Pressure Point (Point #2) (6 page)

A year and a half later

Stella

Much to the silent pleasure of my father, finding a job straight out of college was challenging. I decided right away that I was going to live at home until I could afford a down payment on a condo. While I work as a barista, I squirrel away money and quietly date a nice Roman Catholic boy named Paul.

On paper, it’s not a bad life. But in the giant puzzle that makes my life, a chunk is missing.

Sighing to myself, I push inside the grubby diner. In the back corner, I see a baseball-cap covered head with a bubbly blonde gabbing animatedly next to him. My heart rate increases at the sight of his easy smile, the way his whiskey eyes sparkle as he listens to his sister recant some tale of undergraduate glory.

Should I be concerned that the guy following directly behind me doesn’t make my heart rate pick up? Not when he appears at my door to take me on a date. Not when I gave him my virginity in my tiny dorm room bed, or when I caught his eye for the first time. I toss a glance over my shoulder and my boyfriend’s lips twitch upward. He makes me happy. Honestly, he does. But he doesn’t complete my puzzle.

“Paul, I didn’t know you were coming, too,” Zoe says with her usual exuberance.

“Here I am,” Paul says somewhat stiffly. The guy isn’t exactly at ease in new social situations.

I allow myself one quick glance at Blake, but what I find freezes me in place on the cracked tile outside the booth. The brown eyes that were alive with light a few moments earlier are dark with displeasure. His teeth are clenched and his jaw ticks. Zoe, seemingly oblivious to the mounting tension next to her, introduces my boyfriend of six months to her brother. Zoe doesn’t reveal their sibling relationship explicitly, almost as though she knows Paul won’t be around long to deserve that type of information.

Paul nudges me forward. Fingertips press sharply against my lower back, propelling me forward. My hip collides with the two-tone resin tabletop and causing me to gasp a little and pain to smart at my side.

“Babe, come on,” Paul mutters offhandedly.

A heartbeat later Blake is on his feet and taking a menacing step toward Paul. “Ease up,” he growls, anger simmering beneath the surface.

“Whoa. It was an accident, dude. Chill out.” Paul’s indignant response doesn’t sit well with neither me nor Blake, who looks like he’s
this
close to breathing fire.

“Putting your hands on a woman is not something to
chill out
about, dude,” Blake seethes. “Apologize to Stella or get the fuck out of here.”

If I was frozen before, I am literally a block of ice now. Wordlessly, I send a futile look to Zoe, who appears as surprised as I feel. “Blake–”

“Really, Stella?” Paul says, his voice sounding far away. I whirl around to face him fully. We stand toe to toe and I clench my fists.

“Really, Paul?” I mimic. “It’s that hard to say it was a mistake?”

He snorts, exhaling a nasty note through his nasal cavity.

Disgusting.

Blake takes another step closer, sandwiching me between the men. He towers behind me, a comforting wall of silent support. Paul’s gaze floats between Blake and me for a half second.

“This is bullshit,” he growls. “I’m not putting up with this. I’ll call you later.” And with that, Paul stalks out of the restaurant.

I stare after him in shock and I belatedly realize my palms are slick with sweat. “What just happened?” I wonder aloud.
More like WTF
. This situation escalated. Quickly.

“Has he ever put his hands on you before?” Blake asks urgently.

Slowly I let myself fall into the booth. “No,” I reply lamely. “I don’t know what to say.”

Zoe leans across the table, grabbing one of my hands in both of hers. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I mumble, dumbfounded. My first boyfriend turns out to be a major dud and what am I thinking about? How Blake stood up for me. “Thanks for doing that, Blake.”

Blake drops into the seat across from me, shoulders slumped in…defeat? That’s a strange reaction from him, if I’ve ever seen one. What’s there to be upset about?

Then he says something that sends a dagger straight through my heart. The words he utters remind me of a night nearly a year and a half ago. It had been a wonderful night, crooning along to one of my favorite singers with my best friend. Then what fun I had was tarnished in a manner of minutes. Cassidy Collins, with her boobs crammed into a skintight strapless dress, threw herself at Blake, and he caught her with his lips. He sent Zoe and me back to his house with the driver. He wasn’t there when I left in the morning. And with a few words, he splits my heart in two like he did that night. Since that night, I’ve seen Blake only in passing. Whenever I’ve been at their house, Blake doesn’t bother Zoe or me. The couple of times he visited her at school, I wasn’t able to hang out with them.

