Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,14
the music. “Alexa, turn it down.” The music continued blasting. “Alexa. Shut up!” This time the music stopped. “Sorry. I’m working on an inspirational playlist. Is the Rocky theme too obvious?”
Totally too obvious. Instead of telling him that, CJ put out her hand and said, “Sorry to interrupt. I’m CJ Jacobson.” He stared at her outstretched hand as if confused. He was definitely cute, but he was also definitely giving her generation a bad name. She had been taught that when someone puts out a hand, you stand and shake it.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
Still holding herself in her professional posture, CJ consulted the details of the e-mail that she’d been sent in response to her application. “I have a four o’clock interview with… Wyatt.” She checked the e-mail again. “I’m sorry. No last name was provided.”
“I’m Wyatt No Last Name Provided,” said the guy who was giving her generation a bad name.
“You’re him?”
“I am he.”
There had to be more than one Wyatt.
“Wyatt the volunteer coordinator?”
“Wyatt No Last Name Provided. Wyatt the Volunteer Coordinator. I answer to either. But I’m confused. I have a meeting with…” He turned to his e-mail as if challenging hers. “Clarke Jacobson.”
“I am she.”
“Huh,” he said, looking her up and down. She knew from experience what this up-down look meant. He wasn’t checking her out. He was registering the fact that she wasn’t a dude. “I thought you were…”
“A guy. Yeah. I get that a lot. I’m not.”
“Evidently.”
She felt flustered. It was his smile. It was incredibly disarming. Not in that way. It’s just that this interview was not going well and she needed it to go well.
“My legal name is Clarke. But everybody calls me CJ.”
CJ was the fourth child, and with three older sisters, she was her father’s last chance for a boy he could name after himself. When CJ came out all feisty and tough, he decided to give her his name anyway.
Wyatt pulled out her résumé from a stack of other résumés. It made her heart sink a little. She didn’t like thinking about the competition.
“Your résumé is impressive, Clarke,” he said. Either forgetting or not caring that she went by CJ.
“Thank you.”
“But I was really looking to hire a guy.”
“Pardon?” she said. Because obviously she’d heard him wrong.
“I was hoping to hire a guy.”
It’s not like she was naïve. She knew the world hadn’t changed so much that misogyny didn’t still exist, but she certainly thought it had changed enough that nobody would be dumb enough to come right out and admit it. CJ was ready to call the ACLU right then and there but not before giving him a piece of her mind.
“Well, Wyatt. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but not only are your hiring practices completely illegal, they are also totally small-minded, since I assure you that I can do anything a man can.”
Wyatt didn’t seem at all flustered by CJ’s passionate speech. His smile had shifted a little bit, but it was still there on his face. It made him look… She wasn’t exactly sure how it made him look.
“You can?” he said. “You can do anything a man can?”
“Oh, I can.”
“You can go into the boys’ locker room and help them change?”
Smug. That was the look on his face. He was smug.
“Oh. Uh… oh. Well… I guess not that.”
His smugness shifted to amusement. “I’m not sexist. But the locker room thing is a concern. We have more boys than girls in the program. It’s probably still technically illegal for me not to hire you because of your gender, but it’s an unpaid position, so…”
It was a fair point. While suing a nonprofit organization that empowered kids in wheelchairs would certainly be something that colleges would notice, she guessed that it wasn’t quite the kind of experience that Stanford was looking for. So she politely and somewhat sheepishly thanked Wyatt No Last Name Provided for his time and turned to leave.
“Nice meeting you, Clarke,” he said when she reached the exit. “Sorry that we weren’t meant to be.”
She put her hand on the door but paused before opening it. “Hey. Why do you have more boys than girls? In the program?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. This is the first month. Well, of the expanded program. It used to only run once a month on a weekend. So we had kids coming from all over the state. But I talked my bosses into letting me try out a weekday version.