With a beer in one hand and a roll of packing tape in the other, I carefully made my way across the hardwood floors of my small student apartment in Cambridge. Those floors had heard me laughing, crying, and had me sleeping on them from time to time over the past three years.
Tomorrow, I was leaving behind my sweet little apartment on Harvard’s campus and heading for New York City. How I was going to fit all the boxes scattered around my apartment into my car, I had no idea.
At least I wasn’t going alone. My best friend Gracie was coming with me. Surely between our two cars, we would be able to fit all this crap. I toed one of the smaller boxes out of my way and flopped onto my gray couch one last time, lifting the tepid beer to my lips.
Drinking beer on my couch wasn’t going to help me get done packing any sooner, but since I was leaving student life behind and hadn’t indulged nearly as much or as often as some of my friends, I figured I’d better make the best of my last twenty-one hours as a student.
Once my feet hit Manhattan’s soil, or sidewalks rather, I was officially a grownup. An adulty adult with a job in finance in—predictably—the Financial District. I had a signed lease for a loft I would be sharing with Gracie and two new suits already packed into my suitcase, washed and ready for my first day of work.
Excitement hummed in my veins, causing a wide smile to spread across my face. Blood, sweat, and tears had been shed to get this far, but I was finally on my way. I had a shiny, brand-new degree from one of the top Ivy League universities in the world to back me up, my brother was already in New York, and my best friend was starting at the same firm I was.
Life was good. Even if I was going to miss having my hair piled up in a messy bun on top of my head and spending the day studying in yoga pants and my worn Harvard sweatshirt.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Gracie’s voice filtered into my self-congratulatory thoughts. “Is there someone else here?”
“No.” I hopped up off the couch, nearly tripping when my ankle caught on the box I’d forgotten was in front of me. Laughing, I managed to steady myself just before face-planting and picked my way across my open-plan apartment to my kitchen to grab a beer for Gracie. “I was just thinking about how far we’ve come.”
Gracie shrugged her narrow shoulders, her wispy blonde hair framing her pixie face. Nervousness made her big gray eyes round and shiny. “I know. I still can’t believe it’s over. Where did the last three years go?”
“Away,” I quipped before grabbing a beer from the six pack standing on my kitchen counter and handing it over to her. “ finally, it’s on to the next step. Harvard was great, but you can’t tell me you’re not excited to finally get out there.”
Picking at the label on her bottle, she sighed. “I guess. Our lives are finally starting. I should be excited.”
“Our lives started twenty-three years ago,” I pointed out, smiling as I pointed my beer at my chest. “I don’t really see it as our lives only starting now. This is just another step. The next phase.”
“But I liked this phase,” Gracie argued, rolling pieces of the beer label she’d picked off between her fingers. “Why didn’t we apply for jobs somewhere in Cambridge? We could have stayed put. This is a great city. We could have been happy here.”
“We were happy here,” I reminded her. “But now it’s time to move on. Onwards and upwards and all that.”
“New York just seems so… big,” she whispered before finally taking a few small sips of beer. “I never should have applied for a job there.”
“But then you wouldn’t be working with me.” Gracie and I had landed jobs at the same firm, a miracle feat that I took as a sign from the universe that we were doing the right thing. “Or living with me, for that matter.”
Gracie shuddered, as if the thought was too much for her. “If you weren’t going, there’s no way I would have gone.”
“You would have,” I insisted. “Because you’re too smart not to have ended up in one of the top firms in one of the big cities.”
She shrugged again, looking a little lost as she shook her head. Gracie was my best friend in the whole world and had been for years. We met during freshman orientation, and as unlikely friends as we were, we quickly became inseparable.
Our friendship didn’t seem likely because we were complete opposites in almost every way. We were a textbook example of the old adage that opposites attract.
Gracie was thin as a rake with wispy, almost-white blonde hair, whereas my tresses were thick and black. I’d also never been accused of being thin. In the chick lit I had piled four-books deep on my nightstand, I would have been described best as a big, beautiful woman.
Not that I was beautiful, but I was passable. Gracie, on the other hand, was beautiful in every sense of the word, inside and out. She was soft and gentle to my bold and, sometimes, a little brash. Where Gracie only spoke when she had something to say and was very shy around new people, I had trouble stopping myself from saying everything on my mind. As far as new people went, I figured strangers were only friends I hadn’t met yet.
I once got on a bus, and in the three-hour trip from my hometown in Texas to where I was going in Houston for a weekend, I met a couple around my age, and not only did I know their entire history by the time we got to Houston, but I had been invited to their wedding.
We kept in touch for the next few weeks, and I ended up being surprised when she asked me to be a bridesmaid. It was crazy, but it was also fun. We were still good friends, even though we hadn’t seen each other since I moved to Cambridge.
The trouble with talking so much was that I suffered from a hilarious case of foot-in-mouth disease. I rolled with it, but there had been some instances where I wondered if I should start being as polite and proper as Gracie.
