My phone chimes, the sound of a high-pitched, toy car engine. My ride has arrived.
I’m not quite ready to leave, but I did call the ride, and I can’t keep putting off this conversation. If my boss wasn’t quite so grumpy and if he didn’t already pay me quite so well, I wouldn’t feel so nervous about asking for a raise.
Honestly, Dawson Tightwad Houser should’ve offered me the raise months ago.
The only reason he hasn’t been paying me more all this time is because of my own chickenness in asking him to.
“Today,” I mutter to myself, reaching for the cup of pink grapefruit segments. I like to start the day out with the intent of eating well. I’ll be sorting Skittles by lunchtime, and I remember that I’m down to my last three bags.
I’ll have to find someone to drive me to the warehouse store to get another box. I buy the candy in bulk, the way movie theaters do, because I can save thirty-eight cents per bag over buying them at the corner market I can walk to.
The doorbell rings, and I snatch my purse off the kitchen counter and take it with my grapefruit segments toward the door. “Sorry,” I say as I open the door. “I’m coming.”
“Callie Michaels?” the man standing there asks. He’s wearing a ball cap with the NY on it for the Yankees, a gray T-shirt with the same logo, and a pair of navy blue sweat pants that hang on his skinny frame.
He’s a few inches taller than me, even in my cute ankle boots with a three-inch heel, and he’s just my type. Aloof, sure, but most guys are when meeting a pretty woman.
I smile at him, hoping I’m pretty enough for the likes of him. “Yep, Callie Michaels.”
“I’m Chris.” He flashes me a smile in return.
I pull my phone out. “I’m sending my girlfriend the info of my ride in case I disappear.”
He chuckles and turns to go down my front steps. I love my little blue house. It sits at the end of a dead-end street, and has one of the biggest live oaks in the neighborhood standing guard in the front yard.
“Tara’s already responded,” I say, stepping out of the house and pulling my front door closed. As I go down the steps, I run through my mental checklist for leaving the house.
Stove, off. That’s important too, as I’ve left it on before, and all those things my mother used to worry about happening if someone would be such a disaster to leave the stove on when they left the house—those happened.
The candle I’d had beside the stove had melted everywhere. The oozing wax had soaked into the bottom of the roll of paper towels, and it had fallen over.
Onto the hot burner. And then that paper had ignited.
My neighbor had seen the smoke and called the fire department. I’d gotten a call at work about my house burning down, and in a surprise move, my boss had driven me home so I could deal with the situation.
Dawson hadn’t even fired me for leaving work early. I’d heard he’d let go of plenty of previous secretaries for less.
“Can I practice my pitch on you?” I ask as I slide into the front passenger seat. “Is it okay if I ride up here? I always feel so lame in the back seat.”
“Sure,” Chris said. “And pitch away.”
“Okay.” I smooth down my pencil skirt and settle my bright green briefcase bag near my feet. “Just a sec.”
I glance toward the house and find Claude Monet perched in the windowsill, his frowny cat face clearly showing me his opinion of my departure. He likes to watch the birds from that spot, and he’ll run outside the moment I arrive home from work tonight.
He has no claws, but he sure does like to pretend he can climb a tree and catch one of those blue-black birds that like to torment him.
Feed the cat, check.
Took a pound of ground beef out of the freezer so I can make mini-meatloaves for dinner tonight. Ready.
Texted Tara about my ride, done.
Tucked all the folders for the meeting with the big wigs from Veterans Brew, the coffee company that would fund my raise if everything went well this afternoon, into my bag. Yep.
“All right,” I say. “First off, I’ve been in this job for five years. That’s about four years and eleven months longer than any other secretary who’s worked with my boss.” I glance at Chris, and he’s nodding.
“Second, I’m really good at my job. My boss texts me at home to find out where his blazer is, for crying out loud.”
“Sounds dysfunctional,” he says, peering up at the stoplight to make sure it’s still red. “Is this the pitch?”
“No, just background,” I say. “One more quick point. I have a master’s degree in marketing and human resources.” I wave my hand and resist the urge to tuck my hair behind my ear.
Dawson once commented that whenever I did that, he knew I was nervous, and he didn’t want the men and women we met with to know that too. I work really hard not to do it in front of him anymore.
Just another reason I deserve this raise, I tell myself.
“Okay, here’s the pitch.” I draw a deep breath, hold it, gather my thoughts, and exhale. “I’ve been at Dawson Dials In for over five years now. I’m never late, despite not owning a car. The filing system has never been neater. We’ve increased the business here by four hundred percent since I started here, and your firm had barely been operating in the black when I started. Now, everything runs like a well-oiled machine.”
All true. A lot of that has to do with Dawson, sure. He has the degrees and the training and a creative mind like none I’ve witnessed before.
But he has a strong, smart, organized woman—me—behind the front he puts on for everyone who walks through the door of the marketing firm that employs only the two of us.
