Vice

9: Office Laundry

Natara sets her bag back onto her desk and Jaquie steps out of her office. She didn't lose her job. He wants her to keep working. She can fix this. She will fix this.

Sure, she started off on the wrong foot and now her boss hates her, but there are worse things that could have happened, aren't there?

She closes her eyes and leans back in her office chair, wiping the wetness from her near-tears away, and the shrill sound of an alarm behind her makes her jump. Natara wheels the chair in various directions and her eyes dart around the room looking for the source of the alarm.

It's another weird wall compartment. She hadn't realized her office had any, but they must be a common thing here at Vicecorp. Natara pushes herself up from her seat and cautiously approaches it. 

She runs her fingers along the almost imperceptible notch until she finds a finger-press lever and the compartment opens, spilling a mound of clothes onto the floor of her office.

Clothes? She steps back. What am I doing with all this? What kind of business has compartments that shoot clothing out of the walls? She pokes the mound, raises an eyebrow at it, and it dawns on her that everything in the pile is male clothing. It's all suits, dress pants, and...well...other things.

It all must belong to Mr. Vice.

She retreats back to her desk and looks at her instructions for the day. Sure enough, it says she needs to take his business clothes to the dry cleaner. The instructions give an address to the dry cleaner, information on borrowing a company car, and tell her where in the office she needs to go to grab a basket to carry the laundry in.

First step first. I need to get that laundry basket, she decides. 

Natara takes one more look at the instructions to figure out where she needs to go for the basket. 

Third Floor, Room 239. 

She exits her office and walks back to the elevator. She's sure - with how large this building is - there are other elevators on her floor but she's grown comfortable with using this one.

The door opens, revealing three other people. The elevator was empty all of the previous times she'd used it, so she assumes it must be a busy time of day. She meanders between them and squeezes into the back of the elevator, fiddling with the corner of her dress. No one greets her and her palms are damp with sweat as she presses the button for her floor.

The elevator stops at one of the floors - not quite Floor Three yet - and one person steps off. Two more people step in and Natara realizes one of them is Jace. When his deep brown eyes land on her his face lights up in a smile and he gravitates to stand in the back corner of the elevator with her.

"How'd your coffee delivery go, Tara?" He leans against the back railing of the elevator, smiling. Natara cringes. It's not the same nickname James used - but it's a nickname, all the same - and it bothers her but she's too shy to say anything. She forces a smile back, trying to overlook it.

"Terrible. I didn't know there are secret wall notches so it ended up getting cold. Mr. Vice seemed pretty upset..." She keeps her voice as hushed as she can even though she knows the other people in the elevator can hear every word. She's curious if they all have heard about how the heir to Vicetech is with his secretaries. 

What would they think of it? Natara wonders.

"No worries. I'm sure you'll make it up to him with his lunchtime smoothie." Jace encourages her with a wink that makes her heart flutter. She knows she's weak to brown eyed white boys but full grown brown eyes white men are a weakness she didn't know she had. 

Jace is way too old for her to be feeling anything like that toward him. 

And she's way too young for him.

I should definitely keep my distance, she thinks. 

She steps further away from him for good measure and tries to curtly nod back and not reply verbally. She assumes he'll just think she's being shy or introspective and leave it alone, and he does. The elevator makes another stop and he gently pats his hand on her shoulder as he steps off.

"Hey, you'll do fine. I'll see you around!" He beams. Her posture visibly relaxes once he's stepped off of the elevator and the door has closed behind him.

Soon enough she's reached the Third Floor and she meanders around. This floor is full of various rooms and hallways, with little to no obvious directions or layout. She eventually has to work out the courage to interrupt someone sitting at their desk and ask them how to get to the room listed on her sheet.

Inside the room are a bunch of empty cartons and boxes, presumably from office supplies that the company had been delivered at some point and decided to save. It's some sort of room meant for stockpiling containers, extra printer paper, and various other office supplies. She grabs a carton she thinks will fit all of the clothes and heads back up to her office.

Once inside, she cautiously picks the clothing off of her office floor. Most of the items are suits, made with a silky but masculine fabric that Natara has never felt before. Smooth and rugged and expensive are the only words that come to her mind as she places the items in the carton.

But when her hands land on a pair of Calvin Klein boxer briefs, she instinctively drops them back down to the floor, profusely blushing. The only male underwear she's ever even seen before has been a pair or two of her dad's briefs that would accidentally get mixed in with the rest of the family's laundry from time to time.

And those were plenty embarrassing. But handling a man's underwear - the underwear to the heir of a multi-million dollar corporation? Natara feels like she might faint.