EmberBut I’d decided against it. I was who I was, and I was fine with it. Happy, even.Gracie eyed me as she took another sip of her beer. She climbed up on my kitchen counter where her legs dangled while she contemplated whatever she wanted to say. I waited it out, knowing she would tell me when she was good and ready.While I waited for her, I checked all the cabinets in the kitchen to make sure they were empty. Eventually, Gracie said, “Cambridge has been our home for three years. Do you honestly expect me to believe you’re not in the least bit nervous about moving away?”I shrugged, closing the last cabinet door and checking the kitchen off my mental to-do list. “I’m excited. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous at all, but it’s more nervous excitement than plain old nerves.”“How are you so calm about this?” she asked, frowning into her beer. “I wish I was more like that. You’re so confident about everything. This move is looming ahead of me like a big, black hole, and yo
KADENThank God it was fucking Friday. If there wasn’t already a song written about it, and if I could carry a tune to save my life, I might have written a song about it to celebrate.Fridays were usually a joyous occasion in my life, but today was even happier than usual since this week had sucked balls. As I’d promised myself I would, I got my work and John’s work done.But it had been five days of hell. The guy’s files were a mess, even more so than I had expected. It took me hours before I could tell elbow from ass of what was going on with those clients.Since my life was also most decidedly not a musical, singing and songwriting to celebrate was out of the question. Drinks after work with my best friend, however, was just what the doctor ordered.I triumphantly hit print one last time and stapled the papers of my proposal together. Opening the file in question, I dropped the proposal inside and added it to my pile of work completed for the week.It was more of a tower than a pil
Kaden“The usual.” I didn’t bother fighting the urge to roll my eyes. Ryan knew me better than most. He knew about my history with my dad, too. “To shit on me for nothing, just because he can. I fired a douchebag on Monday, but Dad thought I was being an idiot for not waiting until today to do it. He made me do the guy’s work to prove his point.”“Harsh,” Ryan commented, but he didn’t look surprised. Dad was nothing if not predictable when it came to how he treated me. “How’d you get it all done? You’re already busy as fuck. I would’ve told my boss to go fuck himself if he tried passing off someone else’s work on me.”“Telling Dad to go fuck himself wouldn’t end well.” Antagonizing my dad was a surefire way to have to spend even more time with him, since he was like a dog with a bone. He wouldn’t let it go. He would keep me there, berating me until kingdom came. I didn’t have time for that shit.Ryan shrugged, pursing his lips. “That’s family, I guess. Telling them to go fuck themselv
EMBER“Happy birthday to you,” Gracie said, raising her glass of champagne toward me. “I hope all your dreams come true this year.”“Thank you.” I smiled, clinking my glass against hers. We had completed our trek to New York and moved into our loft that week. It was all finally starting to feel real, and it was thrilling.Neither Gracie nor I had ever been to New York before, but it was turning out exactly like I thought it would. Both of us had seen enough movies shot there and read enough about it to know what to expect, but what books and movies couldn’t possibly convey was the electric atmosphere in the city.It didn’t smell great, and our loft was a little smaller than what we had imagined, but I was already falling in love with the city. Waking up here on my birthday and knowing I was going to be calling it home for the foreseeable future was incredible. It really did feel like a new beginning where anything was possible for the year that lay ahead. An eternal optimist, I was no
EmberGracie pulled me back to our conversation. “Well, banish those thoughts right now. We could end up working for some old codgers. You don’t want to be thinking about that when it’s a wrinkly old man you report to.”“Codgers?” I choked on the sip of wine I had been taking as I laughed. “Really?”Gracie pouted, but the corners of her lips betrayed her smile. “No, not really. I don’t know why I said that. I just get nervous talking about it.”“Sex or the job?”“Both,” she admitted. “Speaking of old codgers, do you know who we’re going to be working for?”I lifted my shoulders and shook my head. “Does it matter? They’re not going to be bothered with a couple of lowly college graduates anyway. I don’t know who owns the company or who the managers are, but I don’t really care either. Do you?”She sucked both lips into her mouth, a contemplative glaze coming over her eyes as she thought. “I would have liked to know a little bit about them. It might help us feel more prepared. Did you me
KADENMonday, fucking Monday. The office was a hive of activity when I arrived, and phones were ringing off the hook. Several of my colleagues were involved in a heated debate about something. Secretaries and personal assistants were bustling around, delivering stacks of paperwork and snapping into phones.Printers hummed because who needed the rain forests, right? Heels clacked, and the coffee machines were working overtime.The silence in my private office was almost deafening by the time I closed the door behind me. My own assistant had been busy this morning, I saw as I approached my desk with my coffee in hand and sat down.A few neat piles of paper waited for my signature, colorful flags marking the spots I had to sign. My computer was already on, but I had to enter my password to get into it. The screens mounted on my walls were also on and set to the channels I needed.Dropping my hands to my jacket, I unbuttoned it and was starting to take it off so I could roll up my sleeves
KadenCubicles made up of white partitioning spread like a maze across the floor. There were no personal effects around the workspaces yet. No doubt, the picture would be a little different in a couple of weeks as the recruits settled in.But for now, it was stark. White. Impersonal and organized. The energy here was different too. The air was thick with nervousness, apprehension, uncertainty, and hesitation, with just a touch of pride and cockiness for having made it this far.If only they knew what was waiting for them. Half of them wouldn’t last a month, and that was out of those who would still have a job come lunchtime.I found the recruits and the trainer, a guy I thought was called Craig, in the big conference room at the back. He was in the middle of a slideshow presentation showing the layout of the building and the emergency exits when I opened the door.He did a doubletake when he saw who was disturbing him, his brown eyes widening as he stammered, “Mr. Marx. Sir, I, uh, I
EMBERKaden fucking Marx. There was a blast from the past I hadn’t seen coming. Of course, I probably should have put it together.Marx wasn’t such a common last name, and I always knew my brother’s best friend came from a family with more money than god. In the back of my mind, I also knew Kaden was in New York with Ryan. He mentioned it once. I just never thought I would end up working with the dick who held the top spot in my list of middle-school crushes. Crap. My heart nearly burst out of my chest when he walked into the conference room with that familiar swagger and the same smirk I had never forgotten.Kaden Marx. Well how about that?The beautiful bastard was just as beautiful and just as much of a bastard as he’d always been. Really, being as hot as him should have been a crime. And that was back in school.Time had been far too good to a dick like him. If anything, he’d grown to become even more good looking than ever before. And he’d always been a showstopper.He had the