Ms.Martin

III

I unlock the doors of the dealership and turn the lights on. I walk into Asher's office and put his coffee on his desk and then walk to mine. Walking over to my desk, I realize I forgot my backpack in my car. I groaned and put my coffee down and ran back out to my car. Another car pulls in as soon as I go outside. I recognize Joe, one of our salesmen. There are only two other people that work here besides me and Ash.
Joe leaves his car and waves to me. Once I grab my backpack, I go over to Joe.

"Hey Tatum! What's up?" Joe is a decent looking guy. He's a little shorter than me, so I have to look down a bit. He's almost 40, but he doesn't mind that Asher and I are his bosses.

"Hey. I'm going to be dealing with an HPC today, so I need you to run the floor. I need you to keep an eye on Jase, ok?" Jase is the other guy that works with us. He's Asher's age, but he doesn't like the fact that I'm 17 and I'm his boss. He says it's "unprofessional". He doesn't know that Joe told me that, so I'm just waiting to bring it up to him when he screws up.

I walk into the office and sit down at my desk to start working on this profile. Turning my music on, I get to work.

There's a knock on my door at 10:50. I look up and pause my music to see my visitor. It's Asher. Smiling, I nod towards the seat in front of me.

"Oh no, I won't be here for long. Your HPC told me she was on the way. You prepared?" He asks.

"Yeah. I've narrowed it down to a Tesla Model S, an Audi A5, and an Alfa Romeo Giulia. You think those are good?" Asher looks like he's in deep thought for a moment. Then he nods.

"Those are pretty good. I wouldn't have thought of the Giulia. Good work. I'll send her in when she gets here, ok?" The black-haired man turns to leave, but he stops and turns back around. "You should probably clean up a bit." And with that he leaves. Realizing what he said, I looked around. My desk is a mess, with papers scattered everywhere and pencils all over the place.

I clean up my desk and just as I'm finishing, there's a soft knock on the door.

"One second, please!" I called out. Straightening my shirt, I walk over to let the person in. When I look up, I see a gorgeous but familiar face. It's the girl from Starbucks. She must be as surprised as I am, because her mouth is slightly open in surprise. I can't help myself from checking her out a bit. Snapping back into reality, I remember what I'm supposed to be doing.

"Are you Adrianna?" I ask. A smile replaced her look of shock.

"Yes, ma'am I am. I'm here for an appointment with Asher?" She says. Oh my freaking god her voice is even better than I thought it would be.

"Oh! I guess he forgot to mention it. I hope you don't mind, but he was very overwhelmed today so I offered to take a case for him. If that's a problem-" Adrianna cuts me off with a beautiful laugh.

"It's no problem. Would you like to get started?" I nod.

"Oh, I'm Tatum by the way. I co-manage the dealership with Asher," I tell her. I forgot to introduce myself to her earlier. I shake her hand and it's surprisingly warm. Leading her to the seat in my office, I sit down myself. "Would you like anything to drink? We have water, coffee, and soda if you would like anything." She kindly shook her head no.

"If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?" I look up from my papers to raise an eyebrow at her. "I don't mean it in a rude way, it's just that you said you co-manage the dealership, but you look so young and the business is so successful..." Adrianna trails off. I smile at the compliment she unknowingly gave me. I can hear a small accent in her voice but I can't place it.

"Asher and I have been friends for quite a while and he knew I was good with money so he hired me as a co-manager almost 2 years ago. And, to answer your question, I'm 17." Her face fell a little bit for some reason. "I'm turning 18 in two weeks, thank goodness. But let's get onto the reason why you're here..."

Adrianna had decided on the Audi, but she's coming by on Monday to discuss the paperwork more. It's about 1, so I call Madi. She picks up on the first ring.

"Hey! How did the meeting go?"

"It went great. But you remember the girl that I kept glancing at at Starbucks?"

"Mm-hmm. What about her?" Madi asks. I wait for her to connect the dots. There's a gasp from the other line. "Was she the client?"

"Yeah. Her name is Adrianna. How about I pick you up for lunch? Let's get Mexican, does that sound good?"

"Sounds great. Pick me up at the mall. I was doing some back to school shopping. When are you going to get yours done?" She asks.

"Ugh we'll talk about it later. Bye." With that, I hang up. I head to Asher's office to tell him I'm heading out. I open the door and scream. My face turns bright red and I slam the door shut. Asher curses and comes to the door.

"T! What do you want?" He asks out of breath. My face is red from what I just saw.

"I'm going out to lunch with Madi. Do you need me in the office at all for the rest of today?" I didn't know my face could get redder, but when I see the girl behind him pulling on his arm, it does.

"No. You can go. See you at home?" He says. I nod and walk back to get my backpack. Once I have my stuff, I go to my car to go down the street. Our building is right by the mall, so it isn't hard to get business here. A lot of what we do is order specially made cars and have a few cars on hand that you can't get anywhere else in town. As I'm pulling out, a motorcycle almost hits me. I honk, but then I notice it's Jase coming back from lunch. Rolling my eyes, I go pick Madi up. As soon as she gets in the car, she starts talking about how she's excited for school and, for what seems like the millionth time today, I roll my eyes.

We pull up at the restaurant and once we're seated, I realize the mistake I have made eating here.

"Shit!" I say, interrupting Madi's sentence. She just looks at me.

"What?"

"This is where Mary works. I forgot. Oh well. We can just deal with it if we see her, right?" Mary is an ex that got me in a lot of trouble last year. She also broke my heart. The waitress comes over and takes our order. I decide on a bowl of guacamole and Madi and I are going to share fajitas.

"So, what classes are you taking this year?" When she says this, I groan.

"Calculus, AP Chemistry, World Government, AP English, Spanish 4, and Phlebotomy," I told her. I overloaded my schedule this year, but it's the only way to make sure I get a job right out of high school. My best friend just looks at me with that pitiful look on her face.

"Man, that sucks. How much money do you have for back-to-school shopping?" I mumble the answer, because she's always complaining about how I spend "too much money" on clothes. "What was that?" I say it a little louder. "Can't hear you!"

"Fine! I have 2 grand for school shopping." Only about 200 will be spent on actual supplies, while the rest will be spent on clothes. What can I say? I love clothes.

"Hey, that's less than last year! I'm proud!" We talk a little bit more until our food comes. Then we eat in mostly silence, take a few pictures together, talk here and there. When we leave, I realize that I just really, really need a nap.

I drop Madi back off at the mall and call Asher. He picks up on the first ring.

"Tatum! I was wondering when you would call! I'm so sorry about earlier. That was so embarrassing. I'm so sorry-" I cut him off with a laugh.

"Ash, it's fine. I just wanted to call and say that I'm headed home. I'm going to be in bed or trying to figure out the stuff from last night." We both went to bed pretty early, so we didn't get to figure out the cost of all of the stuff we sto- I mean acquired.

"Huh? Oh yeah, yeah sure. Just be sure to clean up your mess when you're done, ok?" Asher tells me. 'Cleaning up your mess' when we talk about our side business means to put everything in the right packaging and to stash it in the basement in the secret spot we have.

"No problem. See you later!" I hang up and head to the house.

Walking into my house, I realize there is absolutely no way that I can get anything done correctly in this state. The stairs creak under my weight as I trudge up to my room. I strip off all of my clothes and fall into bed, immediately falling asleep.