Page 27 of Anyone But Me
We both screamed and laughed together as the ride shot up and down a few more times. When the doors opened signaling the end of the ride, we both continued to sit there for a moment. For my part, I wasn’t ready to let go. I didn’t actually know what Jax’s reasoning was. After some time, she was the one to disconnect our hands. She stood and skipped off of the ride as if the moment hadn’t happened at all.Of course she did.Because it didn’t mean anything. She was scared and grabbed my hand. That was all.
I kept reminding myself of this the rest of the day whenever the thought of her hand in mine popped back into my mind.
When we were waiting for our ride back to the hotel, Jax looked at me with a serious expression on her face. “You know, there’s a pretty big elephant in the room that we haven’t addressed at all on this trip.”
I swallowed hard. Was she actually talking about what I thought she was? Had she also been thinking about the way our hands felt clamped tightly together?
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I asked, playing dumb.
Jax’s lips broke into a smile, and she rolled her eyes playfully at me. “Your job, of course! You start on Monday and you haven’t mentioned it at all. How are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? Confident? You better be feeling that last one, because you’re going to kill it, and I hope you realize that.”
It took me a moment to catch up with everything she had just said, partially because she was talking so fast, but an even bigger part because it was not what I expected her to say at all. I was such an idiot.
“I’m… um, pretty nervous,” I said once I remembered how to speak. “This is a huge deal, and the company really put themselves on the line by hiring me. There were definitely candidates with many more years of experience than I have.”
“Yet, they saw something inyou.” Jax poked my chest. “Don’t you realize how cool that is? I bet there was some middle-aged man that applied and assumed he had the job in the bag, but the people in charge of hiring wanted you. You’re special, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”
“Do you really mean that?” Her sweet words had me fighting back tears.
“Are you kidding?” Jax’s voice became louder with every word. “Of course I mean it. I realize I don’t understand a tonabout what you do, but I can still tell you’re really freaking good at it.”
“Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
Jax took my hand in hers just as she had earlier, but this time, there was nothing to be afraid of. “Of course. You’re going to do great. I have no doubt about that. And every night, I’ll be home to help you relax with a good movie, a foot massage, or silence. As you know, silence is harder for me, but I’m willing to do it for the greater good.” Jax squeezed my hand once before dropping it.
“You know what? I was trying not to think about Monday, because I knew it would make me anxious, but right now I feel the opposite. You actually have me feeling more excited than anxious about starting this job.”
I wasn’t sure if I would feel the same way on Monday morning, but at that moment, for maybe the first time ever, I was feeling relaxed and confident.
Chapter 9
By Monday morning, some of the confidence I had been feeling while on vacation had worn off, but it wasn’t gone completely. My job was a twenty-minute walk from my apartment, and I planned to walk whenever the weather allowed, but today, I elected to get a ride. I didn’t want to risk being smelly or my hair being windswept, or even worse, arriving late because I took a wrong turn.
I wasn’t late at all. In fact, I had arrived almost twenty minutes early. I took a deep breath before walking inside the massive office building.
“May I help you, ma’am?” a security guard asked as soon as I walked through the doors.
I swallowed the large lump in my throat. “Yes. I… um… I work here. It’s my first day.”
He nodded, his face serious and not a hint of a smile. “Name, please.”
“Carter Miller-Cooper.” I choked on my own name, making it appear like I didn’t belong there at all.
The security guard typed into the iPad he was holding, and when he looked up from it, he gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Ah yes, Miss Miller-Cooper. Someone will be down to escort you upstairs in just a few minutes, but first I must ask you to give me your bag, make sure your pockets are empty, and go through the metal detector.”
Wow. This was much more intense than I expected it to be. Was this what it was like to work in New York City? I followed his directions and made it through with no issues. As promised, a few minutes later, a young woman, who appeared to be only a few years older than me, came to take me upstairs.
She was short but had a confidence about her that made her appear much taller. Her red curly hair was pulled into a ponytail, but more than a few pieces had already fallen out of it. She was wearing a black suit with a skirt and a white button-up underneath. A wide smile spread across her face as she held her hand out toward me. “I’m Annika. I’m part of the HR team and will be helping you with all of your onboarding procedures today and tomorrow. It’s going to be a lot, so I hope you’re ready. We try to get the onboarding completed as quickly as possible so we can get you started on your actual job.”
She wasn’t lying. As soon as we got upstairs, I was taken into a room filled with rows of computers, similar to our computer lab in high school. I had to read page after page of company policies, then intermittently take quizzes to make sure I was paying attention. By the time I finished all of those, it was already past one o’clock. Annika was sitting up front waiting for me to finish and offered to get lunch with me once I told her I was done.
We took an elevator down two floors, and it was like entering a whole other world. There were rooms with TVs and couches, rooms with bean bag chairs and tables stacked with laptops, all leading to the end of the hall where there was a massive cafeteria.
“This is technically the break floor, but a lot of people come down here to do work when their office gets too stuffy. This is pretty much where you’ll always find me when I’m not onboarding a new employee or in a meeting. My office is essentially just storage space at this point.”
I nodded in response, but I didn’t think I would ever actually come down to this area when I was on the clock. When I worked, I wanted my complete focus to be on my job and nothing else. This floor was much too busy and distracting.
When we reached the cafeteria, so many smells hit me at once. My nostrils were able to detect pizza, burgers, and coffee, but there were many other smells that had my stomach growling as well. “So, we can come down here whenever and buy food?” I asked Annika.
