Page 15 of Keep Your Friends Close and Your… Work Enemy Closer?

And then he was gone. And it kind of sucked. And I kind of hated that.

Five

Annalise

Walking into work on Monday, a sense of dread hit me. Despite having an okay time with Jared on Friday night, once I'd sobered up, reality had come barreling back, and I'd spent all my free time stewing with job worries.

Now that Jared had finished the storage room, he'd be back to sitting next to me, my slush pile the only thing I could think of to trust him with.

Over the weekend, I'd gone through what I now realized was the five stages of grief... albeit without the final one. I'd bounced around between anger, depression, denial, and bargaining, knowing I'd never get to acceptance. Never.

I was currently in mourning for my old life that I didn't even know was going to die. That old cliché was right... you don't know what you've got till it's gone. But the strange thing was, Ididknow what I had, and I'd truly appreciated it every second. But it'd still been taken away from me in a cruel twist of fate.

Before I could even turn my computer on, Jared already slurping on his iced coffee, Veronica approached us, her steps brisk and purposeful, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.

I heard Jared say something under his breath, something I couldn't figure out.

"Good morning," she said once she reached us, both of us whirling our chairs around to face her. "I trust you both had good weekends."

Not able to see Jared's reaction behind me, I nodded, even though I hadn't really due to my Jared stress. But this was obviously not the kind of thing to say to my boss.

"Great." She took a breath, and I braced myself for whatever was coming. "So I have a project for you."

Projects were good. I liked projects.

"For both of you to work on together. As a team. As partners."

Oh, my fucking God. Was she kidding me? As fucking partners? As a team? The anger part of the five stages of grief thundered back.

"Awesome," Jared said, scooting his chair up next to me.

His eyes burned into the side of my face, but I refused to look at him, instead focusing all of my attention on trying to force my lips into a smile. I must have succeeded somewhat because Veronica gave a tight nod, then pulled up an empty chair to sit down in front of us.

"I'm assuming you've both heard of Venus La Fleur," she said, crossing her pants-clad legs like she was settling in for a long meeting.

"Yes," I answered hesitantly, not sure where she was going with this.

"Well, I was watching an old interview of hers this weekend, just something I stumbled upon by accident, and she mentioned briefly that she wanted to write a book, an inspirational book surrounding her life story."

It all started to click into place, and normally, I wouldn't have minded this in the slightest. In fact, I would have been thrilled at the challenge and that Veronica had thought of me. But working on it with Jared? Just shoot me now.

"But if you know anything about Venus La Fleur, it's that she's a little... well..." Veronica glanced around the room as she tried to come up with the right phrase.

"Flaky?" Jared said.

She pounced on the word, her eyes alight. "Yes. That's it exactly. And I thought if anyone could convince her of actually doing this sort of thing, putting in the hard work, gently nudging her along if needed, it'd be you, Cordelia. And I think it'd be the perfect project for you to work on together, to show me that you're the A team."

"The A team," Jared butted in. "I like it."

He would like that.

"Excellent," Veronica said. "And Cordelia? I'm sure you're agreeable?"

"Of course," I lied. Because what the hell else could I say?

All the work, the hours, the late nights, the sweat and tears, the phone calls, the emails, the networking ahead flashed before my eyes, Jared beside me through it all, making me sick, making me regret the extra muffin I'd had at breakfast.

"I'm not going to micromanage you with this one. I know you do great work, Cordelia, and I'll be waiting to see what magic you can work with someone like Venus La Fleur."

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