in excellent hands with her.” I gave him the same professional smile Brenda had just given me.
“It’s true,” Brenda confirmed. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve been at this for twenty years, and I’m happy to help you find the perfect location.”
“I need to...” I gave a vague wave toward my sugar situation. “Good luck with your search.” I hurried to the bathroom, wondering if anyone would notice if I hid in there the whole day.
The mirror revealed a hot mess, darker dots where the sugar had landed trailed by smears where I’d tried to wipe them off. Pathetic.
I dabbed it away with seventeen billion wet paper towels. At least it dissolved with water and the black fabric didn’t show the wet spots.
I eyed my reflection again, wondering how she’d betrayed me after such a promising start this morning. My lipstick had worn off a little, but the rest of my makeup looked okay, and my hair was still behaving at least. I had to straighten it every other day with a flat iron to keep it under control because it was neither straight nor curly on its own, and the New Orleans humidity translated the in-betweenness into some epic frizz. But the dark brown strands were behaving themselves.
“Too bad you ruined it with your sugar shenanigans,” I told my reflection. She stuck her tongue out at me.
I dawdled to give Miles plenty of time to clear out, but when I walked out to my desk five minutes later, he was leaning against it, scrolling through his phone while Aaron stood off to the side, talking too loudly on his.
I shot a look at Brenda’s office, but she’d shut her door and was staring intently at her computer screen.
“Can I help you?” I asked, approaching Miles the way I would a skunk in my alley.
“Brenda agreed that you’re the better agent for me,” he said, sliding his phone into his back pocket. He straightened and studied me, like he was evaluating everything from the cut of my suit to the shine of my watch. It wasn’t in a creepy way, but I still didn’t like it.
“She said that?” I glanced at her office again, and this time she was watching me. She gave me a slight nod.
“Yeah.”
“Did she say why?”
“I think you’ll probably have a better sense of what I want.”
“Why would you think that?” I’d given him literally no signs that I wanted to work with him or that I cared about his stupid club.
“Instinct. I don’t think you liked those properties either. So how does this work? We just drop by some places?”
I did not want this client. Not even for a healthy commission. But Brenda was probably already offended that he’d dumped her for me, and if I turned him down, it would only embarrass her more. She’d been too good of a mentor for me to do that.
“Happy to help,” I said to Miles with a bland expression. “We’ll check out some places. I’ll schedule walk-throughs on the three properties we presented you with today.”
A slight crease wrinkled his forehead. “But I don’t like those.”
That was exactly why I was showing them to him. He could fire me and find himself another broker. I’d even recommend Ginger, one of the other agents, to show him properties in the French Quarter. That might be more his “vibe.” But I didn’t owe Miles anything, and I wasn’t about to play into his entitled rock star garbage by trying hard to please him. “You may feel differently when you’re in the space. It’ll at least help me pinpoint better what you do and don’t want.”
“Here’s my number,” Aaron said, extending a business card. “Text me and we’ll schedule it.”
“It’s okay, Aaron.” Miles plucked a business card from the holder on my desk. “Elle Jones,” he read. “I’ll text you later and work it out.”
“Sure. Sounds great.” My tone was barely polite.
He tucked the card into his back pocket and gave me a nod. “Talk to you soon.”
Then he and Aaron sauntered out.
I watched them go, more frustrated than I could remember being in forever. The last time I’d been this annoyed, my lab partner hadn’t done his part for our final project, and I ended up with a B+ in the class.
“Well, that was interesting,” Dave drawled.
“That was not my choice.”
“Obviously. Why not?”
And that right there was the problem: no one in this office knew that I was one of the first viral GIFs