I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs

33

Tess

Irushed out of Beck’s office, grabbed Maeve, and hauled her to the bathroom.

The Quantum Cyber bathrooms were luxurious. It was one of the main reasons I had taken the assistantship job in the first place. Well, that and the fact that I had no other prospects, rent was due, and I couldn’t even turn on my phone without it blowing up with text messages and voicemails from creditors saying I was behind on my roulette wheel of debt payments.

I slumped against the wall of the bathroom.

“Did you get fired?” Maeve asked, eyes wide. “Am I getting fired? Oh god, I knew I should have found another job! I swear this is the wake-up call that I need. I’m making changes in my life.”

“No one is getting fired,” I said, then lowered my voice. “Beck tried to kiss me.”

“Oh my god!” Maeve squealed. “It’s like The Sound of Music where the grumpy rich boss falls in love with the nanny.”

“Shh! I’m not the nanny; I’m the assistant. And that means I could get fired.”

“Beck is not going to fire you if he wants to sleep with you,” Maeve countered.

“No, but Owen could, or his brother Walker could.”

“Maybe he was just stressed,” Maeve said. “Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he’s sex starved, and he needs an outlet, and your vagina just wandered by, but really, he could go for any vagina.”

“I don’t want him to go for any vagina!” I wailed.

“I thought you hated him.”

“I do, but he’s also not that bad.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow.

“To be fair, he is mercurial and snarly, but he also cares about his sisters.” I sighed. “He’s amazing.”

Maeve clicked her tongue. “See, this is why you need to date more.”

“No, this is exactly why I shouldn’t date.”

“You need to date so that you desensitize yourself to men and their sob stories,” Maeve said, wagging her finger.

“It’s not a sob story; he legitimately does have sisters he has to take care of and a legitimately tragic backstory,” I argued.

“All men have a tragic backstory!” Maeve railed. “At least any of the ones that are interesting. Sure, if you want Maury from accounting who wears his khakis up to his armpits and is slightly balding even though he’s only twenty-seven and all you guys are going to do is watch Netflix in the evening and then spend five minutes doing terrible missionary sex, then I mean, sure, he’s not going to have a tragic backstory. But those hot guys, the ones with the soulful eyes and the stubborn jaw and the rakish mouth? They all have a tragic backstory, each one more catnippy than the last.”

Maeve grabbed me by the shoulders. “But you have to learn to look past that and see whether or not there is a heart of gold under that pile of shit or just more shit. And you haven’t had practice.”

“Beck has a heart of gold,” I said, thinking about him with his sisters.

“Does he?” Maeve pursed her mouth. “He’s trigger-happy to fire people, and he’s a billionaire who didn’t inherit that money but rather made it by being ruthless.”

“Ugh.”

“Now don’t get me wrong,” Maeve assured me, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t sleep with him. I’m just saying don’t fall in love with him because he’s probably going to break your heart.”

“No, of course not,” I said, pacing around the tile floor of the bathroom. “Absolutely no love. I’m not falling in love. Shoot, I’m not even proposing we date.”

“You’re just going to hook up with him and bounce.”

“Yes,” I said, picking at my nails. “Except…”

“Girl.” Maeve shook her head.

“He needs a woman in his life.”

“Does he now?” My friend crossed her arms.

“Not like that! I just meant he needs a woman to make it seem like there’s nothing shady going on with his sisters.”

“As long as the girls aren’t stumbling out of clubs at two a.m. in the morning, I don’t think people are going to give him a second look.”

“They might,” I said stubbornly. “Beck is very concerned.”

“You’re not getting paid enough to get involved in his drama. You have your own drama,” my friend reminded me. “One of the student loan creditors showed up at the apartment last night looking for you.”

“If you don’t pay it off after seven years, the debt is forgiven, right?” I asked nervously.

“I think student loan debt is the exception.”

“I sent you the rent payment, right?” I asked hopefully.

“No, you sent me a wine emoji with a promise to pay later.”

“I had to pay my phone bill!” I said, tangling my fingers in my hair. “And pay off some credit card debt on a card I forgot I had even used.”

“At least if you sleep with Beck, you can probably pillow talk him into a raise.”

“Doesn’t that make me, like, I don’t know, a sugar baby or something?” I chewed on my lip.

“No, it makes you like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

“I’m not that thin, and my hair isn’t wavy; it’s just frizzy.”

“As long as it’s thick enough for Beck to grab onto while he’s reaming you from behind!” Maeve waggled her eyebrows.

“Oh my gosh!”

“Just sleep with him,” Maeve said, “or at least let him eat you out. All this lovey-dovey talk is very out of character for you. You’re probably hyped-up on hormones from living in his house, surrounded by his scent. If you sleep with him, it will probably reset your brain. Not to mention, he was pretty clear about how your job had an expiration date. You don’t want to fall in love with him from afar then be blindsided when he fires you as soon as the adoption goes through.”

“Right,” I said, then tugged at my skirt. I needed new clothes that actually fit. “But I can’t just throw myself at him.”

“You also can’t give him bad sex,” Maeve reminded me. “You don’t want to make it awkward. It’s still a few months before the adoption, right? You don’t want to have to see him every day and have him think about the time that you just starfished and made weird noises while you guys did missionary. You can’t embarrass yourself.”

“Oh gosh. I haven’t had sex since Kaden, and we know what that turned into. I suck at sex.”

“You just have to make him do all the work but make him think you’re participating more than you are,” Maeve coached.

“That sounds like psychology, and you know I barely passed that class in college.” I grimaced.

“It’s easy,” Maeve instructed. “Just when he’s getting all hot and heavy, go like a bit dominatrix and tell him to eat you out, then he’ll be like, ‘Oh this woman is interesting and really doing things for me.’ It will keep him intrigued. Just don’t fall asleep.”

“This sounds like a lot,” I said desperately. “I shouldn’t sleep with him. This is crazy. I don’t know why I’m even talking like that. I need a snack.”

Maeve followed me to the floor’s kitchen.

“You need to get laid,” Maeve hissed in my ear. “You’re sprouting off crazy ideas about how awesome Beck is. You’re dangerously close to falling in love with him.”

“I’m not. I’m just hungry,” I whispered. “I have my leftover lunch in the fridge. I’ll feel better after I eat.”

I had a large slice of quiche from brunch and a cinnamon roll in my lunch box in the fridge. I had written my name all over it and included a note that read, “Don’t you dare eat this!”

Except when I opened my lunch box, there wasn’t anything in it.

“Who the hell is eating other people’s lunches?” I said loudly, fuming.

“You need to put some ghost pepper sauce in the next one,” Maeve said. “That will catch whoever’s eating your food. Or better yet, you need to booby trap the lunch box with some sort of dye. You could rig a bottle of pomegranate juice in the lunch box, and when someone opens it, bam, they’re drenched, and you’re just like ‘oh, it was an accident.’”

I slammed my lunch box closed. I hated people who stole other people’s food! But I was sort of glad to see the empty lunch box.

At least catching the food thief would be a distraction from thinking about Beck.