“It’s nothing, you’re like my sister, and I wouldn’t let some two-bit loser push my sister around.”

Sister.
That word never sounded so heartbreaking. On some level, I should be upset that my boyfriend will most likely turn into an ex soon. My heart doesn’t ache because Paul’s a douche lord—it’s that, once again, I’m slapped across the face with a harsh dose of reality.
Blake doesn’t see me the way that I see him.

I plaster on a weak smile. “What’s good here?”

Much sooner than I thought, as in three days later, Paul’s nothing more than a hiccup in my memory. Blake’s reaction sits firmly in the back of my mind, too, because I have more important things to focus on—like my career goals.

On Tuesday morning, I get a call from Speck, a startup company I interviewed with a couple weeks back. They want to hire me for a junior account manager position.

Six days after the initial job offer, I find myself waving at an auburn-haired beauty sitting behind Speck’s marble-topped receptionist desk.

“You must be Stella Baccino.” Her eyes dance with amusement while I balance carefully on my wedged booties. Heels aren’t my strong suit. “Love that color on you. Plum works with the dark hair and light eyes you got going on. Need a coffee? Juice? Water? One of the perks of working in the tech industry is an endless supply of free drinks.” All of that flies out of her mouth before I’ve taken two steps inside.

“No drink.” I lift my travel thermos that Mom put together before I left. She acted like it was my first day of kindergarten, demanding to take a picture before I walked out of the house to the commuter bus. Then she did three Hail Mary’s. Typical Mom.

“Thank you…”

“Violet Harper. I’m office manager-slash-event planner around here and one of the few females in this office. And I’m also your soon-to-be office best friend.”

“Can we be friends outside the office, too?” The question is asked half-jest, half-serious. With Zoe still at school, I’m in the market for a local girlfriend.

“That’s the natural progression, but I didn’t want to be too forward.” Violet cocks her head to the side, watching me thoughtfully. “You’re joking. I came on too strong, didn’t I? I’m sorry; it’s just that I started working here a couple months ago and am new to the city. I hardly know anyone and could use some girlfriends. This office is practically a frat house. There are three other women here: one hardly speaks English and the other two are thick as thieves and want nothing to do with me. Not only do you look normal, but you also have friendly eyes. Has anyone ever told you that? Anyway, I think we’d make a dynamite pair. Plus, your new boss swears you’re going to reinvigorate the client management team. With those qualifications, how could I not want to be your best friend?”

I can’t help it; I burst out laughing. I laugh and laugh and laugh until my stomach hurts.

Violet’s face drops a little. She’s upset. No, no, that’s not what I want.

“I’m so sorry, Violet. I’m not laughing at you. I’ve been wound so tight this last week that the drop of a feather would send me into a panic attack. Thank you for that. This is my first big girl job out of college and you took away some of my tension. If that doesn’t qualify you for work best friend status, I don’t know what will. What are you doing after hours today?”

Violet beams at me and plops down into her desk chair before tapping furiously on the keyboard. “Colin’s on his way out here to get you set up and the only plans I have when we close up shop tonight is a bottle of red and
The Bachelor
. By all means, save me from the solitude.”

“Stella, right on time just like I knew you would be.”

Portly would be a kind way to describe my new boss, Colin. He’s a jolly, Santa Claus type with a plentiful gut and rosy red cheeks. A mop of straw-colored hair flies in every which direction and only half of his blue polo shirt is tucked into the waistband of his shorts. At least he’s not intimidating.

“Here I am, ready for my first day.”

“Good luck. Let’s do lunch,” Violet calls when I toss a little wave and a wobbly smile in her direction. She discreetly gives me thumbs up, raising her eyebrows comically. What luck to meet someone this friendly on my first day.

