Page 54 of Little Miss Fortune

‘It wasn’t Toby’s fault.’

‘Not that it matters anyway,’ he mumbles, unknowingly stinging me.

‘That’s not for me to decide. HR will deal with it... after the interviews.’

The interviews to replace the runaway reiki master are today. Fawzia clearly didn’t want to do the interviews alone, so kept our secret to herself. I was given some brief recruitment training but not a big role. My job is to take notes and write down the scores.

Or so I thought.

If I thought Toby was bad at my interview, this is actual hell. Like Freddy Krueger reincarnated.

‘You haven’t described a single difficult situation you have been in.’

‘That isn’t a crisis, you have described a risk, which should have been logged into a risk register.’

‘So, are you implying that no one took the precautions to comply with guidelines?’

He is a peacock, flaunting his superiority over these poor candidates whose only wish is to quit this horrible limbo that is job searching.

Fawzia, who specifically chose to sit between us, keeps throwing subtle shocked expressions in my direction every time Toby comes in with a question. Yes, he is right, our notes match up, but I swear, Maahni—the strongest candidate we had the whole day—left the interview covering her face to hide her tears.

When Fawzia walks out behind to check up on her, Toby leaves the room for a half an hour break. He bursts through the landing doors, ignoring that I’m following him as he enters the secret room with the massage chair.

He sits hunched over his legs, his face in his hands.

I don’t know what possessed me to walk in behind him, but it’s probably that men making women cry is something I take extremely seriously. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I don’t know what’s come over me. This is so embarrassing.’ His voice simmers in shame. He looks remorseful, mulling over the last three hours.

I don’t know what else to say. If he is aware of his mistake, it’s not up to me to hammer it in. I am definitely not the one to comment after the recent events. The papers I took from the interview room are in my hands like a shield.

How did we get here?

He turns the chair on. A gentle hum fills the room for exactly ten seconds before he switches it off.

‘Actually,’ he says, ‘I do know what’s come over me, which makes it even more embarrassing.’ He runs his fingers through his hair and smiles at me solemnly.

Why do my knees feel heavy when he looks at me like this? All the books talk about chest and heart and breath. How messed up am I that I am feeling emotions in my joints? I can’t move.

‘Have you heard from Alexandra?’ he asks, turning away, releasing me from my spell.

‘No, I have texted an apology every day, but she is ignoring me.’

Silence. He nods in understanding. There is emptiness in the way his body is positioned. I owe him an apology too. I sit on the armrest.

‘I am sorry.’

‘For the kiss?’

I fill my lungs with air, forcing the truth out. ‘For saying that you don’t matter. I just wanted to say something to Sashka, Sasha, that would make her not hate me. It was hurtful, and that wasn’t cool. And also, it just wasn’t true. I wanted to kiss you. That’s why I did it.’

His lips part to say something, eyes intense and stuck to my face. I feel myself being pulled towards him. Leather squeaks from my gentle lean.

We could do something right now. No one knows about the closet. The next interview isn’t for another twenty minutes.

It takes everything in me to stop myself. ‘But it can’t happen again. I need this job. I love my friends. We need to keep it cool.’

‘Is that what you want?’ His face is an inch away from mine.