The Assistants(18)

“Harvard,” she muttered, yanking her wrist free and turning quickly away. She scurried to the kitchen.

“How did you get into Harvard?” I called out after her, striving not to put too much emphasis on the you.

Emily returned with a bottle, not bothering with glasses. “Hartford. H-a-r-t-f-o-r-d,” she said, spelling it out for me. “It’s in Connecticut.”

I should have known. Only Emily Johnson would choose a college based on its likelihood to induce favorable misunderstanding.

“You know everyone at Titan thinks you went to—”

“I know.” She uncorked the bottle.

“What was your major?”

“Don’t get me started.” She took a long slug of champagne and handed it off to me. “I wanted to be an actress; that was my biggest mistake. But who knows, maybe there’s still hope for my starring role in Busted: A True Crime Story of Not Getting Away with It.”

My stomach churned, not from the Thai food mixed with my second burger of the day, mixed with champagne, but from the realization that we were in fact an Oxygen network original series waiting to happen.

“Do you think it’s our own fault?” I asked. “That after all these years, we’re still just assistants?”

“You’ve got a few years on me, don’t forget.”

“Two. Two years doesn’t even qualify as a few.”

“But you’re thirty, and that counts extra.”

“I guess it’s all our own fault,” I said.

But wasn’t there something wrong with the fact that I’d still have been paying for a college education that got me nowhere if I hadn’t stolen my way out of it? When all my life I’d done everything I was told?

My phone bleeped before I got very far in hypothesizing an answer. It was a text: Got your number from Emily. Hope you don’t mind. Just wanted to say lunch was fun, how about dinner this Saturday night?

“Oh,” Emily said. “I forgot to tell you something.”

“You gave Kevin my phone number?” It occurred to me that I was yelling. “Kevin asked for my phone number?”

“I know, right?” Emily shook her head in disbelief. “Though he’s kind of a * for not asking you for it himself, don’t you think?”

I was feeling a feeling, but I wasn’t sure which one. Shock? Doubt? Diarrhea?

“What are you waiting for?” Emily said. “Text him back before he comes to his senses.”

“I don’t know, Em. Don’t you think this has prison stripes written all over it? What if he starts asking questions?”

“You’re impossible.” Emily grabbed my phone and texted something with the lightning quickness of a late-millennial, then tossed my phone onto the bed.

I scrambled for it. “What did you write?”

Emily smirked. “I wrote, ‘Let’s skip dinner and get right to dessert.’”

“Are you kidding me?” I retrieved the phone and tapped furiously at its screen. “Is that supposed to be sexual innuendo?”

She was messing with me. What she actually wrote was: Yes!

“Damn it, Emily, you used an exclamation point? I would have never used an exclamation point there. Of all punctuation, it’s the neediest.”

“You’re so lucky I entered your life,” she said. And then waited a beat. “It’s the only way we’re gonna get Kevin to enter you. Right here!” She raised her hand for a high five.

“Or turn me in,” I said, passing on the hand slap.





7




WHAT DO YOU WEAR to dinner with the perfect man?

I Googled just that, but the top hits were all from ask-any-idiot-anything dot com, and they all suggested “comfort” as the most important component of a proper outfit, which I wanted to be true from the bottom of my heart but knew had to be false. My striped manjamas, as Emily called them, could not be the correct attire for my date with Kevin, so I went with my go-to black dress, which the salesgirl at Forever 21 had assured me was right for any occasion.

Hair down. Contacts, not glasses. Makeup? Regular. I’d learned the hard way on previous dates that trying something fancy with my makeup always ended in disaster. Keep It Simple Stupid, or KISS, which was a rule I also applied to kissing itself, though it was doubtful tonight would end anywhere near the arena of tonsil hockey.

I carefully applied my mascara with my mouth open, as I always did. (I’m not the only one who engages in this nonsensical act, am I?) No need for blush since I was already a little anxious-pink beneath the surface. For a full-blooded Italian, half-Sicilian on my mother’s side, I was implausibly pale and quick to go red. If not for my dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and penchant for rigatoni, I could have easily been mistaken for Irish—or, more likely, what some nefariously referred to as Black Irish.

My cell phone bleeped and I was sure it was Kevin canceling, but it was only Emily wishing me luck. Actually, her exact text was: don’t fk this up. But I knew what she meant. There was something suspect about this night, something I was missing and therefore bound to fk up. This may sound to you like the idling hum of low self-esteem, but it wasn’t. It was an indisputable fact that Kevin Hanson and I were not on an equal plane of hotness. Every eligible woman and half the eligible men at Titan would have entered the Hunger Games for the chance at a date with him. Why was he pursuing me?