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I enjoyed confrontation. I felt it was invigorating. The more people at each other’s throats, the more driven everyone was to provide the absolute best. Fear was a great motivator, but so was ego and drive. Combine all three and you had an assistant who will work themselves to the bone for the satisfaction of knowing that they alone were the one who could provide what they provide. It was how I ran my own life.
Business lifewashome life. Home lifewaswork life. There was no differentiation.
“I suppose it didn’t,” I said. “But I’d like to try again.”
“You’re the boss,” Bobby said, standing. It was his way of telling me he thought my idea was stupid. It was transparent, and though I usually disliked people using euphemisms or beating around the bush and being politically correct, I tolerated it from Bobby. He was old-school. He would do what I asked, and say a little quip to note his disagreement. But if he really disagreed, he’d say so, very plainly, to my face.
I admired that. Having balls, figurative ones, was essential. Confronting your boss directly and telling them that you think their idea is “fuckin’ stupid,” as I had been told by Bobby on multiple occasions, took balls. I’d fired Bobby three times by now. I always hired him back the next morning.
Flipping through the résumés, one caught my eye. I figured it was the one Bobby liked by the way the corner of the cover page was gently bent. It was a telltale sign Bobby had put it aside special, unlike the others which he probably put directly into the manilla envelope. This one he liked enough to note it physically, even as gently as he did.
A Columbia graduate, Summa Cum Laude. Double degrees. Impressive. Still, probably disappointing overall. These kinds of people usually saw themselves as above an assistant’s job. They would come in, do the work for a week or two, then call their Daddy to get his golf buddies to give them a boardroom position and a one-day-a-week spot in an office.
The pansies.
I was prepared to be let down, as I almost always was with anyone who came to my attention. Very few people ever stood up to my quality standards. Very few ever looked like a tiger, walked like a tiger, talked like a tiger. They were papier-mâché. Easily torn and see-through.
The door opened and the cast of candidates came in, being ushered to the small office cut into the wall on the side of my room. It had a bathroom inside, and an exit to the main hall that was locked. Otherwise, the door into this room was its only entrance, and I enjoyed them being paraded in front of me before they interviewed. It gave me a chance to see how they walked.
One stuck out.
I was as surprised as I was impressed. A tall, leggy woman, in her mid-twenties if I had to guess, clearly athletic. And serious. And confident.
I watched her with interest as she made her way to the small office. Unlike the others, she never sneaked a peek at me. And it wasn’t out of fear or idiocy. She knew I was there. She just didn’t want to give me the power of making her whither.
I liked that.
ChapterThree
Julia
Well, this had to be the weirdest interview ever.
Sure, this was a bit out of my normal element, hanging out in the North Side, in some big, fancy building, interviewing for an assistant’s job to a CEO rather than doing anything using my degrees. But it was good money. And they were hiring immediately.
And most importantly, they called me.
Frankly, I was willing to take whatever was out there. Any job that paid reliably and wasn’t throwing drinks or taking off clothes was fair game. Something that kept me up and moving was a bonus, and this job seemed like the kind of high-intensity, high motion job that would keep me on my toes. Literally.
The office inside the office, where I was stuck with four other hapless souls, had a desk, several chairs, and a treadmill. One of the guys, who I mentally dubbed as “Bro,” had taken the seat at the desk immediately, eyeing us all from what he assumed was a power position. He was one of those alpha guys. I hated them. They were never as dominant as they thought they were, were always just ego-driven mama’s boys, and their haircuts were stupid.
The other people took seats around me. Two other women and another man sat awkwardly, looking around the small, but tastefully decorated office. There was an open seat in the corner. I could sit there, but…
What the hell.
I kicked off my heels and walked over to the treadmill. Punching the start button, I began walking, picking up a book from my bag and beginning to read in silence. I wasn’t running, I wasn’t even jogging, just walking. And yet, the gasps and the wild looks from the fellow interviewees was like I had grown an extra head.
“What?” I said, my accent dropping a little. “I don’t want to just sit down.”
“Fucking Southie,” Bro said. He was now turning away from me, as if visibly seeing me was an insult on his precious eyes. The other three had now busied themselves as well, not wanting to watch the spectacle. I shrugged.
Fuck ’em.
I kept moving on the treadmill, keeping up a low pace as I glanced out of the glass doors toward the desk in the center of the room. I had purposefully avoided looking at it when I first came in. I wanted to portray the image that I was confident, and cowering in front of the boss was not a confident move. Neither was being cocky and smiling at him like Bro did.
But as I looked at the desk, and the man sitting behind it, I saw him looking at me. Right. At. Me. His steely dark eyes cut through the room like laser beams. He had dirty-blond hair that looked like it was intentionally messy, and I had no doubt he had a hairstylist who kept it that way regularly. It gave off the impression of quiet and very carefully controlled chaos. His eyes looked like obsidian arrowheads.
He was breathtaking.
