Page 34 of His Good Girl

“He will be tomorrow.”

“He’s the CEO. You’ll report to Benjamin and this Dana chick.”

“That does not make it okay.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t, but it does make it convoluted.”

I appreciated that she did not try to bleach the situation into something innocent. Jules was a menace, but she did not lie to make me comfortable. She would joke about anything right upuntil the second joking became inadequate, and then she would set the jokes down without ceremony.

“I don’t want to be stupid,” I said.

“You’re not stupid.”

“I emailed him for help. He gave me a job, and I keep thinking about his hands. That feels stupid.”

“Did he ask you to dinner?”

I looked up. “Not yet.”

“Yet?”

“He said in the office that he was glad I came. That was all.”

“But you think he might.”

“I don’t know what I think.” I pushed my coffee away, fearing I was weaponizing caffeine. “Maybe he was only being kind. Maybe I’m turning kindness into allure because my brain is broken and unemployed. Maybe he looks at me and sees my father’s child. Maybe he looks at me and sees a mess he promised to manage.”

Jules’s face softened. “Or maybe he looks at you and sees you.”

I made a face. “Disgusting.”

“Growth usually is.”

We stayed at the café until the lunch crowd made it impossible to keep our table without developing guilt, then moved down the street to a wine bar that was technically not open for dinner yet but served ‘afternoon pours,’ which sounded classy if you did not examine it too closely. The rain had stopped, and the city hadthat rinsed, pretty silver look it got after weather passed through and left everyone mildly inconvenienced. Jules linked her arm through mine as we walked, swinging our joined hands once like we were seventeen and cutting class instead of twenty-five and arguing about whether lusting after a future employer counted as self-sabotage.

At the wine bar, we took two seats by the window and ordered sparkling water first because Jules said we were ‘women of culture,’ then immediately ordered fries because culture had limits. My phone sat on the table like a tiny bomb. Every time it lit up, my stomach jumped, and every time it was not Callum, I felt both relief and insulted disappointment.

The first time my phone lit up, it was my aunt sending a picture of her neighbor’s dog wearing a raincoat.

Shortly after that, my dentist reminded me I was overdue for a cleaning, which felt personally aggressive.

Then, as I was sipping my first glass of wine, Benjamin Mercer emailed me the onboarding packet with the subject line: First Day Materials—Read Before Arrival, Not During.

Jules read that over my shoulder and whispered, “I want to study him in a lab.”

The packet was thirty-two pages.

“Thirty-two pages,” I whined.

“That’s foreplay to him.”

“Jules.”

“What? Some men send flowers. Benjamin sends policy compliance.”

I skimmed it while she ate fries. There were forms, confidentiality agreements, badge instructions, a first-week schedule, a floor map with my temporary workspace circled in red, and a note from Ben that said: Do not attempt to memorize everything.

I laughed despite myself.