Page 24 of So Not My Type

When she arrived back at the building, she didn’t even wait for her dad. She sprinted into the lobby and slipped into an open elevator. She pulled out her phone and double-checked the room number. G-75A.

What the hell kind of number was that? She bolted to her desk, grabbed her laptop, and glanced at a man with a hoodie and headphones. “Do you know where G-75A is?”

He shrugged with an uninterested gaze. “Not offhand.”

Her pulse kicked up another notch as she raced down the hall, through the maze of conference rooms, private rooms, and sitting spaces, and finally found a room buried in the corner. The large windows showed Sophie seated at the table, chatting. Ella peeked at her watch. 3:07. Almost forty minutes late to her own damn meeting.

Go in? Wait? Nothing?

She pulled in a sharp breath and reached for the handle. The heavy metal fire door screeched like a cat, and all gazes zoomed toward her. She glanced at Sophie, who gave a small, disappointed shake of her head. The heat to her chest was immediate and the Cuban sandwich threatened her belly. She scanned the room, debating where to sit, debating what to say, when Sophie’s words cut through the silence. “So, it sounds like we’re close to alignment…”

Sophie finished the meeting without a single acknowledgement toward Ella, as Ella fought hard to blink back tears. As they wrapped up, Sophie flicked a narrowed gaze to Ella, then back to the room. “Thanks to all who made this meeting a priority.”

Gulp.

Ella’s gaze cast downward. She swore when she looked up everyone would stare at her with disappointed eyes. But something worse happened.

No one even acknowledged her at all.

NINE

SOPHIE

Whoever invented the phrase TGIF needed to be handed a bucket of THC-filled cherry gummies and a cream soda as a thank-you, because nothing had ever quite described the feeling Sophie had getting a break from Ella after spending the last two weeks together.

And after that little stint yesterday, when Ella took a long, leisurely lunch—leaving Sophie scrambling to cover a meeting she thought Ella was running—she needed some serious space. Ella had seemed excited, stoked even, to lead her first meeting. Sophie might be type B or C in her private life, but at work she was a proud type A-er. It had taken a lot for her to relinquish the reins for an hour. And of course she was prepared, because she wanted to support Ella if she fell, but she wasn’tprepared, prepared, at least not the way she would’ve been if she owned the meeting. And when 2:25 p.m. had rolled round and she had not heard a word from Ella, she stumbled with creating an agenda and she. Was. Furious.

Sophie stepped into the office. It wasn’t quite 7:30 yet, and Ella was reading her laptop screen with a half bottle of water and a last bite of a breakfast sandwich littering her desk. Sophie walked up behind her, ignoring the way the blunt black hairgrazed the back of her neck, not looking at her long, smooth fingers tapping against the keyboard, definitely not noticing how the dark and citrusy scent hit her nose.

“Morning,” Ella said, seemingly avoiding eye contact as usual, as she looked at her monitor and nothing else.

“Morning.” Sophie’s tone was flat by intention. She tried to logically think about this situation. If it were a different trainee, would she have kindly taken them aside and explained when they set a meeting, they were expected to be there? Would she have given a butt-chewing about if they weren’t five minutes early, they were five minutes late? Would she have had a heart-to-heart and talked about how to make it in the corporate world?

Sophie shushed the guilt knowing even though she told Ella to take whatever time she needed for lunch, no one exceeded twenty-five minutes for a lunch unless it was a required team-bonding event. But why did Ella scooting out of there like this job wasn’t her life, her love, her freaking wife like it was for Sophie make her so irate?

Bottom line, Ella wasn’t just any trainee. She had privileges that no one else did. She wasun-fireable. Promotable without merit. The CEO’s goddamn kid, who could do what she wanted, when she wanted. And that tied Sophie’s hands. Was she really supposed to scold Ella for having lunch with the CEO? What if that got back to George? It’d be Sophie’s job on the line, not Ella’s.

“Hey, um, I’m really sorry about yesterday and the lunch and everything.” Ella’s cheeks pinked. “My dad wanted to take me out.”

Must be nice to get extra perks. Ella completely effed up Sophie’s dream of being a trainer. The one shot Malcolm gave her to test out her managerial chops, and Ella made it impossible. Should Sophie even give Ella any assignments? Just assume she was unreliable, but would probably rise in theranks and be her boss one day? Whatever it was, Sophie was completely and totally over it. “Understood.”

Ella pulled in her lips. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and released a sigh through her nose. “Won’t happen again.”

The next few hours the only words spoken were work-related. Gentle banter, gone. Smiles, gone. Sophie kept her tone even, professional, and shelled out the minimal information needed to get her point across.

Sophie had to give some credit to Ella. Since this morning, Sophie wasn’t sure if Ella so much as left to use the bathroom. During moments of downtime, Ella’s screen filled with training videos, she scoured the digital asset repository for old creative, or she reviewed retired project plans.

Why did people like Ella always win? Why was the rich girl in high school always chosen as prom queen, why did the woman with the Gucci bag get seated first at a restaurant, why did the pretty woman get away with murder? It wasn’t fair. Over the years, her mom had told her stories of the prep school kids who went into her diner, hassled the waitresses, made a mess, and left. Or how businessmen with chunky gold Rolexes used to pinch her butt. Or how the suburban moms would come in with their custom-embroidered canvas bags fresh from the market dripping with flowers and make comments like “This place is just so…cute.They must use special freshener here—I can hardly smell the grease like last time.”

But really, what Sophie hated most was the monster festering inside that wasn’t who she was. If Harper were watching, Sophie would be mortified. How would she justify treating someone like this? Just because she wasn’t outwardly awful, or screaming at Ella like the grocery store manager where Sophie worked when she was fifteen, didn’t mean she was being kind.

Sophie clicked her fingers against the underside of the chair.Enough. Like it or not, they had to work together. And, besides Ella leaving for lunch, she’d been kicking ass since day one. Olive-coffee-branch time. “I’m going to grab an espresso. Want me to make you one?”

“No, I had plenty at home.” Ella sipped from the water bottle and swiped her lip with a thumb. “I wanted to let you know I’ll be leaving for a few hours this afternoon.”

Are. You. Kidding. Me!Sophie handed her a branch, and Ella just took that stick and shoved it up her…Whatever.Less than three weeks in, and Ella took an extended lunch yesterday andthenleaves early on a Friday? You earned that right after paying dues. And as far as Sophie was concerned, Ella was in her overdraft.

Ella was an amateur. And a bit of this made Sophie smile. Everyone knew that you didn’t leave early on your first few weeks of work. Hell, on your first year of work. You arrived first, left last. You picked up the crap work that your manager didn’t want to do. You rolled up your sleeves and helped co-workers build a PowerPoint presentation. You did boring content QA. You fucking hustled—you didn’tleave early.

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