Page 3 of Opposites (Never) Attract
Jenny. The hickey-giving girlfriend. She had amazing skin and silky hair that was never frizzy. And boobs. She had boobs.
I had nipples, and that was about it.
She came up to him, oblivious of my presence next to his locker, and wrapped her arms around his neck so she could plant a kiss on his lips.
She could do that. She could just kiss him. And suck on his neck and put her fingers in his thick, dark hair.
“Ready to go?” she asked, against his lips.
“Always,” he said, with a smirk. Then he turned back to me. Yes, I was still standing next to his locker gawking at him. “We good?”
I nodded. “Yep. All good.”
He and Jenny turned away, his hand tucked into her back pocket so he could cup her ass, and I’d never wantedanything as badly as I wanted a man’s hand in my back pocket.
“What were you talking to Smarty Sunshine about?” Jenny asked, probably keeping her voice loud enough so I could hear. “That girl is so weird.”
“She’s just smart, is all.”
“Sure, babe. Sure.”
Even I could tell she was being sarcastic, and he leaned down and kissed her neck instead of arguing with her. I could admit it was nice to be defended for a minute, but no one was going to defend me forever. For good.
No. I needed to get out of this town. This whole damn state.
It was time to leave all of this behind.
Even him.
ONE
KAITLYN
Present Day
“Alright everyone,”I said, standing in front of a long boardroom table surrounded by New York’s most ambitious, most cutthroat analysts and investors. “It’s gut check time. We’re coming up on Q3 and our KPIs just aren’t where I want them. We need a plan in place if we’re going to meet our goals by the end of the year.”
“We’re trending in the right direction, though,” said Jeffrey, a twenty-eight-year-old finance wunderkind who liked to get drunk at happy hours and hit on me.
“Trending,” I said, with an appropriate level of disgust. This was why he failed at every attempt to get me in bed. I didn’t do half-assed. “Trending feels a lot like hope, Jeffery. Or wishing. That’s not what made Berkley and Brothers the top brokerage firm in this city…no, in this country. Did it?”
“No,” he said, looking like he did at the end of happy hour, after I shot him down.
“No,” I repeated slowly.
One of the keys to leadership as a woman in finance was that you had to be balls out badass. Never letting anyone imagine they could surpass you. But as a woman, you also couldn’t be a bitch.
“Now, I like wishing for things, too,” I continued with a smile. “Peace. Harmony. Calorie free cheesecake…”
There it was. A smattering of laughter. An easing of the tension.
See, I’m just like your wives. Your sisters. Nothing scary here.
I tugged my charcoal Chanel suit jacket over my black pencil skirt and straightened my back. Success in this position was all about moving from bad cop to good cop at will. Always keeping everyone’s attention, but never pissing off one person individually.
Slowly, I walked the space between the table and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the conference room. The late afternoon sun hit the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan and turned everything to gold.
“But that’s not going to get us where we need to be. Where wewantto be…”
