The Next Best Thing

Chapter 10

As Glen yammered on, Emma tried not to look like she was suffering. She doubted she was pulling it off, but she also doubted he cared. She couldn't get a word in, and when she resorted to trying to talk over him, he just did the same, only louder. She had no choice but to whine inwardly for mercy, all the while staring past Glen's shoulder at Ruby out front in her car, bopping to some music, completely unbothered to be kept waiting. Emma tried to will her to honk, like she was using The Force to lift a rock. It was no use.

"So that's when I said, 'Just call me Hot Hips Hamilton!'" Glen said, finally getting to the part where, after everything, he'd given himself the nickname.

Emma knew it was her cue. "Glen, you're crazy!" she said with a good-natured laugh, then flapped her wrist at him. "I hope that's on all your stationary."

"Secret Santa ideas," he said cutely, tapping his temple.

Emma backed up to the first set of lobby doors. I'm doing it! she thought as she opened them behind her. "Next time we have a building barbecue in the summer, I want to see you out there with a hoop," she said, backing out of the second set. Oh my god, I'm going to make it.

"You know it!" He took a few steps to follow her out.

"I'm going to be thinking about that all day, Glen," Emma laugh-sighed as she backed into Ruby's car and felt her way around to the other side where the door was still locked.

Glen stepped outside, a slightly confused grimace on his face. "Uh, ok. Bounderies," he sang, but seriously.

"Open up, Ruby!" Emma barked.

Ruby let her in. She tilted her head back to look at Emma from under her pink-lensed sunglasses. "Buckle up, bitch. Let's do this."

The music in the car was blaring. It had a good beat and bass Emma could feel in her teeth. The lyrics seemed to consist of only one word, and the word was 'bounce'.

Ruby lowered it a bit.

"Lemme guess," Emma said. "This song is called 'Bounce'."

"Close," Ruby grinned. "It's called 'Flounce'."

"As in a skirt?"

"As in, 'I'm outta here, losers!'"

"Ok," Emma shrugged.

At a light, Ruby turned to get a better look at her.

"How are you coming to work today with this naked mug when we're going to see your boyfriend, Gadge?"

Emma's skin crawled at the name of their first client. The industry was filled with wannabe rock stars and selfish egos, desperate for attention. Jason "Gadge" Sandler was only different from them in his delusions. He liked to boast about his humility, but he only surrounded himself with young apprentices because they didn't know better than to worship him, or at least how not to and still keep their jobs.

He did not hire peers, especially men, and especially gay men, because he viewed them all as threats to his spotlight and his masculinity. He paid his staff a pittance for which he expected  lifelong loyalty. No one who quit, regardless of the reason, was ever forgiven.

He blew a lot of smoke about family values too, but he cheated on his wife constantly. Ever since Emma caught him sneaking a woman up to his suite at a convention hotel, he'd treated her with a passive aggressive resentment because she knew who he was - a man with zero integrity in denial of the fact. The same man who dropped this oft-quoted humble-brag on her the first time they met: "You know, they say most geniuses suffer from imposter syndrome, and, uh, I feel like phoney every day." It certainly didn't take a genius to see he was totally and utterly full of shit.