Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 62262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
“You know, being stuck down here in this windowless dungeon with old, musty documents and no people, and—”
Oh yeah, he was definitely annoyed. “Please go get the items I asked for, Mr. Miller.”
“Right. I’m on it. Tables, bins, and a chair. I’ll be back with them right after my lunch break.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “You just got here, and you’re already taking a lunch break?”
“I might have just gotten here”—I pointed at the floor—“but I’ve been here since eight a.m.” I waved my hands in circles to indicate the building in general. “Everyone gets an hour off from noon to one, including you. Why don’t you take your break with me? I’ll show you where to find an awesome food truck with cheap, killer burritos.”
The frown was back. “No, thank you. I have far too much work to do, so I won’t be wasting time with an hour-long lunch break.”
“Suit yourself.” As I turned and left the office, I mumbled under my breath, “What a dork.”
I was almost out of earshot when I heard him mutter, “What a slacker.”
CHAPTER 4
ANDY
On Friday night, I was reading in my bedroom when my window slid open. Moira pushed the curtain aside, and as she climbed over the sill, I told her, “You look amazing. Why are you all dressed up?” She wore a black velvet cocktail dress with a full skirt, and her high heels and a little, sparkly clutch were tucked under her arm.
“Qian dragged me to a fancy fundraiser.”
“How was it?”
She flopped onto my bed. “Same as all the others—dull, and the food was tiny and fussy. Dessert was a square inch of cake with a rounded tablespoon of ice cream. I kid you not.”
“If you’re hungry, there’s leftover pasta in the fridge.”
“Thanks, but I insisted on going straight to a drive-through afterwards.”
“Did you send your fiancé home after that?”
Moira sat up and tried to salvage her up-do, which was listing to one side. “No. He and my parents are currently drinking tea and chatting happily in Mandarin, even though they know I can’t keep up. They didn’t even notice I left.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. If she realized I snuck out, my mother would be texting me every thirty seconds.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
She rearranged the pillows and leaned against the headboard. “You know the worst part of all these hospital fundraisers?”
“The nosy doctors’ spouses, asking when you and Qian are going to get married?”
“Exactly.”
“What did you tell them this time?”
“The same old excuse—we’re both too busy to plan a wedding right now, between his surgical residency and my MBA program. Everyone’s starting to wonder why that degree has taken me almost six years.”
“Out of curiosity, how much longer are you planning to drag out grad school?”
“Just until June. All the work’s been done for a while now, and my advisor knows I’m stalling. It sucks, though. As long as I’m still in school, my parents are only sort of pressuring me to get married. Once I graduate, it’ll be the only thing they talk about.” She perked up and asked, “Hey, do you think I should go for a PhD?”
“No, because you don’t actually want one, and you’re already going to be paying off student loans until you’re eighty.”
Moira looked disappointed. “Good point.”
I asked, as gently as I could, “Have you considered going ahead and setting the date, M? Because I know you love Qian, and he adores you.”
“I’m not ready.” She’d been saying that for years. It made sense at first, but by now it was clear there was more to it than that. Moira changed the subject abruptly. “But this isn’t why I came to see you. I wanted to find out how your first week of work went.”
“Okay, I guess. I started off feeling totally overwhelmed, but now I’m thinking maybe I can actually do this. I called April today and told her I plan to stick it out—for now. All SPAM employees start with a probationary period, and when that’s up I’ll decide if this is what I want long-term.”
“Have you caught up with the backlog?”
“I’ve barely made a dent, but at least it’s semi-organized now. It’ll probably take a couple of months to work my way through everything that needs to be catalogued, labeled, and shelved.”
“Is the doofus with a man bun still helping you?”
The thought of Sam Miller made me frown. “Yes. I’m having him go through every shelf looking for stuff that’s misfiled. The archives are pretty big, so it’ll take a while.”
“Are you doing that just to torture him?”
“I’m doing it because the jerk who had this job before me would just stick things anywhere, totally out of order. I don’t have time to go through everything and move it all to the right place.”
“Do you trust your coworker not to screw it up?”