Public Relations

Chapter 16: Mia

We hold this stance for an uncomfortable amount of time, with him sat back on the edge of the conference table and myself back at the front of the room where he'd had me pinned against the wall, where I'd been presenting in the first place.

"You're unreal," he grumbles.

There's a light rap on the wood of the door directly to my right, and then the door swings open.

One of the mousy interns pokes her head in, already in the middle of her thought, but she trails off when she sees us. Brett's cheeks are rouged, his lips swollen and shiny. His hair, which is perpetually messy, is over-the-top fussed up, pieces sticking straight up from where I'd tugged on them. He gives her a light, innocent smile.

I cringe. We look like two people who have just fucked each other's brains out.

"Um," she stumbles. "I, uh, sorry."

I'm hot with humiliation. She's one of the interns hired at the start of the summer, a short, timid thing who could be blown over with a strong gust of wind. She'd never said much to me, particularly after word got out about my connections to the CEO, and I'd never tried to befriend her. She'd printed a few things for me before, filed a few legal documents, but never anything friendly.

Now she's the only witness to this dalliance and I don't even know her name.

"Sorry," the girl says again, clearing her throat. "Um, there's some prospects who are here to speak with Mr. Carvallo. He's requested this meeting room to be cleared in ten minutes."

"Sounds good," I say, but the sentence hangs awkwardly without her name to punctuate it with. I sink into my skin and pray for a meteor shower to put me out of my misery right here.

Instead, the door is shut, and I'm lurched back into the harshly lit cage of this conference room. Brett lights up like he's been told he's going to Disney World.

"That was fun!" he says, and I fight the urge to hit him.

"Pop a squat." I point at one of the office chairs. "I want to get through this next slide at least."

And we do. We pretend for a handful of suffocating minutes that everything is normal, that we're two people who work together and haven't made out. We talk about the main points he should focus on - his upcoming collaborations, his future plans, a potential career switch to acting that his management team has been toying with for a couple months.

I dismiss him once I've finished, with verbal instructions on how to get down to the parking lot and not a second glance in his direction. He lingers for a moment, testing to see if I'll acknowledge his departure, but I'm fixated on disconnecting my laptop from the conference screen.

"See you soon, Mia bella," he hums, and then he's left the room.

* * *

Elizabeth is hovering somewhere on the plane between delighted and disturbed by the time I tell her at lunch.

"Today?" she hisses incredulously, her voice barely above a whisper.

I take a nervous glance around the restaurant, as if there would be anyone from work in this tiny sandwich shop right now. There's one other couple at a booth on the opposite side of the restaurant, an elderly duo with gray hair and lined smiles who have been blowing their paper straws at each other since they sat down.

Elizabeth crunches a potato chip. "Girl, answer me before I cause a scene."

"Jesus, Liz, yes. Today. This morning. In Conference Room B."

She scrunches her nose up. "I was in that room an hour ago. It did smell like yearning in there."

"You're sick," I moan.