Just You. Jane Lark

little interlude.

      Well, whatever. Who gave a shit?

      I sat down––ignoring her too.

      If that’s the way she wanted to play it––that’s the way we’d play it.

      I had two pages of the magazine to pull together today. Vacations always had to be paid for, I’d be short of time today.

      My mate Jason rocked up twenty minutes after me, just before nine, drawing a fine line between being on time and getting caught up in a pile of shit; especially as he’d had a bunch of time off with short notice before Christmas.

      He threw his stuff down under the desk and glared at his computer, starting it up. He seemed in just as bad a mood as Portia.

      “Where’d you go to New Year’s Eve, you just disappeared?”

      “I had to go.” He looked up at me. “Rach texted.” That didn’t have a ring of truth, it stunk of an excuse.

      “Wife-y got you on a ball and chain already?” The guy had got married about a week ago. I mean he was twenty-two and the girl was already knocked up, and he’d only met her two months ago. Fool. But then I’d never seen the girl, maybe she was that hot.

      My screen pinged to say I’d got an email.

      ‘Can we get a coffee at lunchtime?’ It was from Portia.

      I glanced over at her desk, but I couldn’t see anything other than her arm.

      ‘Okay. What time?’

      ‘12.30. Meet me in Starbucks.’

      ‘Ashamed of me, baby?’

      There was no reply. I had a feeling the conversation was gonna go something like––don’t tell anyone I hooked up with you.

      Well we were from different leagues. The girl was arrogant and preppy and she liked to stick her pretty little nose up in the air.

      Her tastes had turned to Jason, she’d had her eye on him for weeks. Me… I was just the one who’d been there when she’d got drunk… When she was sober––I was way below her standards.

      I said something about the party to Jason. He ignored me and glanced at Mr. Rees’s office. The boss wasn’t in yet.

      Jason looked over to the door into the office.

      I gave up trying to talk and focused on getting my pages done. The whole place was in a bad mood today.

      At eleven-thirty, not that I was clock checking, Portia got up and headed for the restrooms. She was slender, but she was slender with hips. The girl had some junk in her trunk for sure, Beyoncé style, and she had a pencil skirt on today that exaggerated the movement of her hips as she walked across the open plan room weaving between desks. The movement thrust the image of her ass in an emerald bikini into my head. My temperature soared.

      I got up, without even thinking about it––and followed.

      When I got in there, I found myself hovering outside the women’s like a pervert.

      I leaned against the wall, slipping my hands into the back pockets of my pants.

      She took a couple of minutes to come out, but when she did her pretty pouted lips parted in an ‘o’ and she turned pink… tipping up her chin, and her pretty little nose, with a look that implied disgust, like I smelled bad.

      I shifted off the wall and stepped forward. “Portia, we need to talk.”

      “We’re going to talk, at lunchtime. Away from the office.” Her words were a sharp, crisp rejection; spoken in her slightly British––perfectly rounded and toned, I’m-up-here-and-you’re-down-there––accent. Then she just walked past me, her body expressing her usual demeanor that said: stay away from me, you’re worth nothing.

      Shit. She was definitely regretting what had happened––awkward.

      I went into the restroom but didn’t use it, just stared at myself in the mirror over the basins. I wasn’t that bad looking, was I? I ran my hand over my hair. I kept it buzzed short. I really didn’t think I was that bad?

      Bad enough to regret.

      But then I wasn’t rich and I wasn’t Jason––white, Mr. handsome and nice from-out-of-town. Nope. I was straight out of the ghetto. Not Portia’s type at all.

      I was seriously surprised she’d gone anywhere near me if I was being honest with myself.

      But dishonest… I wasn’t that bad, and persistence and a bit of charm usually paid off.

      I washed my hands and went back into the office.

      Mr. Rees came in a few minutes later. That would lift the mood. The man was a tyrant and as arrogant and ignorant as Portia. Really, what the fuck had made me want to kiss her… Oh yeah, her in a bikini.

      I started talking to Jason, about the party again––about everything other than me and Portia in the pool. But I’d lay hot odds she was sitting at her desk listening, fearing I’d throw in that little fact. Then all of a sudden Jason got up…

      “Hey, I’m talking.”

      “I got something to do.”

      Well, I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I was getting a lot of messages like that today. Lucky I had thick skin.

      A few minutes later he came back with a look of thunder on his face and started shoving stuff in a box.

      What was up with this day? “Where you going?”

      “I just realized that this job’s not for me. Bye…”

      Nice fucking knowing you! I glanced over to see Mr. Rees watching Jason.

      Well, what the hell was that about?

      The girls were watching too. I could see Portia. She’d turned her chair to face Crystal and, having seen Mr. Rees, they were all pretending they hadn’t been about to start gossiping, but any moment now, there was going to be a gossip fest…

      Jason walked out without a “thanks”, or, a “nice knowing you”, or, “see you”, or anything, and he looked pretty crazy with his cardboard box of stuff tucked under his arm, and an angry face.

      I watched him go, feeling like my hangover from the other night had come back. Seriously, what the fuck was going on today?

      And now it was nearly twelve-thirty.

      Mr. Rees shut the door on his office. Normally I’d have gotten up and gone over to the girls––when the ogre had gone back in his cave––and they all began whispering. I didn’t. I figured Portia wouldn’t want me there. ‘Course I could go over anyway, to wind her up, seeing as she was so embarrassed over having had a thing with me. But that was the sort of game my dad used to play; I wasn’t that guy. If she regretted the stuff we’d done, that was fine. Let her regret. I didn’t, and there were dozens more women out there to be fished and hooked.

      When the clock in the left-hand corner of my screen rolled over to twelve-thirty, an email message flashed up. I opened it.

      ‘See you there.’

      Showdown time.

      She got up, threw a red scarf around her neck and pulled on her coat, then threw her purse over her shoulder and walked out.

      Here we go. I gave her a few minutes head-start so no one would think anything of me following, then got up too, and went to get my jacket. The shock of Jason going rattled through my nerves. The guy was there, then gone.

      Mr. Rees came out of his office as I walked past, and I heard him speak to Hilary, our sub-editor, asking for Jason’s contact details to forward a letter of notice.

      Jason had been sacked.

      Shit.