Chapter 1
"Incoming call from butt face" Siri announced for what felt like the hundredth time this week. I let the phone ring, wondering if pretending to be dead counted as a valid excuse.
It's been a hectic week, trying to meet deadlines and whatnot.
I reluctantly get up to check my phone and it's my annoying boss,it makes me wonder if I'm the only employee or he's just particularly after my sanity.
Every other girl would be excited to wake up to "I love you" or "good morning sunshine" texts but I always wake up to "get your ass to work" or "where's my coffee" kind of texts.
And that's exactly what I see on my phone screen. I scoff and look at 50 missed calls with heavy eyelids. I check the time and it's 8am.
I couldn't even get a wink of sleep.
I literally just came home from work this morning and he expects my tired ass to be back there again this morning.
I fall back on my bed wishing for an early retirement.
Ever so sluggishly,I get out of my bed that isn't a bed; it's a nest–The duvet hasn't been properly flattened since the Obama administration, and I sleep in a tiny, cleared-out trench surrounded by an army of mismatched pillows– and into the shower.
My room is a total mess. It doesn't just lack organization; it actively rejects it. It's less of a bedroom and more of a physical manifestation of my favorite coping mechanism: "I'll deal with that later." I can't even differentiate between a garbage can and my laundry basket.
My desk? Please don't get me started. It's currently hosting a graveyard of half-empty water bottles, open sketchbooks, loose sticky notes I can no longer read, and a chaotic tangle of charging cords that looks like a nest of depressed plastic snakes.
Instead of books, my bookshelf holds a leaning tower of empty shoe boxes, a cereal bowl containing the fossilized remains of some Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and a collection of random trinkets I have zero memory of acquiring.
The archeological dig began– formerly known as getting dressed.I begin rummaging through my room, looking for wearable clothes to work.
When I need to find something to wear, I don't open my closet. That would imply I use hangers like a civilized human. No....I go excavating.
I stood in the center of the chaos, squinting at the floor-clutter with the practiced, critical eye of a vulture mapping out a highway.
Spotting a flash of green peeking out from under a pile of hoodies near the foot of my bed, I dropped to my knees and began to rummage.
I flung a stray sneaker to the left and hurled a pair of sweatpants to the right, digging deep into the strata of cotton.
"Gross, definitely wore that to gym," I muttered, tossing a wrinkled t-shirt over my shoulder. "Too small... has an unidentifiable salsa stain... where is the—ah!"
I grabbed a sleeve buried deep near the bedrock of the pile. With a triumphant yank, my favorite oversized emerald sweater emerged.
I immediately hoisted it to my face and gave it the ultimate test: the sniff check. Armpits? Fine. Collar? Smells faintly of my vanilla perfume and yesterday's anxiety. Perfect. Passed with flying colors.
I snapped it like a whip to shake out the worst of the wrinkles, pretending that counted as ironing. I nod with a triumphant smile, clearly satisfied with myself.
Next up– pants. I bypassed the closet entirely because the rod holds nothing but empty plastic hangers that rattle mockingly whenever I walk past.
I scanned the room and spotted a pair of black jeans slumped over the back of my desk chair like a deflated person.
I snatched them up, patted down the pockets to ensure I wouldn't accidentally sit on an old piece of chewing gum, and gave the knees a quick check. They weren't completely blown out yet. Success.
Outfit secured, I aggressively kicked the surrounding laundry mountain back toward the wall and hurried out.
The Late Log
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I apologized to a potted plant this morning.
Not a quick, mumbled "sorry" either. A full, hand-on-leaf, sincere apology. The plant didn't deserve to be body-slammed by a sleep-deprived woman hurtling out of an elevator, but here we were. Tuesday morning. 8:51 AM. Seventeen minutes late.
Seventeen minutes.
I had a vivid dream about being late for work instead.
My reflection in the glass wall as I speed-limped down the corridor informed me of several things. One: my blouse was buttoned wrong. Not cute-wrong either. Disaster-wrong. The kind of wrong where one side was significantly longer than the other and I looked like I'd dressed myself during an earthquake. Two: my hair had entered its "mad scientist after a lab explosion" phase. And three—I stopped walking to squint at my earlobes.
One pearl stud. Classic. Elegant. Boring.
One enamel taco. Wearing a tiny sombrero.
"Taco Tuesday," I whispered to my reflection. "It's thematically consistent. It's fine. He won't notice."
My reflection stared back at me like I was the dumbest person alive.
Because Adrian Ashford noticed everything. The man once sent me an email—at 11:47 PM on a Saturday—pointing out a formatting inconsistency in a footnote on page thirty-two of a sixty-page report. He'd used the word "egregious." About a semicolon. He would absolutely notice my taco earring. He would probably dock my soul for it.
His door was open. Of course it was. Adrian didn't close his door. He liked to see us all working. Or suffering. Probably both. The man was a corporate vampire who fed on overtime hours and silent tears.
I considered my options. Option A: Walk past the door with quiet dignity, sit at my desk, and pretend I'd been there the whole time.
Option B: Crawl. On my stomach. Like a commando. Through the break room, around the water cooler, and pop up at my desk like nothing happened.
I went with Option C: Speed-walk with casual nonchalance and clip my shoulder on his doorframe like an absolute champion.
"Ow." I hissed it under my breath, clutching my shoulder. "Cool. Great start. Nailed it."
"Isabelle."Adrian called.