Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01 Page 2

  All Krista could do was inwardly groan.

  When 5 o’clock rolled around, Krista couldn’t sprint out of work fast enough. She headed straight for happy hour with Kate and Jasmine, two friends from college who moved to San Francisco shortly after graduation. Krista had never thought to move, letting them escape to California unhindered, but when Jim had found her at a party, shortly after serving him a restraining order, and punched her in the face, she decided skipping town was the right, and only, way to play it.

  Yes, he’d gone to jail—he took down another three people who got in the way, all of whom had pressed charges—but he’d get out eventually. Something as trivial as the law wouldn’t stop a man like Jim. Not being able to see out of one eye for a week drove that point home.

  Krista spotted Kate in the corner sipping her drink.

  Twenty-six with long brown hair and large, luminous eyes, Kate had a dainty look, but a contrasting foul mouth. She was also pygmy short, which was funny when she started throwing out the f-bombs. Her one, self-proclaimed, greatest flaw was always falling in love with g*y men. In her defense, it was an easy thing to do, especially in San Francisco. More than half the population of g*y men had great style, excellent hygiene and unbelievable bodies, not to mention being intelligent, educated and cultured.

  Kate was in love a lot.

  “Hey, Kate,” Krista said as she flung her handbag into the corner of the booth and crawled in.

  Kate jumped, and then giggled. “You ass**le,” she said by way of hello.

  “Did I grow, or is this pub fashioned after people your size?” Krista asked as she tried to straighten her legs under the table.

  “Har har. How was your first day?”

  “No, seriously. Is this not the smallest booth in the world? Let’s go to the bar.”

  About then Jasmine showed up, looking like a painter. She was a tall girl and rail thin with a short bob and a cloudy disposition, but always managed to make things fun regardless. Or maybe she sought to up the fun factor since she thought everything was dismal.

  Though all of them went to the same college with the same major, each of them landed in different fields. Jasmine was a designer of some sort and Kate ended up in product development. They all had jobs, though, so they didn’t complain too loudly.

  “Hi,” Jasmine said, sliding onto her own bar-stool.

  “So, Krista,” Kate said. “What about these embarrassing stories from the day you text about earlier?”

  “Ooh, I love embarrassing stories!” Jasmine clapped happily, catching the eye of the older bartender and pointing to the tap of Harp.

  Krista couldn’t help a grin. “I have a few. First off, my boss!”

  Kate and Jasmine settled into their barstools expectantly as Krista unfolded the strange events of her first day. When she started talking about Mr. Montgomery and his various quirks, humiliation turned into hilarity.

  Finally Krista got to the most embarrassing story.

  “Wait,” Jasmine said as she bowed her head with a thoughtful expression. “You picked up a piece of paper, which you had heard print, in order to look normal? I don’t get it. Was he hideous or something?”

  “Or creepy?” Kate asked as she leaned over her martini to get a good look at Krista’s face.

  Krista cleared her throat and shrugged. Kate and Jasmine immediately honed in.

  “He was hot, wasn’t he?” Jasmine accused with an evil smile.

  Krista shrugged again, hating that her friends could read her so well.

  “He must have been super f**king hot to make you lose your shit!” Kate chortled, matching Jasmine’s delight.

  Krista kept the shrugs coming.

  “Seriously? He was that hot?” Jasmine asked with a quirked eyebrow.

  Krista felt herself flush. “Okay, yes. He was hot, okay? He just surprised me, is all. He was in my space—I wasn’t all ga-ga over him, or anything! I know to steer clear of hot guys!”

  “Womanizing guys,” Kate corrected.

  “Same thing.” Jasmine waved the thought away. “Describe him!”

  “Seriously, you guys. There’s nothing to describe. He was pleasant looking, he smelled good, and he surprised me in an enclosed space. It’s not like I’m great with people. He could’ve been anyone and I would’ve been a dweeb!”

  “De-scr-ibe-him,” Jasmine enunciated.

