Even after meeting the somewhat intimidating Quinton Baird who was a Fixer, whatever that might mean, she had all but demanded the job, had practically told him he would be a fool not to hire her.
And, unbelievably, he had just… agreed. On the spot. With a waiting room full of other older, more seasoned applicants.
This professional, confident, worldly, somewhat scary man had agreed to hire her.
That was surreal enough.
But then he had given her the employment binder.
In it she found the usual things.
Her employment forms that looked almost alarmingly official.
There was her paperwork for the company health plan, something that made her immediately feel like an adult more so than anything else. She’d get off her parents’ plan. Even before she legally had to. It even had dental.
Then, of course, there was the fine print.
She would be expected to be in the office when she was needed, whether that meant from nine-to-five or seven-to-eleven, she would be there.
She would handle the normal tasks of office-keeping as well as run errands and, oddly, deposit files in some lockbox off premises.
She would also have to sign a confidentiality agreement.
But in return for all of that, she would get paid just shy of six figures.
Six figures!
With the potential for a yearly bonus.
As if six-figures wasn’t already more than enough money.
She couldn’t help but take to a bit of a fanciful – and therefore uncharacteristic – moment to daydream about what that kind of money could do for her.
Get her an apartment.
Fill it with all the things she saw in magazines that she loved, but thought she couldn’t even hope to own until after she got her MBA and a lush corner office.
She’d even given serious thought to stopping. Applying. The colleges would be there if she should ever need them in the future. But why go, racking up debt, if she had such a stable job already?
It wasn’t that she devalued the importance of an education, but she was also a bit too practical to choose a potential over a reality.
So she took the job.
Within three days, she had decided to stick it out, put college out of her mind.
She met the major players in the office.
Quin, of course, was the boss, The Fixer.
Smith seemed to be his second-in-command, The General.
There was Finn, The Cleaner.
There was Lincoln, The Middle Man.
There was Miller, the only girl in an all-boys club – The Negotiator.
There was the guy who lived in, oddly, the Pine Barrens. Ranger. Named, for reasons she had yet to suss out, The Babysitter.
And last, but not least, there was Kai. He was The Messenger.
What that meant, she had no clue. But she was sure it was important. They all seemed to be important for some reason. They got paid ridiculous sums of money to ‘fix’ things for people. She’d seen the invoices. She’d nearly spat out her coffee at a few of them, unable to fathom what problem there could possible be that could cost upward of one-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars.
Whatever it was, they paid it.
So these men – and Miller – did crazy jobs.
They were all in possession of something she could only begin to understand in the way of skills.
“Heya honey,” A voice called, making her head shoot up, finding Kai standing there holding out a coffee to her.
She was picky about her coffee.
Her own mother never seemed to get it right even though she had drank it the same way for over a year.
But she appreciated the gesture anyway, reaching out for it, feeling her fingers brush over his. A sizzle seemed to meet at the contact, only to spread up her arm, over her chest, down her belly. Lower. Her breath sucked in, surprised, unsure.
“You really brighten up this place,” he declared, giving her a brilliant smile, pulling his hand away, and moving down the hall, leaving her standing there with her system starting to catch fire.
What the hell was up with that?
TEN
Jules
New normal.
That was the phrase.
Everything felt different, but this was just how it was now.
My new normal.
I had heard Quin give this speech to clients over and over through the years. It had sounded somewhat trite back then. But now that it was my reality, I got it. I got why he needed to say it to everyone. Because it was true.
No matter what had happened, you learned to adjust.
Humans were adaptive creatures that way.
People could – and did so every single day – come back from terrible things. Not curl up in a ball and half-live forever. They came back. Stronger. More determined than ever.
That was what I planned to do.
It started with moving back into my own place, finding it spotless, making a mental note to send something nice to Finn. I mean, the man had gotten me a new mattress. I didn’t know exactly what he was into – cleaning supplies aside – but I had to get him something.