No Kissing Allowed (No Kissing Allowed #1)(12)
The wow look on her face told me this was the best piece of information I’d given her yet. “So he isn’t against it, then?”
“I don’t know, probably all rumors. He said he’d never dated anyone at the office. That he doesn’t date at all. Just as well. I’d get fired.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Right, and you’ve been dreaming about this job for four years.” We sat in silence for a second, then she smirked. “But I bet he’d totally be worth it.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. So tell me about your first day at Bergdorf’s as a hot new buyer.”
“Junior buyer, and even that seems like a fancy title for what I really do.” She launched into coffee runs and sorting files and clothes and doing any and everything other than buying. It’s funny how fabulous our jobs sounded to us before we’d actually started them. Now, reality had set in. We were at the bottom of the barrel, scraping away with a salary so low it should be against the law, all in hopes of moving up.
Right now, I planned to starve for lunch the next day to make up for our drinks. You spend four years in college, and never once did they tell you how hard it’d be once you left. How slow and painful the job hunt could be. How the salaries were a joke and the apartments cost a fortune. Sure, some new graduates, like Grace, had trust funds and families willing to support them while their careers took off. But Lauren and I were not part of that club. Lauren was raised on a farm out in Oklahoma, and my family…well, let’s just say I’d made it my mission at twelve when my dad died to get the hell out of there. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom and even my stepdad, Eric. I did. But I didn’t want to marry at twenty-two and have babies at twenty-five, my life set even before I’d begun living it.
I’d spent the better part of my four years at NYU learning to speak without an accent and begging my parents to come visit me here so they could see this part of my life. See why I loved it. But it always ended in an argument. So I would go home, listen to my aunts rave about my cousins and their husbands and children, all the while feeling less and less like my accomplishments mattered. I loved going home, the amazing food and comfort of our house, but for once, I wanted Mom to pipe up and brag about me. It never happened.
Sadness washed over me at the thought, and then a voice from over my shoulder said, “Can I buy you ladies another round?”
Lauren smiled. “Grace! I thought you couldn’t come?”
Grace settled into the third chair and for the rest of the evening I forgot about work and Aidan, glad to have my friends beside me.
Now, if only I could forget about UT Guy.
…
I left Lauren and Grace an hour later, eager to get back home so I could sort through my day in private.
As soon as I closed the door to my apartment and tossed my keys in the basket we kept on the kitchen counter, I went immediately to the shower. Showers were one of my least favorite things in the world—the aggravation of shaving and drying hair too much for me to stand—but my shoulders were still tight from the day, and I needed to unwind.
I hit the docking station I kept in my bathroom and surfed through until I found the song I craved—“Tuesday’s Gone.” My dad, my real dad, was a major classic rock fan, and my mom used to joke that when I’d scream as a baby, he’d play me Lynyrd Skynyrd and I’d quiet down every time. Now I played the band whenever I felt like I was losing myself, my focus, and needed to come back to center. After all, it was my dad who gave me my first set of wings. He was a pilot, and every time he’d return home he’d tell me he wanted me to go places, to see the world, to become the best possible version of myself. To me, he was telling me to leave Alabama and to never look back. And so I did. I just never realized that fulfilling my dad’s greatest wishes for me would break my mom’s heart so thoroughly.
The memory hit me like it’d happened yesterday. I’d gotten all my college acceptance letters and had finally made my choice. I still remembered the look on Mom’s face when I told her I’d chosen NYU. How she had at first said no, then that we couldn’t afford it, then the weather and the crime rate, and then before long, she was crying. I stared at her, lost as to how the happiest moment in my life could make her so miserable. She didn’t understand. I couldn’t breathe there. I couldn’t voice a single opinion without having someone look at me like I’d grown horns. My perfect cousins hated me, and the rest of my family treated me like I was a stranger. After all, I was a hard-core Democrat in a Republican state. A foreigner. My upbringing marked me a Southerner, but I’d never been Southern a day in my life.
I grabbed my navy pajamas from the darks side of my pajama drawer and lay back against my bed, my phone beside me. I had just tucked my legs under the covers and closed my eyes when my phone vibrated with a new email. I clicked the work folder, and then nearly dropped my phone as I read the name at the top.
Aidan Truitt.
Sitting up and crossing my legs, my gaze zeroed in on the empty subject line. A thousand things began to run through my mind—was he writing to lecture me? To ask me to do something? To fire me? Why was I so afraid of being fired? Surely that didn’t happen on your first day. I didn’t know, but as I ran through scenarios, each possibility felt more probable than the last. Finally, I ordered myself to stop being a wuss and hit the damn email. Only seven words and a letter.