of you lovely ladies like to try—”
“Not now, Carl!” I yelled at the approaching server with his tray of butterflied shrimp. The man ran off with his appetizers.
“Oh, yeah,” Nina said, waving a hand. “I heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend. Dominic personally arranged the vacation time with HR. He called Jasmine—the grumpy one with zero camera skills—at home at two a.m. on a Friday night and said he needed the deal done that weekend.”
“Technically she wasn’t at home. She was out clubbing with a super cute jazz singer she met on a pub crawl,” Missie chimed in.
“Wait a second. Grumpy HR Jasmine, the mid-sneeze immortalizer, goes clubbing with jazz singers?” I asked. “You know what? Never mind. Please continue.”
“Anyway, he said it was a thank you for putting up with his bullshit for so long. He paid out of pocket for her time off and her travel. Can you imagine?” Nina gushed.
“Two a.m. on a Friday?” I asked.
“What would he have been doing at that time of night that he decided he needed to send his assistant away for two months?” Gola asked.
“Maybe she witnessed him committing a murder,” I said nervously.
I knew exactly what he’d been doing that Friday night. It would have been about ten minutes after I stormed out of his townhouse in my fancy stripper clothes.
I needed another shot from potentially bisexual bartender guy.
By the next morning, I’d had the promotion and “signing bonus.” I knew he’d puppet-mastered me into it. I just hadn’t realized how diabolical he’d been. I thought he’d taken advantage of a situation, not manipulated his admin into a sixty-day paid vacation.
“Not to stir up the rumor mill, Ally,” Nina said, pulling me out of my bitter fugue state, “but I think he likes you. Like really likes you.”
“Or hates you,” Missie added. “We honestly can’t decide. We go back and forth about it. I personally hope he hates you because he’s saving all his love for me. But he looks at you like he wants to throttle you or throw you out of a moving vehicle or—”
“Fuck your brains out,” Nina filled in helpfully.
I choked on my own spit. “Guys, I’m not like sleeping my way to the top. I assure you. And Dominic has no interest in me whatsoever.”
“First of all, you’re no Malina. You wouldn’t bang your boss to get ahead. You’d bang him because he’s so hot I bet he can make scrambled eggs on his abs,” Gola insisted. “He’s said that though? About not being interested in you?”
I closed my eyes. “On multiple occasions.”
“He’s lying. He’s totally lying,” Ruth squealed.
“I’ve never seen a man look at a woman like that. Like he’s a kid looking in the window of a candy store and he’s deciding if he’s willing to break the glass to get to the candy and devour it,” Missie said, glassy-eyed.
“Well, that’s an uncomfortable description,” I said.
I felt a thrill of heat work its way down my spine.
“He’s looking at you right now,” Nina said without moving her lips, which made it all the more suspicious. Everyone but me whipped around to zero in on Dominic.
“Definitely wants to throw her off a roof.”
“After he gives her like ten orgasms.”
“Can I please be you when I grow up?” Missie whisper-sang.
“Why wouldn’t you two just get together?” Ruth asked, fanning herself with a cocktail napkin.
“Besides the fact that I’m not his type, he’s not my type, he’s not interested in me, and sleeping with coworkers is a bad idea?”
“Yeah. Besides all that,” Ruth said.
“His dad,” I said.
I faced four confused-looking women. “We’re not picking up what you’re putting down,” Gola said.
“He takes your inability to stare directly into his beauty and your mad escapes to the men’s room to mean you’re afraid of him. You know, like you think he’s another pervert.”
Their resounding chorus of “Are you fucking kidding me?” was instantaneous and loud enough that half of the room turned to see what all the fuss was about.
“Oh my God! Pull yourselves together,” I said, shushing them.
“You know. If we lowered some of the barriers, maybe he’d make his move on Ally?” Ruth said.
“Lowered barriers? Guys, I don’t think we should be conspiring against management.”
“We’re conspiring for him. Not against him,” Gola mused. “If Dominic understood that we thought he was a good boss, that we weren’t comparing him to his dad, maybe he’d break the glass and eat the candy.”
“No, no, no. Nope. Nope. Uh-uh. No one is conspiring