Misadventures with a Sexpert - Elizabeth Hayley
Chapter One
GRAYSON
“Yo, Grayson. Boss Man wants to see you.”
As I sat behind my desk, looking through pictures I’d taken this morning of an elderly women’s knitting circle, I willed myself to take deep breaths. If I’d known ten years ago I would one day be beckoned by a stoner serving as the intercom for my disheveled and squirrelly “boss man,” Mr. Thomas, I would have quickly sought out the nearest set of knitting needles and jabbed them into my ears.
Instead, I slowly rose, turned, and waved to Dax—our resident intercom extraordinaire and film critic who only watched horror movies—before making my way to what Mr. Thomas considered his office.
It was, in fact, more of a closet, with a small desk that must have been assembled inside it because there was no way it would have fit through the doorway. There were also two small filing cabinets stacked one on top of the other, a metal stationary chair for Mr. Thomas, and a stool for whomever he dragged inside.
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
“Ah, yes, Hawk, come on in. Close the door behind you.”
“It’s Hawkins, sir.”
“What?” The man’s beady eyes shrank even more, making his confusion clear.
“My last name. It’s Hawkins, not Hawk. You could just call me Grayson, or Gray, if you’d like.”
“If I wanted to call you a color, I already would have. A hawk is highly intelligent and has exceptional eyesight. Can the same be said of you?”
Accepting the battle was already lost, I shook my head.
“I didn’t think so. You should be flattered to be compared to a bird of that caliber.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it that way,” I muttered as I accepted defeat.
To close the door, I had to crowd his desk, nearly toppling over the stool as I wedged my way in. Once that ordeal was over, I righted my seat, sat, and propped my foot on one of the rungs of the stool.
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk, and steepled his fingers. “I’ve let Willow go.”
The sole of my shoe slipped off the stool’s rung, causing me to lurch forward and almost careen into the desk.
“Oh. That’s a shame,” I said as I sat back down.
I found myself secretly envying Willow, the person in charge of maintaining our social media accounts. Or who used to, anyway. I wasn’t exactly sure what it took to get fired from the Daily Gazette, but I was hoping to find out. The story behind it would probably be the most newsworthy thing to enter the office in quite some time.
Though as I had that thought, I also realized I wasn’t being fair. I didn’t have to be here. Every day, instead of saying “fuck this place” like a normal functioning adult would, I came into this looney bin of a newspaper office.
It was supposed to be a way for me to find myself again in a low-pressure environment after leaving the opposite in New York, but the place had more loonies than a subway car after last call.
“Hmm, yes, it is a shame. For her. She’s not getting a reference from me, that’s for sure.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
He waved me off. “You know I’m not one to spread rumors.” Which was a bald-faced lie. The man would’ve made the editors at the National Enquirer salivate with the way he traded gossip. “But let me warn you that putting your own personal ads into our paper won’t be tolerated. I still don’t even know what D slash s means, and part of me hopes I never find out.”
Nodding along like the good plebeian I was, I tried to figure out what any of this had to do with me.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I’ll need you to take over her job for the foreseeable future.” He began moving papers around on his desk as if the conversation was over. Which it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
“I’m sorry, what now?”
“Well, I figured since you already take all our pictures, you could just upload them to our social media accounts, add a few pithy comments, and voilà, you’re done.”
“But…I hate social media. I don’t even have a Facebook page of my own.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it work. Willow did it. How hard can it be?”
“I thought you were considering letting me draw some comics for the paper. Social media coordinator is a far cry from that.”
When I’d moved to town and interviewed for the photographer’s job at the Daily Gazette, I’d expressed my true goal was to create