had plans, too,” she says, her voice thin.
“I write both your checks,” Melissa reminds us, “and if you want to be around to cash the next one, you’ll start packing.” Striding angrily to the door, she opens it, walks out, and slams it shut.
“Sorry, Jimbo. If I’m stuck, so are you.” With an infuriating little Oops, my bad shrug, Rusty stands, too, and leaves.
“Robyn,” Carey starts with similar desperation in her voice, “we don’t need to go. I know them. They’ll get it together in the morning. They always do.”
“We can’t risk it, Carey.” Robyn shakes her head, resolute and unsympathetic. “Everything is riding on this, including your jobs. Change your plans and pack up for a weeklong trip. Your only job for the next ten days is to keep the Tripps from falling apart.” She attempts a smile, but it is a sad, sad approximation as she glances at her watch. “See you for Netflix in seven and a half hours.”
She leaves, and when the door closes, Carey grabs a pillow, bends, and releases a scream into it that is surprisingly primal.
I, too, want to let out an unholy string of curse words. I want to scream to the room, Why can’t I find a job that is somehow both legal and relevant to my graduate degree? Is that too much to ask? Am I being transitioned into Rusty’s full-time errand boy?
If I quit now, the only other position on my résumé is the black stain of RL&S; my former firm is still on the front page of national newspapers for its shocking accounting scandal that, so far, has resulted in fourteen arrests, job loss for nearly two thousand employees, and apparent loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in company retirement benefits. A few brief months at Comb+Honey won’t make my résumé look better. I’m backed into a corner, and the Tripps know it.
“This is bullshit,” Carey says. “And one hundred percent your fault.”
“My fault? I wasn’t the one having s—” With a full-body shudder, I press the heels of my hands to my eyes until I see bursts of light. Maybe if I press hard enough I’ll never have to see anything again. “I wasn’t the one cheating on his wife. This is Rusty’s fault, and we’re the ones who are paying for it.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have helped you.” She sits back against the couch with a growl. “This is what I get for trying to be nice.”
“That was you being nice?” I start, stopping short when she turns to glare at me. I drop my head into my hands. “At least you’re doing what you’ve been hired to do. Babysitting adults is not what I went to school for.”
It was apparently the wrong thing to say. The last person to storm out of the office is Carey, with an infuriated “Yes, yes, James, we all know you’re brilliant.”
My roommates, Peyton and Annabeth, pause midconversation when, just over twenty-four hours later, I roll my shitty suitcase into the living room and set it beside theirs. I look back longingly at their enormous leather sectional; it’s not pretty—it’s old and bulky—but I had really looked forward to making it my home base for the next week. Yet here we are: instead of a staycation at home in my pajamas, I’m facing eight days cooped up in a van with a married couple in the midst of a crisis and Mr. Morality McEngineering-pants.
“Don’t worry,” I tell my roommates. “I’m not crashing your romantic getaway.”
Annabeth looks at the suitcase and then turns bright, inquisitive eyes on me. Her face falls. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.” I round the counter that separates the kitchen and living room and open the fridge to retrieve a protein shake. “James and I have to join the Tripps on their book tour.”
Peyton lets out a sympathetic groan. “He’s the new one, right? The hot nerd assistant?”
I swallow down a long drink of the shake—as well as the petty desire to ask her to slowly repeat the word assistant while I record it for him. “Yup.”
“What happened?” Peyton pulls her thick dark curls into a ponytail. “I thought you had the week off?”
“It’s complicated.” That’s about all I can say. NDAs aside, I’ve never complained about work—other than my long hours—and never disclosed just how rigid Melly can be, how maddening Rusty can be, and how hard this job is most days. In other words, I’ve always done what I can to protect the Tripps. I owe