  Krista rolled her eyes. “Fine. He was over six feet—not much over, I don’t think. He had really green eyes—super green. Hard to look away from eyes. Stop looking at me like that!” Kate held up her hands as if to say there was no look. Krista continued with a red face. “He had blondish hair in kind of a spikey ‘do. He had these, like, noble-born features ….”

  Jasmine shook her head to cut her off. “What does that even mean? Who do you know that’s noble?”

  “Just…I don’t know…like, straight nose, chiseled jaw—like a guy a photographer would have a wet dream over.”

  “Okay, so he was noble, fine. Body?” Jasmine asked with hungry eyes.

  “Jaz, whoa, get laid already,” Kate said as she leaned away.

  Jasmine huffed, “I need to. It’s been a while. But I loves me a good hot man.”

  “Nice body,” Krista continued, thinking back. “Biceps, super broad shoulders—he was like, hulking in the entryway. Trim waist.”

  “Dress?”

  “Suit,” Krista matched the girls’ smiles. She couldn’t help it. “Tailored, silk tie that matched his eyes…he looked good in it. He wore it like a second skin. He like…lounged in it, or something.” Krista shook her head, trying to calm the hatching butterflies in her stomach.

  Like any girl, Krista also loved to look at hot guys, but this one had been different somehow. There was certain quality to him that made her act like a teenager with a crush. It hadn’t happened since she was a teenager with a crush.

  “So…he was super-hot and you freaked out,” Kate summed up.

  “Well, it wasn’t just that his face was perfect, you know? He was rugged and masculine, but so damn smooth he’d melt in your mouth.” Krista fanned herself, finally giving in with a bright smile, “He gives me fire-crotch just thinking about him.”

  “Hah!” Jasmine pointed at her with victory. “I knew it!”

  “So hit that, Romeo,” Kate laughed.

  “She’s a chick. She’d be Juliet, dummy,” Jasmine said flippantly.

  “Whatever. Same dumb play.”

  “Yeah, right,” Krista mentally shrank back from the suggestion. “New job. He’s the kind of guy that everyone probably talks about.”

  “Yeah, true. And if he doesn’t have a girlfriend, which he probably doesn’t, all he wants to do is sleep around and then talk about it. I hate man-sluts,” Jasmine pronounced, going back to her beer.

  “Yeah,” Kate agreed into Krista’s nod, “But they sure are nice to look at!”

  All the girls fell on the bar laughing. A truer statement had never been uttered. The three of them were worse than any man when it came to gawking. They’d all three turn and look, smiling appreciatively, and then walk away without bothering to say hello, having no time for the man. Heartache or a bad lay was rarely worth the nice face or body.

  Still…a girl could look!

  “But when are you going to get back out there?” Jasmine asked, as her knowing chuckles subsided.

  These girls, to some extent—Kate more so than Jasmine—knew her history. They knew about the bad nights and the dark days. They knew her recovery from the scared, weak woman her ex-boyfriend Jim made. They were her support network most of the time, but sometimes, like now, they branched out and pushed.

  Krista shrugged uncomfortably. Jasmine was right to push. Krista was young. She’d made some mistakes—one in particular—but she couldn’t let that dictate the rest of her life. She did need to move on. She needed to learn to trust again. She needed to find someone safe who wouldn’t jerk her around.

  She just didn’t feel like starting today
. She said as much.

  “But you do need to, though,” Jasmine persisted in a quiet voice.

  Krista sighed, tears springing to her eyes unbidden. “Jim got ahold of a Facebook account. He’s been messaging with threats.”

  “What?” Kate yelled. “When did this happen? Why am I just hearing about this?”

  Krista waved her away, desperate not to let Jim ruin her day. “It was bound to happen, right? Even when he was cheating on me, or…the other stuff…he was always possessive. He thought we were going to get married,” Krista snorted in derision. “It’s just a computer. He doesn’t know where I am.”

  “What’d you do? Did you contact his parole officer?” Kate pushed with round eyes.

  Krista shrugged. “He wasn’t breaking any laws. I closed all my social media accounts.”

  “I never use that crap, anyway. You’re not missing anything,” Jasmine deflected.

