The Boss(hole) by Penelope Bloom
Juliette
Ishould’ve been mortified. Adrian had been convinced, after all, that we’d be able to quietly sneak back to our campsite and nobody would see that we were naked. He hadn’t anticipated the cute little bear cubs spotting us as we waded out of the water and running for us. We’d had a lead on them, but we had to run for our lives to keep away. The mother bear had also loped behind, keeping an eye on her cubs.
I tried to imagine what my father would say if he knew his daughter, Juliette Coleton of the triumphantly protected virginity, had just exposed herself to a campsite full of people. I wondered if I was technically a sexual predator now, too. We’d both shouted for the kids to cover their eyes and tried to shield as much as we could with our hands, but who knew?
One of the campers crunched through the dried leaves up to our tent. “Uh. You two okay in there?” he asked.
“We’re fine!” I said.
“We could use some clothes, actually,” Adrian said. “If anyone has spares.”
“Yeah, we can arrange that,” the guy said. “God knows we don’t need you waving that thing in front of our wives again any time soon.” We heard the camper run off, presumably to gather clothes for us.
I stifled a laugh, looking at Adrian who was pressing his palm to his forehead. “This is exactly why I stay in the office.”
“Oh come on,” I whispered. “Admit it was a little fun.”
“Jumping out of a plane without a parachute would be fun until you hit the ground.”
“Totally different,” I laughed.
It was dark in our tent with only the faintest bit of orange campfire light penetrating. Adrian’s face flickered in front of mine, and I saw he was actually smiling. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in and kissing me. “You really are.”
Going backto life as usual was a slap in the face. During the trip, I’d gotten a real taste of what it’d be like to have Adrian all to myself. I thought I got to know him more in that single day than I had since meeting him, and all it did was make me crave more. I wanted to know more about him, have more time with him, and do more things with him.
Instead, I was stuck in the apartment while he worked twelve-hour days. It was the day after our trip, and he warned me he’d have to stay late tonight to catch up.
I tried to make the best of my time. I finally had some actual money in my bank account from my first paycheck. I decided to treat myself to a little shopping. I spent most of the morning updating my wardrobe with some much-needed fresh options. I treated myself to lunch at a little bistro and sort of went for a jog afterwards. The jog started out high energy because I had new shoes and a cute new exercise outfit. But after two minutes and a lot of heavy breathing, I decided to rethink it as an “active walk.”
I showered, got cleaned up, and saw I still had several hours to wait before Adrian was due back. I checked my phone for anything I could do work-wise, but he’d barely thrown me any scraps since we came here. I knew he had a new secretary, and the jealous side of me took over. Was she better at the job than me? Was she pretty?
That last thought settled into my brain like a little nugget of poison. I’d resisted asking Adrian the question, but it was eating away at me. After all, he’d fallen for one secretary, hadn’t he? Maybe the guy had a thing for women in business clothing.
I decided to look up Coleton Central’s website. I tried finding some sort of personnel roster, but it appeared Coleton Central was too exclusive and secretive to have one. The only internet presence they had was a phone number and email to set up a consultation appointment.
I dialed the number. I could just pretend I’d tried his cell phone and couldn’t get through.
“Coleton Central, this is Sasha. Can I help you?”
Sasha, I thought. I immediately pictured a vixen behind the desk with boobs so big and perky that she could run into a wall and bounce off without even scratching her nose.
“Yes,” I said, deepening my voice as much as I could. “I need to speak with Adrian White. Er, well, I need his secretary. I want to book an appointment. But I don’t want to bother Mr. White, so it’d be best if you just put me through to his secretary. Is that you? Are you his secretary? I mean.”
There was a brief pause, probably because I was ranting like a crazy woman. That, or it was the ridiculous deep voice I was using. “I can transfer you to his secretary. Please hold.”
I let out a sigh of relief. Unless I was about to get transferred to Giselle, who would sound even more vixen-like and make me imagine even bigger boobs.
“Hello?” A woman answered in a shaky grandma voice. “This is Polina, how can I help you?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said quickly. “Wrong number.”
I hung up the phone and laid down on the couch, chuckling at myself. I was an idiot. And Adrian was a much better man than I realized. I sighed and decided to behave myself while I waited for him to come back from work.
I spent most of my evening laying on the couch wondering if I was making the right choices. Adrian was almost exactly the sort of man I’d daydreamed about. Maybe my dream guy hadn’t started out as grumpy, but I was coming to see that side of Adrian wasn’t the real him. He was driven and he took care of me in a different way than my family always had.
They tried to shut me up with excess. If they threw enough shiny objects in my face, they thought I’d stop wanting more and be a good little Coleton girl. But Adrian valued me for me.
I wished I was still allowed to join him at the office, but I also understood why that was impossible. Even without Adrian’s goals, I would’ve been recognized too easily and dragged back home. My father did regularly show up at Coleton Central and dozens of men and women who knew me growing up worked there daily.
I turned over the possibility of my family’s company getting destroyed in my head for the hundredth time. Every time I thought about it, I expected to feel some sudden rush of wrongness—like I’d realize I was making a huge mistake by not warning my family. I did like my mother, even if she was far too complacent in the way my father tried to run things. But it wasn’t as if my family would go hungry if the business collapsed tomorrow.
They’d all have plenty of money and plenty of resources to get by. Destroying Coleton would just be taking away my father’s ability to keep ruining the lives of people like Adrian’s father. And that was what I always came back to. No matter how many ways I looked at it, this felt like the right thing. I knew people at Coleton would lose their jobs if Adrian succeeded, but how many would lose more than that if he didn’t? It felt like a necessary price to pay.
I turned on a show and hoped to distract myself for the next few hours while I waited for Adrian. But I only made it about ten minutes before I pulled out my phone and decided to text him some suggestive emojis.
I grinned, debating between a banana emoji or the purple eggplant.
Decisions, decisions…