Page 10 of And Now, Back to You

“We have a meeting,” he says. “And you’re late.”

“I didn’t see anything on my calendar,” I offer. “Mark let me know about it after our shoot.”

His bushy eyebrows are two angry caterpillars on his forehead. “Oh? Do I need to put things on your calendar now? Run it by your secretary?” He snorts. “You’ve wasted enough of our time. Let’s get started.”

“Maybe an introduction first,” suggests another voice. A woman with sleek dark hair stands gracefully from the meeting table in the middle of Keith’s office. She offers me a kind, if not slightly strained, smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Delilah. My name is Maggie Lin. I oversee the radio station across the street.”

If Keith looks like the remnants of a science experiment gone wrong, this woman looks like one gone right. Everything about her screams: put together.

She extends her hand.

I stare at it, my fin-less fingers gripping the edge of the door. I think I’m starting to get hives from the turtle suit.

“Um,” I say. “Hi.”

She slowly lowers her hand, her smile faltering.

“Delilah,” Keith bites out.

“Sorry, I just—” I hike my thumb over my shoulder, laughing nervously. “I was hoping to stop by the break room before we get started. I think I have an extra change of clothes in my locker.”

“We don’t have time for another one of your catastrophes, Delilah. Get in here.”

My cheeks burn hot. I try to find the backbone Gianna is always encouraging me to have, but it’s hard when my past mistakes are continuously trotted out like a prized show pony.

I’m more than a little accident-prone. I’m clumsy on my best day. My grandpa liked to joke when I was growing up that I must have angered a particularly vengeful spirit. My luck is atrocious. Whatever is worse than atrocious. Maybe I stepped on every crack in the sidewalk as a child. Or walked under a thousand ladders. Because if something can go wrong, it’s almost a guarantee it will.

The turtle suit. The mud pit at the Preakness. During a potluck last year, I made chocolate pudding for one of the crime desk guys only to slip in the parking lot and dump half of it on myself.

So, no. I don’t want to step into this room with this perfect woman and my impertinent boss for a meeting I’m not prepared for while I’m dressed in a turtle suit. I don’t. There’s only so much humiliation a person can withstand, and I’d like to be taken seriously. For once.

I take a bracing breath. “I’m going to go to the break room,” I say, slowly and clearly. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes and we can get started.”

I turn quickly, hoping to make my escape before Keith can launch any more cutting remarks my way, hell-bent on standing my ground. But I don’t account for the person quickly rushing toward me in the opposite direction, equally determined to get to wherever they’re going.

It happens in slow motion. I get a glimpse of a blue checkered shirt and try to jerk left, but he does too. Our bodies slam together and we tip sideways, my hip slamming into a meticulously polished case of awards. Keith’s second-place television station softball tournament trophy wedges itself against my rib cage and I squeak, reaching for something to steady myself. Except the only thing I have to steady myself with is a surprisingly strong, blue-check-clad arm.

Coffee spills, something snaps, and then I’m on my back against cold linoleum, gasping for breath, pinned to the floor.

A low groan rumbles against my neck and a puff of warm air brushes over my throat. The man currently plastered to my front bites out a low sigh that sounds suspiciously like my name.

Coffee spreads around us in a slow bleed. It seeps through my suit and warms my skin. I try to breathe around the hot, pricking sensation.

The man above me pushes up on his elbows.

He looks different without his glasses, but I’d recognize that stubborn set of his jaw anywhere. Jackson Clark. The tight-ass from the radio station across the street. He’s flattened me bodily to the floor outside Keith’s office. The same guy who has been leaving me weird notes on the window of my car for almost two years has decided to resort to violence.

Recognition makes his blue eyes flash darker.

“Of course,” he says, his mouth in a flat line and his hand tangled in my hair. “It’s you.”

AIDEN VALENTINE: You’re listening to Baltimore’s home for easy listening, 101.6 LITE FM.

AIDEN VALENTINE: Now with traffic and weather together, here’s Jackson Clark.

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