  “Well, me neither—hence us not knowing this first-hand, but… Shit.” Kate stared at her drink.

  The girls stared at their drinks for a quiet moment, each reliving some memory from Jim they’d rather forget. After a second, Jasmine said, “What did that salesman say when you waved his paper in front of his face?”

  She could turn around on a dime, thank God. She steered the conversation back to safer waters.

  After a deep breath, Krista said, “I didn’t hear what he said—I sprinted out of there too fast!”

  “He wasn’t mad?”

  “No. When I met him later, he was smiling about it. Definitely not mad.”

  “Oh my god…” Jasmine had a somber look, like she’d just found out someone had just died. “He totally knows he makes you nervous!”

  “Yup,” Krista said, peeling the label off her beer. “It was a print-out of some graphs for a sales presentation.”

  “He works on the same floor?”

  “No, thank God. He printed it from the art department. It had his name on it and everything. He had to go reprint.”

  Jasmine started laughing.

  “There’ll be no living with him now. You’re screwed,” Kate said as she shook her head.

  “Yup.”

  Chapter Two

  Day two!

  Training day, which had only taken a couple hours of the morning, and consisted of a ridiculously quick job rundown by a mildly disgruntled employee. Krista had learned a couple things. One, stay away from someone in the department named Dan. He farted.

  When asked for elaboration, she was told by Rachel, the girl leaving, that she had to sit behind him and smell the funk all day. It was a medical thing, so not his fault, but still, that was a thing apparently.

  Krista couldn’t stop a few stray giggles breaking free. What a thing to tell somebody!

  Next, don’t talk to the art department, or Jacob, the IT Manager. Apparently Jacob read people’s email if they landed on his radar. Rachel didn’t have to tell Krista twice.

  The final thing of note—no one talked to Research. Don’t take it personally, Krista was told, but just know that Research employees weren’t the social stars of the company.

  That was all Krista had learned. Not a great start. But one thing was for certain, she fervently hoped Jacob wasn’t as hot as Sean.

  Time passed quickly after that. In a new job, a person never really knew what they were doing for the first few months, and Krista was no exception. But the pace was slow, and the database her department used for all their statistical information on products was pretty easy to figure out. Soon Krista was churning out reports like a pro, turning them in exactly on time so as not to get a pink slip.

  That had been something she wished Rachel would’ve hinted about. When to turn in a report!

  The first request for research Krista got, which was on toothpaste for an ad campaign coming up, saw her working like a beast, wanting to do her best work and impress her boss. With a satisfied smile, she had emailed her completed report a day early! She’d wanted to do jazz hands and shout, “Wacha wacha,” like Fozzie Bear. Why, was anyone’s guess.

  A few minutes later Mr. Montgomery called her into his office. She could barely contain the strut she was so impressed with herself. That lasted until she appeared in his open doorway and saw the world-class scowl.

  “When was that information due, Miss Marshall?” he’d asked immediately.

  “Oh, well, it wasn’t due until tomorrow but I thought you might want to check it over early…”

  “We aren’t sprinters here. We take time to thoroughly review our work before turning it in. I suggest you get back to it.”

  She didn’t bother to argue that out of the million flaws she possessed, one of them wasn’t lack of thoroughness. Her entire school career could attest to that fact, usually with grumbles from her other team-project members. The way he’d said thoroughly hinted that wasting time was better than allowing the rest of the company to know the department could handle more work.

  “Right, good point!” She’d thrown him something barely closer to a smile than a grimace, and scampered out. It had been a bad start to her new job. One of them, anyway.

  It was a nice day in October, nearly four months after her start date, when Krista got to work in the usual, insufferable way via San Francisco’s public transportation. She had the schedule down now, though. Pretty simple, really. You showed up. If the train was there, you got on. If not, you waited. Once on, you hoped to hell it didn’t break down.

  After just adding carrots to her grocery list, and wiping residual fear and pain out of her head from her latest bad dream the night before, Krista walked into the break room with mug in hand. She slammed into something unexpected, and went careening off toward the wall.

