Office Gossip- (Sample)

3. The Aftermath

Violet

"So....how'd the interview go? Did you listen to anything I told you?" Chloe asked not five seconds after I walked in the door.

"Seriously? You know...I sat there for the whole twenty minutes, pretty much on auto pilot. And do you want to know why?"

"Why? What happened?" Chloe asked, her sudden change of tone from excited to concerned at the look of disgust on my face. As she should be.

"You know..." I said, as I walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and grabbed a Coke Zero bottle, and a straw from the everything went great. Except when a certain blue-eyed man about a decade older than us, and brother of one of our best friends sat across from me the whole time, staring at me as if he were some possessed zombie. I swear, if there hadn't been three other people in the room with us, I'm sure he would have said or done something to screw up the whole experience for both of us." I opened the coke bottle and took a sip. Giving her a moment to process what I was saying.

"So...Alex was there? How did it go?"

"Okay, how do you think it went?" Now I was annoyed. I nearly slammed the refrigerator door shut. I opened the bottle, pulling out one of my reusable cups from the cupboard in the corner between the refrigerator and stove. I filled the cup with ice as I was about to rant the whole bizarre story to Chloe as she sat there, staring at me as if I was about to drop some major bombs. All, of which, I was sure, at this point, she knew. But, knowing her, she would happily let me rant and rave, and let everything out so long as I didn't take anything out on her. Not directly, anyway. "Did you know Alex would be the one conducting the interviews? Or did you want to watch me suffer?"

Chloe sat there for a moment, open-mouthed as if she couldn't believe anything I just said. When she was finally able to pull herself together, she moved to the other side of the couch, allowing me to sit beside her. Barely maneuvering to the opposite side with a cautious move to her left as if she could already see coming what was about to happen.

"I'm sorry," she finally said after what felt like the longest staring contest that the two of us had ever participated in. "I wanted to tell you about that. But I didn't think that it was that big of a deal. He was just filling in for one of the girls who was out. I told Daphne you wouldn't mind when I confirmed that the whole thing was set up. She knows you have a history with him because I told her...but I just didn't tell her how far the two of you went. I never would have told her the two of you were together. HR hates that sort of thing. Thinks that it creates some potential conflict of interest if you were to get the job."

"Yeah...still we had an existing relationship before, does that count?"

"Not unless it was a conflict of interest. Whether or not what the two of you had...how it ended the last time ended on good terms or not. And, given how what you had the last time, was no more than a summer fling, mostly occupied with innocent flirtations and not an actual relationship..."

"Gee, thanks, Chlo." I interrupted, my voice oozing out sarcasm, unable to help myself.

"Anyway..."she said, ignoring my interruption, "I didn't tell you he'd be there because I figured you need a job. And that anything you might've had with him in the past is, well, in the past. Surely you are capable of pushing past that?"

"Of course I'm capable, Chlo. That's not the issue. The issue I have is I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to handle working for a man who, literally, makes my blood boil every time I see him."

"Oh come on, Vi. That's a cop-out if I've ever heard one. You can handle it. Don't try to convince yourself you can't just because the man that you're pinning over is one of the few men who can actually determine your fate. Look, we've got that barbecue coming up at the lake house this weekend. Take this time to forget about him and everything that's going on for the time being. Let things settle for a bit. And by then...hopefully everything will settle before you start. You did get the job, right?"