Colin leads us through Speck’s open office plan. The small technology firm has been around for less than four years and the Chicago office has only been open for one of them. I fought for the job when I read the advertisement online because the technology sounded promising. Speck is a mobile messaging application that provides businesses with technology to communicate with their employees. Managers can contact their employees through voice and text messaging, relay mass messages, and it syncs with timecard and human resource systems. The biggest catch for Speck to date is a massive logistics company and its rapid expansion into Europe. My job will be working one-on-one with Speck’s clients. I’ll help them implement the tool and make changes as necessary.

Mom says I wanted to go into client services because I’m a nurturer. To me, it’s about working with people and achieving business goals.

“Katya’s in from the New York office. We have a meeting with her first thing. I’m afraid you won’t be able to set up at your desk until after that. Drop your stuff for now.” We’re walking and talking like an episode of the
West Wing
, and I have to move my legs quickly to keep his pace after I toss my purse underneath what I presume to be my workstation.

The conference room we enter has one wall of glass windows, though the middle is frosted to avoid prying eyes. Katya Monroe, the Global Director of Client Management, thumbs through something on her smartphone, not pausing to greet Colin and me. We sit opposite her and Colin stays silent, giving me the distinct impression that he’s not comfortable speaking up to the commanding woman.

Mental note made.

When her thumbs finish flying across the screen, Katya snaps her head up, baring her teeth in a smile that a shark would be wary of. “Good morning, Stella. Pleasure to have you as part of the team.”

“Thank you for this opportunity to work at Speck, Katya. I’m thrilled to be here.”

“I’m sure you are.” Katya exudes confidence, looking down at me by way of her nose.

Awkward. Silence.

“What’s the training procedure, Colin?”

My boss snaps to attention, though he can’t hide his nerves as he fumbles with the keyboard and mouse on the conference table. With a few clicks, he pulls up a color-coded spreadsheet. “First two weeks with customer service learning the ropes, next two weeks are intensive client training, I’ll shadow her for one more,
and
then we’ll set her loose.”

“Clients?” she demands abruptly.

“Morgan Trucking and Pendent Arena.”

This is the first time that I’ve heard about my clients, and I keep my expression neutral, not betraying my anticipation. Morgan Trucking’s fleet of seventy-eight trucks is all part of the Speck network. The homegrown Chicago company was one of the first to sign with Speck. During my interview, Colin told me about them and Pendent Arena. Pendent is a new client located twenty miles outside of the city. My Honda and I will spend lots of time together when I make client visits.

“Morgan needs lots of hand holding; are you up for the challenge?” Katya drums her scarlet manicure on the glass tabletop impatiently.

“Absolutely. Just think of me as a sponge. I’ll soak up everything Speck quickly and –”

“Great. Client coming in five, we can wrap this up now,” Katya interrupts with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Seriously?
I balk silently. Forcing a pleasant smile, I rise to my feet. Inside, I’m thrown for a loop. Everyone I’ve met at Speck, thus far, has been friendly and welcoming.
You are the new kid on the block. You need to earn your stripes before she’ll treat you as an equal,
I remind myself.

Try as I might, I can’t push past the crestfallen dive my stomach takes. There was no sign of superiority from anyone who I interviewed with or all of the photos and videos that I stalked on Speck’s social media pages.

A visible sheen of sweat glimmers on Colin’s forehead as we walk toward his office. Inside, he shuts the door behind us and flops into his chair with drama. “She’s not always so…abrupt, I promise.”

The kindness melts the sliver of fire that had ignited inside of me. I sit down in the seat opposite of my new boss. “Colin, I meant what I said; I’m thrilled to be here. And I’m looking forward to getting to know Katya better.”

His distress evaporates a little when he sits up straighter in his chair. “It was a rough morning, I apologize. I didn’t know Katya was in town. There’s nothing to do but make the best of it.”

I nod in affirmation, not wanting to speak ill of my boss’s boss. If there’s one thing that I learned in my career as an RA in college, it was never to trash talk your supervisor. A friend was forced to work in the freshmen dorm notorious for illicit drug use and parties broken up by the cops because she spread rumors about the head of the RA program. Admittedly, I’m cautious, but this is my first real job, after all.

Colin offers me a crooked smile. “Let’s get started.”

Katya’s forgotten as I fall feet first into all things Speck.