  Her lucky mug hit first, bouncing off and twirling through the air. The universe paused, waiting for the reaction of a breakable object falling toward a hard surface.

  The crash drowned out Krista’s thoughts.

  “Oh no!” she said softly. “My lucky mug…”

  Two large hands braced her, but she couldn’t focus; her brain started replaying all of the horrors of her first real job thus far. Things like her horrible first week where, in addition to getting lost constantly, she did most things wrong, and once actually walked in on a group of women gossiping about her. Then there was that fiasco with the guy in the art department, Tommy—she hadn’t seen that coming! He’d completely blindsided her asking to go for coffee, which followed with him getting a rejection so blunt she couldn’t sleep that night from guilt.

  But seriously, he just kind of sprung it on her. She’d reacted more in fright than anything else. Then when she tried to apologize, they basically shooed her away. She went from a funny Research girl to a hated monster overnight. They didn’t even care that he found another girl within a couple weeks, Krista became enemy number one.

  All this was egged on by the habitual nightmares of Jim she couldn’t shake even though she’d moved away from that old life. A broken lucky mug might as well be a funeral song. It was the symbol of good luck she got with each new venture; new semester, new job. She wasn’t all that superstitious but this one thing was law. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

  With glassy eyes, she bent to collect the two biggest pieces. Forlorn, with thick fingers, she tried to fit them together, remembering the last time she’d broken a lucky mug. She’d had to drop a class. It had been that bad!

  Near tears, she barely recognized the presence kneel beside her.

  “Are you okay?” Sean’s voice rumbled gently.

  She looked up into his concerned Romanesque features. For the first time, she no longer cared if he was handsome. Or his fantastic smell. She’d landed in a crisis.

  “My lucky mug,” she pleaded. “I don’t think I can fix it.”

  ~*~*~*~

  Sean’s chest constricted strangely with Krista’s words. She looked like a fallen angel perched on her knees, holding the fragments of her blue mug in her outstretched hands. Her eyes were filled with desper
ation as they pleaded with him, begging for a different outcome than what she was experiencing.

  If he wasn’t so drawn in by her despair, he’d be outright laughing. She couldn’t have picked an uglier mug if she’d tried.

  “We have plenty. We can have this cleaned up in a flash.” He bent over to scoop up the biggest pieces and stood, leaning towards the garbage can.

  “No!”

  He froze.

  “You can’t throw them away!”

  “I don’t understand.” Sean looked from the pieces in his hand to those in hers. Cracking a smile, he said, “I don’t think it’ll hold coffee anymore.”

  “It’s my lucky mug. If I have a test or get nervous or something, I have my lucky mug to comfort me. You can’t just throw it away. It’s a process. I know it sounds dumb…”

  “And I broke it; your lucky mug.”

  Krista shrugged, sadness haunting her. “I was the one that ran into you.”

  The downtrodden look on her face pinched Sean’s insides, while the smell of her, lavender and mysterious femininity, tickled his nose.

  He’d seen this woman around a lot, noticing her gliding through hallways and getting printouts or making copies. He kept trying to catch her on her own, to get her to agree to an afterhours meet up. Unfortunately, when she saw him she either went sprinting in the opposite direction, or she stared at him mutely and made ready to leave immediately. He was sure it was because of the rumors and his track record, but she was a hot little number. Geeky as all hell, but there was an intelligence there that befuddled him. When she looked at a person, you could tell she was analyzing; working things out. She constantly had him intrigued and turned on at the same time. He wanted to sample the merchandise.

  He’d just stumbled on his chance.

  “I’ll fix it,” he said quickly, taking the few fragments she held.

  Her large round eyes met his. The connection sparked intensity, a rush of lust that had him hard immediately. He stepped closer. He needed to turn this feeling into sex; to get her to make a promise here that he could cash in later that night.

  Her hands tightened convulsively. Sweat beaded her brow. She was uncomfortable; struggling with their proximity. Wanting to get away, but drawn in despite it. He had an effect on her; she just didn’t want to give in to it.