Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet #1)(6)

“I mean…maybe.” I glance around the glass walls and the cubicles outside his office. Women walk around in pantsuits and pencil skirts. Men take phone calls and sit in meetings in boardrooms. Every wall is glass.

Like they want you to see how fucking important they are. I can’t imagine any of his other employees smoking on their free time.

Connor leans back in his chair. “Garrison.” He draws my attention back to him. “I don’t care if you smoke, as long as it doesn’t hinder your performance here.”

My shoulders relax and I release a breath. “It won’t,” I say, almost hurried. It even surprises me. How much I want to keep this job. It’s the only thing I have right now. “I don’t usually smoke weed. I’m not a pot head or anything. It just helps me mellow out sometimes.”

Connor nods like he already assumed this about me. “Company policy is to have you take a confirmation test to make sure the first drug test wasn’t a false positive. But I’ll take this conversation as proof that it wasn’t.” He passes another paper to me. “Because you failed the first, you’re going to have to undergo random drug tests throughout your first year here.”

Sounds fair. Shit, I’m just happy I still have a job.

He glances at the clock on his wall, then back to me. “Make no mistake, Garrison. If I find you’re taking harder drugs like opiates or cocaine, you won’t have a job here. This isn’t Wolf of Wall Street. My employees are useless to me if their health is at risk.”

“Noted.” I don’t mention how I’ve tried most drugs. Most I couldn’t care less about. And I’m not around people who’d pressure me to do them anymore.

Connor puts his fingers to his temple. “Let’s talk about your project.”

I grimace. Honestly, I’d much rather talk about my failed drug test again. “It’s going splendidly.” My sarcasm is broken because it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to come out during a meeting with my boss.

“You don’t have an idea of what you’re creating yet.” Connor assumes correctly again.

“I mean, it’s kind of difficult when you said I could create anything,” I tell him. When it comes to tech development, that’s a wide fucking spectrum, and I want to choose the right thing. It’s just figuring out what it is.

“Take your time,” Connor says. “You don’t have a deadline.”

That scares me even more. Because Connor Cobalt is the kind of guy where you don’t want to waste his time. And he’s giving me infinite quantities of it.

I’m also really aware that not a lot of people get this kind of opportunity. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s married to a Calloway sister—therefore has ties to my girlfriend—maybe I wouldn’t be in this position right now. It feels like nepotism. But I’m not going to throw it away.

“What if I take years to even come up with an idea?” I ask. I can’t believe he’d ignore his bottom line just for me. He’s a business guy. They tend to give a shit about money, and I’m currently on an eighty-thousand dollar salary with benefits.

“Then you take years,” Connor says like it doesn’t bother him. “But I don’t think you will. And I’m always right.”

He’s always right.

A part of me wants to prove him wrong. And I don’t know what that says about me.





*



Later tonight in my studio apartment, I toss a frozen pizza in the oven, sink onto my couch and scroll through Willow’s videos she sent me. Re-watching them for the third time.

She’s lounging on her bed in a baggie Superheroes & Scones T-shirt that has to be at least three years old—I recognize the design from a line of shirts when we first started working at S&S.

X-Men posters are taped to the walls above her head. She rubs at her eyes, her glasses already off for the night. Watching her makes me miss her more, but maybe I’m some sort of masochist because I can’t stop. And I just want more.

“So my classes aren’t that bad so far,” she tells me. “Except for Intro to Marketing. Ugh…” She buries her face in a pillow. “They’re making us do a group project.” Her words are muffled, and she pops back up after a second. “I thought I had abandoned those at Dalton Academy. But no, they’re in college too, and they are the literal worst.”

“Agreed,” I say to the video.

She brushes hair off her cheeks and her hazel eyes drift to the screen. She holds back tears. “Garrison.” She says my name like she’s mourning it. “Could you…could you call me when you get off work? Even if it’s super early my time. It’s nothing important. I just want to hear your voice.”

My chest hurts like someone dropped a fifty-pound dumbbell on it.

I didn’t call her. It was midnight by the time I left the office, and that’s 5 a.m. her time. She’s got a “hellishly” difficult morning class, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t fuck with her studies. College isn’t easy, and I’d hate myself if I distracted her.

My plan: call her during her break between classes tomorrow afternoon.

The oven beeps, my pizza done, and just as I rise off the couch, my phone lights up. Vibrates loudly. Her name is big across the screen. WILLOW.