“Any fun plans for New Year’s Eve?” Quinn asked me as he checked the noodles boiling in the pot.
“You know me.” I grabbed wineglasses from the cabinet and scrounged around in a drawer for the corkscrew. “I’ll find some party to go to, get plastered, and probably wake up in some random guy’s bed. Ring the new year in right.”
Monty snorted. “Damn, that brings back memories. You just summed up my early twenties.”
After we graduated high school, Monty had moved away to play college football and had been injured in his third year. That caused him to go down a spiral of depression, partying, and eventually hitting rock bottom before crawling his way back out.
“And now you’re an old man who stays in on the weekends and watches movies with me,” Quinn said in a teasing tone as he pulled Monty into his arms. Tenderness shone in my friend’s eyes when he laid his head on Monty’s shoulder.
“Yeah, what a horrible life.” Monty softly smiled and pressed his cheek to Quinn’s head.
I popped open the wine and filled a glass. I definitely needed it.
Brian arrived a few minutes later with his new girlfriend, Gwen. She was the high school principal, also known as Monty and Quinn’s boss. If Blue Harbor was a big city instead of a small seaside town, the relationship dynamic might’ve been a bigger cause for concern. But truth was, nobody gave a shit. It was a tight-knit community.
Who cared if the principal was banging the dad of one of her teachers?
“I brought homemade bread!” Gwen said as they joined us in the kitchen. Her red hair curled to her shoulders, and her green jacket went well with her porcelain skin tone. The lady had good fashion sense.
“Did you say homemade bread?” Monty asked, perking up.
She smiled and placed the loaf wrapped in aluminum foil on the table. “Fresh out of the oven.”
“You got yourself a keeper,” Monty said to Brian, and then he looked at Quinn, who was slicing the chicken into small strips on a cutting board. “Hear that, Specks? She made bread.”
“Hey.” Quinn flipped around and pointed the knife at him. “Who’s making you dinner right now? A dinner you have begged me to make for the past week? Show some respect.”
Monty smirked.
After dinner, we all visited for a while before Brian and Gwen left. Then, Quinn, Monty, and I cracked into the second bottle of wine and sat in the living room to talk.
“You seeing anyone?” Quinn asked, he and Monty cuddled together on the love seat and me in the recliner. “You had a date the other day, right?”
“A hookup, not a date.” I sipped more wine, then rested the glass on the arm of the chair, staring at the dark red liquid as it swirled before settling. “After the shit with Christian, I’m done with dates. I just want to fuck.”
“He still texting you?” Monty asked, his fingers moving in small circles on Quinn’s bicep.
“Yeah.” I tipped back my glass for another drink. “He wasn’t getting the hint, so I blocked his number.”
Christian was a guy I had kind of dated earlier that year. We’d never said we were in a relationship, but we’d fucked regularly and gone on dates. For that short amount of time, I had been happy and thought that, maybe, things were looking up for me, that I’d finally found a good guy. But then he’d ghosted me. Just fucking stopped responding to my texts and calls, and he blocked me on all social media platforms.
Turned out, he’d met some other guy named Chad. When things went south with stupid Chad, Christian texted me saying how sorry he was. Complete and utter bullshit.
“Fuck him and his small dick,” Quinn said. “You deserve better.”
Then why did I only attract guys who treated me like shit? The common denominator was me. Maybe I didn’t deserve better.
The next morning, I arrived early to work, grabbing Daniel’s coffee on my way. He never told me I had to get his coffee, but it was something I liked to do. Partly sucking up, sure, but I also wanted to show him I was reliable. Hardworking. Not just a pretty face. After a year of working for him, it had become routine.
His door was open as he sat at his desk, riffling through papers.
“Good morning, sir,” I said, standing in the doorway. “I have your coffee.”
He glanced up, blue eyes finding me. “You can come in.”
I approached his desk and handed him the coffee. “A car will be here at eight thirty to take you to your meeting.”
Daniel nodded and took a drink. He’d taken off his suit jacket, and I admired the wideness of his chest and his sexy throat as he tilted his head back to stretch the muscles in his neck.
“How long have you been here?” I asked. He looked exhausted.
“Since six thirty. I needed to prepare for the meeting and take care of a few things.”
Daniel Sawyer was not only a hard-ass, but a workaholic too. He had still been in his office when I left to go home the day before, and he was usually already at work when I came in each morning. Married to the job.
How did his girlfriend feel about him working so much?
In the year I’d worked for him, I had never met or even heard anything about his girlfriend. The framed photo on his desk of him and her smiling was the only proof I had of her being real. It was the only time I’d ever seen him smile.
“Is there something else?” he asked with an edge of impatience in his voice.
I cleared my throat and took a step back. “No, sir.”
“Very well.” He dropped his gaze to the papers in front of him.
Taking that as a sign to leave him alone, I left his office and went to the breakroom to make a pot of coffee. I had bought a latte for me when I’d gotten his, but I knew I’d need more. Plus, it was a nice gesture for my coworkers.
“Saint Reed strikes again,” Jennifer said, coming into the room after I started the machine. She worked as the marketing manager, the position directly beneath the VP. “I was just about to make a pot of coffee, and here you are, already on top of it.”
I smiled. “I’m amazing, I know.”
“You really have to be amazing to work for Mr. Sawyer,” she said. He was her boss, too, but in a different way. He approved—or denied—designs and ideas from the marketing team. Every project had to go through him first. But I was the one who worked directly with him every day. “You know, you’ve lasted the longest out of all his past assistants. Not sure if you knew that.”
“I know that the last one quit after two months, but I thought it was because she got a better job offer.”
“Not until she put in her two weeks’ notice.” Jennifer pulled out a chair and sat at the table in the middle of the room. “Not everyone can handle Mr. Sawyer, so I’m glad you’ve managed well. He might not show it, but he appreciates all your hard work. You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”
It was reassuring to know he wasn’t just that way with me. He was a block of ice to everyone apparently. It wasn’t bad enough to quit a damn good job over, though.
“Have a great day, Jen,” I said before leaving the breakroom and going to my desk. It was right beside a window, so I had a nice view of trees and the courtyard below while I worked. Daniel’s office was straight ahead.