Foxx, my other best friend and third partner in the company, is too preoccupied to even notice. He’s probably in his office, bending his fiancée, Kat, over his desk right now.
He thinks Chris and I are too oblivious to catch on. Yeah, right. Lucky bastard gets to have sex at home and at work. Must be nice dating a woman you work with.
Kat has had a hold of Foxx’s ear—and cock—since she started working at our magazine, Tripping Out!, and while I like Kat and admire the hell out of her talent, I can’t help but to feel shafted.
Foxx has Kat. Chris has Tripping Out!
And me? I have the fires of Hell burning up my ass in the form of a flame-breathing dragon named Elena—which reminds me…
I have to call her before what’s left of my ass gets handed to me.
I start to walk to my office from the break room when the ringing of a phone from Kat’s office grabs my ear.
I check my watch. It’s about lunch hour… and I’m willing to bet that it’s the devil herself on the other end of Kat’s line.
I amble into Kat’s office, snatching the phone off of the receiver.
“Tripping Out! offices.”
“You really should work on your tone, Lukas. You sound bored over the phone. That can’t be good for business. Where’s Kat?”
I scoff, switching hands. “You’re not business, Elena. And I am bored—bored with your admonitions. Kat’s… well, Kat’s occupied right now.”
She laughs. “Ah. And what better substitute for Kat than one of the premier voices of this company?”
“I’m not a voice of this company—just a partner. A very, very silent partner.”
“Ok, silent partner, I’ll cut to the chase. Here’s the deal…”
She continues on for the next five minutes, barely taking a breath while I listen intently. She’s taken care of this. She’s taken care of that. And I can’t lie; she’s good—meticulous, but what’s the hurry?
“Nice,” I respond when she’s finally done. “I think I like it… but what’s the rush? What couldn’t have waited two nights ago?”
“The venue. I had to make a decision first thing this morning. I booked it.” She pauses. “Why? Did I interrupt something?”
Her octave has deepened, her tone infusing with curiosity. I sigh wearily.
“I apologized for that before, Elena. I didn’t mean to pick up while…”
“Please,” she stops me. “Spare me the details of your skanky-ass sexcapades, Lukas.”
I laugh. “Trust me; I’m not interested in giving you a blow-by-blow of my sex life. You couldn’t handle it, anyway… I’m just saying that you won’t have to worry about interrupting anything else… nor will you have to expect any interruptions of your sexcapades from me.”
“I would never be dense enough to allow you to interrupt me during sex.”
“It seems to me that you never really have any sex to interrupt.”
She stops short. “Fuck you, Lukas.”
“Good day, Elena.”
I barely get out the “El-“ before I hear the dial tone. Figures. That girl needs the stick pulled out of her ass and one in her crotch.
“Phone sex?” Kat quips from the doorway. Her stunning blue eyes are smiling. “Sorry. I heard the word ‘sex’ and took a guess.”
I shake my head, chuckling at the irony. “This is better than phone sex.”
She grins broadly, shaking a head full of wavy brown hair from the other side of the room.
“This is the third time she’s hung up on you this month, Griff. I don’t think there’s anything sexy about that, “ Kat says, strolling towards me. I wink at her.
“I do. She wants me… She just doesn’t know it yet.”
I hop off of the top of Kat’s office desk, replacing the phone on the receiver before my feet even touch the floor.
Kat saunters past me on her way to her desk, swatting me with a manila folder.
“I’m sure my sister doesn’t want you, Griff, and I’m positive that she wishes you’d stop picking up when she calls my work phone.”
Kat sits behind the desk, grimacing at the countertop.
“And I’d wish you’d stop sitting on my desk when you do it. You’re going to leave an ass imprint on it.”
“What?” I respond innocently. “You mad that it’s better than Foxx’s?”
She shuffles the papers on her desk, standing them into a neat pile with a thud. She grins slyly at me.
“Trust me, Griff,” she says. “Nothing is better than Brendon’s ass.”
“What’s this about my ass?”
A footstep thumps across the threshold, and I turn around to find Foxx leaning against the doorway, his blonde eyebrows raised in wry amusement.
He fakes a punch to my gut as he passes me and stops directly in front of the wooden desk before bending down to kiss Kat.
They start grinning like two Cheshire cats and I step away from the affectionate pair, attempting to slink out of the office before Kat can goad me any further.
Good thing she only caught the tail end of that phone conversation. She doesn’t know… and I don’t want her to know.
Elena and I are sneaking around behind her back.
Our impromptu conversations? A ruse.
Well, Elena hanging up on me is not part of the ruse but I digress. Every Thursday, while Kat takes lunch with Foxx, Elena calls our offices and I pick up.
We have a “no-cellphones” policy at the Tripping Out! headquarters.
Normally, Elena calls my work phone, but on the off chance that I can catch her calling Kat’s phone, I pick up, discussing updates with her on the party—the surprise party that she and I are throwing for Foxx and Kat.
The surprise engagement party for Mr. Brendon Foxx and Katarina Lexington. Soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Foxx.
I can’t believe Foxx is actually going through with this thing: this whole tying the knot, “till-death-do-us-part” bit.
And I like Kat. I like Kat a lot. But a marriage? A contract? Forever? I’m not so sure I buy into it.
Still… ever since Kat’s signed on as a writer with the travel magazine that we founded, she and Foxx have been inseparable. And I’ve never seen him so happy.
Maybe it will last… as long as anything really can, anyway. Maybe they’re as perfect a pair as it gets—which is a far cry from what Elena and I have.
I’ve been talking to this girl steadily on the phone for more than two months now, and all I want to do is strangle her most of the time.
Every time we speak, we wind up aggravating the fuck out of each other until I talk enough shit to piss her off and have her hang up on me.
I chuckle to myself as I waltz into my own office, closing the door behind me.
Ok, I admit it. Part of me spits a bunch of bullshit just to fuck with her a bit, but it’s only because she’s so tightly wound up.
She takes herself way too seriously, and she’s controlling as hell. We clash about every single detail of the party: from the décor to the attire to the location.
Honestly? I couldn’t give two fucks about what color lighting we’re going to have at the party, but Little Miss “Can’t Be Wrong” always insists that we talk about more than just the food and booze (which is all I really care about, anyway).
The party hasn’t even started, and already, I can’t wait for it to be over.
Christ. I scramble to get a good look at my watch again, nearly knocking over the cup of lukewarm coffee on my desk. I’m late.
I’ve got even more of this party shit to attend to.