complete idiot.
This meant I was always behind on my quota, and always late. I’d delivered my quota just before 11pm, and it was just past Midnight now that I’d finally come home and gotten ready for bed.
The only upside was that tomorrow was Tuesday. Librarian day. The day I felt like a real human being who contributed real value to society.
It was also the day I’d see Noah again.
My chest tightened when I thought of him. Fire pumped through my blood, but something else did too. That initial attraction died down a lot when I found out just who he was. God, he was an asshole, but I never knew just how breathtakingly attractive and charming Noah Black was when I wrote that silly book making fun of him.
He was only charming and attractive because he had to be in order to manipulate people and extract all of the money out of them like some kind of...money vampire.
“Money vampire?” Natalie, my roommate and best friend said. She was standing in my doorway.
“God, did I say that whole thing out loud?”
Natalie smirked and nodded.
“How charming and attractive is he?” she asked. “Who is he?”
“Didn’t I shut my door?”
“Not all the way,” she said. “I slowly cracked it open and looked if you were sleeping or not.”
“You realize how creepy that sounds?”
“Your light was on, so I felt that made it fair game. Who is charming? Are you finally actually dating someone. A money vampire? That sounds hot.”
“I’m not dating anyone. He has a kid.”
“You love kids!”
“I don’t even know if he’s single. Also, I hate his guts.”
She slinked her way into my room, and before I could say a word, she was already on my bed. Great, we were going to have to “talk” about this now, weren’t we?
“If you really hated his guts,” Natalie said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “you would have simply said that you hate him. You wouldn’t have made it clear that you’d been trying to figure out whether he’s single or not. Typically you don’t wonder about the marital status of a guy you hate and have no interest in dating.”
I glared at her, and my nostrils flared. “He’s rich.”
“How rich?”
“Rich rich. Like there is zero chance in hell he’d ever be into me. Also, I hate his guts.”
“Was he wearing a ring?”
I bite my lip and shake my head. “He even caught me checking, and he wiggled his fingers at me.”
“You totally have a greater-than-zero chance with him!” She shoved me for emphasis.
I shoved her back. “You keep ignoring the part where I hate him.”
“All of the best romances start out with hate. It’s like how if you stick your finger in scalding hot water, it feels almost cold. The more extreme an emotion gets, the closer it gets to its complete opposite. It’s like a horse shoe. If you go all the way around, you get close to the other end.”
“You are so full of horse shit.”
“Think about hate sex. Makeup sex. Hate sex. Think about when little girls have crushes on boys. They are mean to them instead of nice to them. There are so many examples. You hate him, but you were looking for his ring. That means you don’t actually hate him. Or you hate him enough that you are even more into him.”
“I was looking for his ring before I realized who he was.”
“Who is he?”
“Noah Black.”
“Who is that?”
“He’s the head of the publishing company that shattered my dreams and ripped away my life as a professional author and illustrator. He’s the reason I have to drive that awful delivery truck with that awful Big Brother computer in it three days a week. He made the last five years of my life a completely miserable dead-end, and the worst part of it is that he didn’t even know he did it. He did it just to increase the last few decimal points of his quarterly earnings or whatever. He doesn’t care about books, authors, or readers. He’s the bad guy.”
“So…” Natalie said. “He didn’t even know he did anything bad to you. It sounds like it should be easy to forgive him then?”
I crossed my arms. “No.”
“How rich is he?”
“Rich.”
She pulled out her phone, and I saw her type in: “Noah Black net worth.”
Her eyes bulged—and mine did too—when we saw the number.
“I would forgive him in a heartbeat,” Natalie said.
“Gold digger.”
“He’s worth a lot more than gold.”
“Because he’s a money vampire! Because he’s cold and heartless. He