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1
Frances
Standing inside the mailroom where I worked, I peered through the door’s narrow window, watching the suits rush to the elevators to start their day. I was invisible to them. My coworkers in the mailroom barely knew my name, and outside this room, no one noticed me at all. That was just fine by me.
“Hey, you, can you take this up to the twelfth floor?” asked the manager, Clive, handing me a pile of packages. I nearly stumbled from the weight when he dropped them into my arms. He missed my struggle, having already turned his back to talk with his buddy.
I held the envelopes against my chest and pushed the door open with my back. The white marble foyer and stainless-steel doors of Crawford Corporation greeted me. As people hurried about, I avoided walking into their paths. Balancing the boxes, I struggled to press the elevator button. A man wearing a tight navy-blue suit studied his phone next to me. When the doors opened, he walked in first and pressed the button for the tenth floor.
“Twelfth floor, please,” I said over the pile of mail.
Either ignoring me or having not heard me, he didn’t move, his eyes glued to his phone. I shimmied to the front of the elevator and leaned forward until my index finger pressed the number twelve. Most people didn’t pay attention to their surroundings, but I did.
Blowing a curl out of my face, I leaned back and waited for my floor.
When the doors opened, the familiar white marble desk with this week’s avant-garde floral arrangement, stood in the center. At the desk sat the twelfth-floor receptionist, and my best friend Erika. She wore a bright yellow dress and her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail. A brilliant smile spread across her face when she saw me—a hint of a snicker on her lips. “That pile is nearly as tall as you.”
“Yeah, and probably weighs just as much,” I said, dropping the packages onto her desk. She rummaged through the pile efficiently, making separate stacks.
“Thank goodness there’s nothing here for Crawford,” she said, sorting through the last piece of mail.
Colton Crawford was Crawford Corporation’s CEO and every employee’s worst nightmare. Everyone had a story of when Colton Crawford had yelled or glared at them—everyone except for me. Unsurprisingly, he had never spoken to me. We rarely crossed paths, but someone in my position wouldn’t interest a man like Crawford, anyway.
While most employees saw the CEO, I watched the man. Each morning, he dropped money into the homeless guy’s cup, and whenever he grabbed a coffee in the lobby café, he tipped the barista every time.
“He’s not that bad,” I mumbled.
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to work with him.”
Erika’s hands clasped the mail as her eyes darted past my shoulder. “Shh, here he comes.”
I swiveled to watch Colton approach us. A charcoal gray suit framed his tall and lean body. Every time he walked past me, he seemed to move in slow motion, like the hero in a Hollywood movie. His suit jacket flapped at his sides, revealing a broad chest and slim waist in a white buttoned shirt. I gripped my side, clenching my oversized sweater, as my stomach did a small flip. A whiff of designer cologne wafted past. I closed my eyes, imagining what the cologne would taste like if I were to press my lips to his neck.
“Cancel my eleven o’clock, Erika,” said Colton as he punched the elevator button. I stared at the back of his short, dark hair.
“But, sir, she’s already here,” Erika said.
The doors opened, and Colton walked through them. Pivoting to face us, his face blank of any expression, he said, “I don’t care,” just as the mirrored doors punctuated his exit.
I sighed, and so did Erika. Only hers had a bit of a growl to it. “That’s the second time this week he’s canceled an interview at the last minute. How’s he ever going to hire a new PA if he doesn’t take the time to interview one?”
“What happened to his last personal assistant?” I asked, taking a deep breath to inhale the last remnants of Colton’s cologne.
“The same thing that happened to the one before and the one before that. She got fed up with his rude remarks and short temper and quit.”
Walking around the desk with a stack of mail under her arm, Erika turned just as she proceeded down the hallway. “Meet you downstairs for lunch?”
I smiled. “See you soon.”
The air in the elevator was thick with his bergamot scent, and I unabashedly basked in it, twirling in the closed space with my arms outstretched like some fairy in a field. Unfortunately, when the doors opened, I was no longer alone but staring at a crowd of suits. No one had noted my foolishness, distracted by their files and phones. I scurried through them and wandered back to the mailroom.
Clive and the others chatted while they sorted through packages. I checked my phone and saw a message from my brother, Marco. At eighteen, Marco was eight years my junior.
Marco: Won’t be home for dinner. Meeting after school, then taking a shift at the supermarket. I’ll be home by 11:00.
I shot a quick text back: K. Don’t work too hard.
Ironic that message. We had no choice but to work hard. Our parents immigrated to Syracuse, New York when they married twenty-five years ago. They worked two jobs, leaving my grandmother to raise us. She didn’t speak any English at the time but fortunately taught us Italian. When Marco and I were old enough, we got jobs to help out, too.
