Page 13 of Honey Pot
"What about that guy… Did you take him home?"
He was tall, with ruddy hair and empty eyes. The complete opposite of the ghost that haunted me, his blue eyes like the brightest lights on the darkest of nights.
“Yeah,” I shake out of the daydream, “he was great.”
"That wasenthusiastic."
“He wiggled his fingers around inside of me like some sick rendition of a cheer fromBring It Onbefore he pretended to eat me out, and then sat there staring at me from between my legs for praise." I looked at her as we walked down through the office toward the boardroom. "I need to get a bag of treats for my side table drawer for all the men that act like dogs."
"Roll over, sit, good boy," Bobbi giggles beside me.
“Who knewspirit fingerswould haunt me into my twenties.” I wiggled my hands at her with an annoyed grin on my face. “I need one man to give a shit, just one.”
It was busy for a Friday morning—too busy. The office lights were making my head spin, so I blinked the sleep out of them and rolled out my neck in an attempt to center myself.
"Mary," Bobbi waved a hand full of rings in front of my face, "did you hear me?"
"Sorry." I blinked my eyes a few times to focus.
"You need more sleep." She shook her head, not bothering with her previous question, as she pushed backward through the office door and into the room.
The long table was full of other reporters and junior journalists just looking to get that one piece that might propel their careers, not realizing they were only there because their superiors needed someone to take meeting minutes.
"Did you hear Tony is sending Lacey to New York to cover the World Series?" Bobbi slid into the chair next to me with a coffee and smoothed out the collar of her tangerine-colored button-down.
Of course he was. "That's what happens when you grow up a nepo-baby," I groaned and sipped on the scalding coffee like it might save what few brain cells I had left from drinking so hard the night before.
I tried to pretend I was upset. It's not like that mattered to anyone anyway. I was trying to break into sports, but it seemed impossible to get my foot in the door when Lacey French had it out for me. I wasn't even sure she knew what a baseball was, but it didn't matter because she knew I did.
She paraded into the board room as if on cue, her perfect body draped in a tight yellow mini skirt and crisp white dress shirt she left untucked. She flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder and slammed her bright yellow leatherpurse to the tabletop as if she didn't have all the attention in the room before making an unnecessary amount of noise.
Bobbi stifled a snort and looked at me with wide eyes. “She's like some demonic version of Big Bird, and we're stuck inSesame Streethell.”
I covered my mouth to stop the laughter that tumbled from it but still received more than one dirty look from the table. Tony French, of course, was late to his own meeting, and we sat in waiting, sipping on coffee when he slumped through the door half-dressed. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled to the elbow, and he looked like he hadn't seen sleep in three days.
At least that made two of us.
He poured himself a coffee despite his daughter holding out a fresh cup to him; he waved her off and ran his hands through his fluffy, salt and pepper hair. “I need someone in Rhode Island.” He looked around, skipping all formalities. “Matthews, you're up.”
Rhode Island.
My heart raced, and the nausea in my stomach built.
“No, anywhere else.”
Bobbi looked at me in shock. All the news I covered was local but the moment the location had left his lips, I felt my heart clenching in my chest for the first time in nearly seven years. “I won't go there,” I said again, louder when he didn't respond.
“You will,” he insisted..
Lacey narrowed her eyes at me from beside him, her head cocking to the side in suspicion.
“What's it for?” Bobbi asked when I didn't.
“College baseball. The team that won after a three-year losing streak.”
There was that unfamiliar thumping in my chest again.
This was not how I wanted to get my foot in the door.
