AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Is that such a bad thing? I ask myself.
I start to realize that maybe my mind has concocted these scenarios just to try to convince itself not to think of him in the way I have been ever since yesterday. The best adjectives I could use to sum up those thoughts are “yummy,” “delicious,” and “scrumptious.”
And now, he just did what I wanted him to do – he kissed me – and I had to go and get all bitchy towards him. All because I’m trying to focus on what I think I should focus on, rather than what I really want to.
I hate how my mom conditioned me to be this way.
But then again, I really should be focused on my job right now, instead of on that sexy, pompous asshole.
“Stacy, darling, how’s it coming along?”
My thoughts are interrupted when Monica pushes open the door and barges right in, in her no-nonsense style. Some people say my boss is a huge bitch, but I usually admire her forthrightness, how she grabs life by the horns and goes after what she wants.
Usually.
Right now, she’s not really the person I wanted to see. I haven’t told her that Elias said he’d answer my question first during the press conference. I wasn’t sure how to break that news to her without divulging how exactly it came to be.
In fact, I didn’t really want anyone to know the origin of how I had met Elias. When Elias had mentioned calling the cops, I hadn’t said no only because I had wanted to protect the Leviathans’ reputation and keep drama away from the team in the weeks leading up to the Superbowl. I had also wanted to protect my own reputation.
I feel naïve to have let what almost happened almost happen, but I also feel as if news of it getting out would make me look like an idiot and hurt my career.
What kind of reporter doesn’t know the team members?
It became quite obvious to me that he hadn’t been in the locker room with the rest of the team members. He had waited until they all left and then he came from somewhere else, only trying to make it look like he was in the locker room, which he couldn’t have been, or else the Leviathans would have recognized him as an intruder.
Unless maybe he had been hiding in a shower or something, I reasoned.
Still, none of it made any sense. He had had a key to the locker room, and a locker. He must be a friend or relative of someone on the team.
But then that would mean someone on the inside helped him get in, I think. And maybe we should tell Coach K so that he’s prepared, in case it happens again…
Stop it, I tell myself. Elias said he’d look into it and you agreed. No point in second guessing yourself now.
I’m still pretty shook up about the whole thing that happened, and I’m hoping that somehow Elias can find out who did it. Still, I don’t really want to announce it to the world.
For some reason, on top of this hang-up I have about feeling like it could ruin my career by exposing me as an idiot who didn’t know the team members I’m supposed to be covering, I feel a bit embarrassed about it. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I feel vulnerable since I was all alone and helpless, and had it not been for Elias…
Gee, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. I don’t know what exactly that guy was there to do, but he obviously had nefarious purposes in mind.
“It’s coming along pretty well,” I tell Monica, reminding myself to snap back to reality.
“Pretty well” is one way to put it – mostly, a very dishonest way – but I have to seem as if everything is normal.
I always act like I’m going to get to ask a lot of questions, even though I usually don’t. So at least tonight is no different in that respect. In that sense, I’m just faking it ‘till I make it, like usual. There’s nothing to give away the fact that anything will happen out of the ordinary.
“Good, good,” she says, nodding her approval. “Because, you know, Kirsten Donnelly is here, and she’s been going around saying that she’s going to ask the first question that will be answered.”
“Is that so?”
Hmmm.
Kirsten is my archrival, who works at a different news outlet. I would like to be on friendly, professionally terms with her, but the feeling is not mutual.
She makes it quite obvious that she hates my guts. In fact, she would probably like to rip every, little, tiny, last one of them out of me and shred them all to pieces before stomping on them and burning them up.
