“Am I banished from the break room, then?” Samson shook his head. “I feel your rules are too strict, mistress.”
“I’m just pointing it out. You could have Babette get your coffee, either from the pot over there, or have her go out to the café across the street, but you come lurking around here every day when we break for lunch, and most of the time when I’m just making a run for coffee, or extra pens or something.”
His brow furrowed, and he shifted his weight as he looked at her. He’d been teasing her before, but now she couldn’t read him at all.
“You don’t want my company?”
Was he hurt? He seemed genuinely put out.
“No, I’m just… Look. You are the boss here. You can be the buddy boss if you want, or the hard ass. You get to decide everything. But the rules are really there to protect us, and I’ve worked for plenty of guys who would break them up until the moment they suddenly felt threatened, and then your employees are the ones who suffer. We’re the ones out of a job.” April sipped her water. “If you want to have a lighter atmosphere, you have to make it comfortable for us to participate in it. And if you don’t, then don’t be mad when we pass on being the butt of your jokes. That’s all.”
Samson stared at her for a long moment. April felt her stomach churning. He was going to fire her. She’d done it again. Run her mouth and pissed off the man with all of the power.
Instead, he came over to sit across from the table with her. “I didn’t mean to offend you, April. I enjoy spending time with you and hearing your perspective on things.”
“Then why do you…” April looked down at the table for a moment, steeling her nerves. “Why do you go out of your way to make me feel like I’m doing things wrong?”
Samson’s long fingers circled around the edge of his mug. “Honestly… You made such an impression when I saw you in my sister’s apartment. You’re such an intriguing woman. It bothers me that I didn’t remember you at all from before. And when I see you demurring, holding back, it makes me wonder which you really are: the fierce lioness, or the shy little mouse.”
April squared her shoulders and sucked in her cheeks. “I’m neither.”
“Is that so?” Samson’s eyes scanned over her curiously. “Then what are you?”
“I’m a person,” April snapped.
Samson’s hand dropped from his mug. That obviously wasn’t what he was expecting. Finally, he said, “I know you are a person.”
“Maybe.” April packed up the contents of her lunch into the bag. “But fine, challenge me. Remember, though, that I’m a person. Not an object, or a toy, here for your amusement. People get uncertain. People need to know that the ground they’re standing on is firm. And people, especially people like me, are survivors. To survive, you have to be able to assess your situation and become whatever you have to be. So sorry if I disappoint you sometimes by not being memorable or entertaining enough.”
Samson said nothing as she finished packing up her lunch, and he let her leave the room without another word. Her hands were shaking again. She didn’t know if she spent so much time sweating and shaking around him because he could strip this opportunity away from her, or because he made her feel like a furnace had been stoked deep inside her, and she had no outlet for all that heat.
***
Ideally, April would get off work, go home, and be incredibly productive coming up with new designs and options for her team. In the real world, she turned on Netflix to some dumb sitcom from the 90s and opened up her laptop to scroll through her Facebook feed. The next hour elapsed to the sounds of canned laughter and the occasional YouTube video one of her friends had shared.
Then, she noticed a familiar face in the “Up Next” column. It was an interview with Samson Bennett on some late night comedy show. April paused the video she was watching and considered it. Didn’t she have enough problems navigating her relationship with this man without seeing how he performed for the camera?
An hour later, and she’d fallen pretty much all the way down the rabbit hole. From the late night circuit, to daytime television, to extended interviews with major news networks, Samson was possibly one of the most covered businessmen in the country. Granted, she could have made that guess given the amount of space he took up in tabloids, but those stories were all about Samson’s active sex life. The rest of the media covered every aspect of business possible, as well as his opinions on politics—
“Well, Andy, the problem isn’t funding; it’s ideology.”