“I haven’t had a raise in sixteen months, and I think I deserve one.” I nod, having reached the end of my pitch. I’ve practiced it in front of the mirror, wearing my sexiest set of underwear.
Leopard print. Pink leopard print.
I wear the same bra and panties now, because they make me feel powerful. They’re like a naughty little secret only I know, and that makes me feel a step above Dawson, as if I know something he doesn’t.
As if the man cares about what I wear under my clothes. In all the time I’ve known him, the man has never been on a date. Has never even called a woman, except clients and the landlord we pay rent to.
He isn’t a workaholic, because he leaves the office by five p.m. every evening.
He isn’t ugly either. In all honesty, he’s downright hot. Power suits, shiny shoes, thick, wavy hair. The beard. Mylanta, the beard. He runs, he plays basketball, and at first glance, he could definitely get any woman he wants.
The truth is, Dawson Houser is a complete beast. An ogre. The quintessential office grump.
“That’s it?” Chris asks. “That’s the pitch?”
“That’s it,” I say. “My boss loses interest if I talk for more than thirty seconds.”
“And you want to keep this job?” Chris looks at me like I’m nuts.
Sometimes I feel nuts.
I peel back the plastic top on my grapefruit cup. “Yes,” I say. “It’s a good job. I like it. He pays really well.”
And the office is in an old, 1700s house in downtown Charleston, where the second-story window has a killer view of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Then why do you need the raise?” Chris finally leaves the stoplights of Sugar Creek behind and hits the highway.
“I haven’t had one for sixteen months,” I say, annoyance flashing through me. Didn’t he listen to the pitch?
“He’s going to ask that,” Chris says.
“I outlined why I deserve the raise.” I don’t want to point out that Dawson will never find someone who can do what I can and who can put up with him.
“Well, I don’t know…” Chris grins at me, but his laid-back, sporty-jock look only irritates me now.
“Okay,” I say, reaching for my bag. “I’ll work on it some more.”
He adjusts the radio, the music set to the pop favorites. I happen to like the newest, poppiest music, but I don’t tell Chris that.
I pretend to go over the notes for the meeting that afternoon, but my mind wanders through my pitch.
No, I tell myself as Chris makes the final turn and eases to a stop in front of the house-office.
“Here you go, Callie Michaels,” he says, clearly flirting with me.
“Thank you, Chris Potter.” I tap to pay him, and his phone cha-chings from where he’s attached it to the windshield.
“Hey, before you go,” he says, and I know what comes next. I actually smile, because he’s going to ask me out, and that means I’ve put all the parts of myself together well enough to make other people believe I have my life together.
They don’t know about the house fire. Or the escaped hamsters. The partial nudity in public. Or the Glue Incident.
So.
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asks. “Maybe you’d like to go to dinner with me sometime.”
He has nice eyes, the color of the rich, deep earth that my potted plants sit in. At least until I kill them.
“I’m not seeing anyone at the moment,” I say. “When is ‘sometime,’ Mister Potter?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think I have a date with another pretty woman I drove to work yesterday…”
I laugh, because he is cute, and why shouldn’t I go out with him? He’s clearly not a serial killer.
He could be, I think.
That’s why you date, I hear in my head, in my mother’s voice. To find out if he’s a serial killer or not.
“No facial piercings?” I ask, searching that handsome face. “Are you a cat-hater? Wait. Do you only own sweats?” I eye the pants, once again noting how skinny he is.
I need a beefier guy to go with my size twelve body. Fine, size fourteen. But it’ll be a good dinner date, and I won’t have to eat meatloaf for the third or fourth night in a row.
He swipes on his phone for a moment, his chuckle still filling the car. “Looks like I have to work tomorrow, and my mom is going to do our monthly are-you-dating-anyone dinner on Wednesday…Thursday?”
He looks up, hopeful.
“Sure,” I say. “Thursday.”
“I’ll text you right now, and then you’ll have my number.”
“Perfect.” I’ve already tucked my phone away, because Dawson doesn’t like it when I walk in, glued to my phone. I feel the device vibrate against my foot, and I add, “I got it. Now, wish me luck with my raise.”
“Good luck with your raise,” he says dutifully, and I giggle again as I get out of the car.
Facing the house, though, I erase all signs of joviality. It’s time for work, and that means I need my best game face securely in place.
“You’ve got this,” I whisper to myself as I walk down the sidewalk. “You’re smart. You’re capable. You’ve taken this company from floundering to thriving. You, Callie. It’s Monday morning, and you have meetings with this man specifically to talk about this kind of thing.”
I put my hand on the door handle and take another breath. I’m going to slay this Monday.
I open the door, my cute bag on my shoulder and my leopard underwear concealed beneath adorable, professional attire.
This raise is mine, I think…at least until I hear Dawson yell, “It better be here by ten, or someone’s going to lose their head!”
