Page 6 of The Moment You Know

It wasn’t working. And she needed it to work because in less than an hour she was meeting a man for a drink.

For the average person, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Paige wasn’t the average person and it was a big deal. Putting herself on the market again had taken some work and tonight she was going to see if it had paid off. She was both excited and scared shitless, a combination that had plagued her all day.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Rub, rub, rub.

It still wasn’t working.

“It’s just a freaking drink,” Paige whispered, just as her office assistant, Andrea, appeared in the doorway. Today, her resemblance to Edna Mode from The Incredibles—albeit the hot version, with her dark hair cut in a choppy, chin-length bob and her eyes framed with black, cat eye glasses—was even more pronounced because of the blue shift dress she was wearing.

Hoping she hadn’t been overheard talking to herself, or seen using her worry stone (some people could be judgmental), Paige shoved the stone in her drawer and quickly went on the offensive. “What are you still doing here? You should have left fifteen minutes ago.”

“I need the completed contract for the Adler wedding,” Andrea said. “Remember? The one I asked you for this morning?”

“Adler wedding.” Paige blinked, shifting her focus back to work with difficulty. “Surely I gave that to you already,” she murmured, hoping it was true but figuring it probably wasn’t. Andrea was many things (slightly odd and quirky were at the top of the list), but she was also ruthlessly efficient and organized. Not to mention, she probably hadn’t been distracted all day with thoughts of a drink after work.

“If you had, I wouldn’t need it. ‘And don’t call me Shirley’.”

Paige inwardly groaned, having inadvertently given Andrea the ‘Shirley’ line from Airplane! on a silver platter. She had a penchant for quoting lines from movies and usually Paige struggled to produce responses of her own in a timely manner. However, this time she actually came up with an appropriate line from The Sandlot at the exact moment she needed it and lobbed it back at her assistant.

“‘You’re killing me, Smalls’,” Paige said. “I’m sure I gave it to you.”

Andrea frowned for a long moment, then slowly removed her glasses. Without saying a word, she grabbed a tissue from the box on Paige’s desk and then proceeded to painstakingly clean first one lens and then the other, as if it were of the utmost importance that they be spotless before putting them back on. Only then did Andrea turn her attention back to Paige. “How sure?”

“I’m fifty percent sure that I gave it to you,” Paige amended, trying not to sound weak, even as her confidence shriveled like testicles in cold water under Andrea’s unwavering gaze. Not for the first time, Paige thought that if it wasn’t for the fact Andrea was the best office assistant ever, she’d be the worst.

“Well, you’re one hundred percent wrong, because I don’t have it. Which means you still have it.” Andrea waved her hand at Paige’s desk, which was cluttered with stacks of papers, files, binders, an array of cloth napkins in various colors, and an oddly large-framed picture of her Russian Blue cat, Sputnik. “I’m sure the Adler contract is buried somewhere in that disorganized crap pile,” she said bluntly, then added, almost to herself, “I don’t even know how you function like this.”

“I function just fine. More than fine, actually, thank you very much.”

A slight variation of this same conversation played out at least once a week, so Paige wasn’t really offended. She turned her attention to one of the stacks of paperwork and started to look through it, finding the contract almost immediately and holding it up. “Boom. Adler contract.”

“Don’t say ‘boom’.” Andrea reached out to take it like she was descended from royalty and Paige was one of her subjects.

Paige pulled the contract back. “Not so fast.”

Andrea narrowed her eyes, which were slightly magnified behind her black-framed glasses.

“First things first,” Paige told her. “I believe you owe me an apology.”

“An apology for what, exactly?”

“Does the phrase ‘disorganized crap pile’ ring any bells?”

“Since I said it less than one minute ago, yes it does. And I’m not apologizing. ‘Disorganized crap pile’ is completely accurate and you know it.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that some people’s disorganized crap pile is really their organized crap pile?”

Andrea shook her head. “That’s what disorganized people say to justify having disorganized crap piles. Disorganization is not organization.”

“Then how do you explain my finding the contract right away? Hmm?”

“The fact that you found the contract before next Friday is not a result of your killer organizational system—which, if you are to be believed, is cleverly disguised as a disorganized crap pile. It’s more a result of you randomly looking in your disorganized crap pile and coming across it by pure luck.”

“Wrong. I knew exactly where it was.”

“Wrong. You thought you’d given it to me, remember?”

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