Page 34 of My Forbidden Boss

He sighed. “Hollis, for the love of god! Answer the stupid question before I blow my brains all over this bar.”

“What? Oh, it’s a presentation. She came up with this way of automatically filtering expenses down to the last fucking sausage and salad fork for each location to see their own stats. It’s brilliant, actually. Nobody has the time to figure out these things, so it never gets accounted for. Her way… it’s a program kind of thing… it doesn’t even spit out how much food was wasted or how many wine glasses were broken or anything. It just jumps straight to how much needs to be ordered next time so that we don’t buy too much of one cut of meat, or it tells you how much you should raise or lower the price of wine to compensate for the cost of glasses broken by the guests or when washing or polishing or whatever.”

Charlie nodded, understanding just about as much as I had. “So, she’s showing these Wyoming people how to use the system or something?”

“Yep.” I sighed. “She’ll be gone for a whole week, just about. I tried to tell her she could take some time off for herself when she got back… you know, trying to think of her and what she would need or want. She looked at me like I was asking her to pull my finger.”

A snort and cough exploded across the little table as Charlie intermittently laughed and tried to keep breathing.

I smiled sleepily, finding myself at the point where my self-tragedy had become almost comical.

“Charlie, you… uh, you seem to have pissed our beer out of your mouth and all over our table. Shall I request a fucking beach towel, sir, so you might attempt to leave the barbaric horde you came from and rejoin civilization?”

I gestured around drunkenly, swaying toward the twang of bluegrass and the open bathroom door’s clear view of the trough inside.

Charlie kept coughing but eventually controlled himself. “Well, you said she agreed to give you a chance by working together. Why not just tell her the truth? Tell her that you have no idea what it is she does, but you know that it’s important, and you want to properly be able to appreciate her as an employee or some shit.”

He paused. “Hell, if that’s the way you play it, you don’t even have to wait till she gets back. Just fuckin’ show up in Wyoming like, ‘Hey, surprise! Put me to work.’”

He laughed heartily, expecting me to join, but Charlie found himself laughing alone.

I sat, not processing his words for a long time, but eventually comprehended what he had said.

I laughed, and he responded, raising a glass and chuckling some more as, finally, I appreciated his humor.

But soon, I stopped laughing.

I thought, willing the gears in my head to turn faster than the bar floor seemed to be doing. The effort made my head spin, but I ultimately succeeded in considering the implications of what Charlie had suggested.

“Charlie… That is not the worst idea you’ve had tonight.”

He glanced over groggily. “Huh?”

“I’m not going to ask her to teach me her job. That’s bullshit. Number one, she’ll hate it, especially when I can’t fucking understand what she’s trying to tell me. Everybody loathes having to train the new guy. It’s dull. It’s boring. And it feels like you’re having to do the work twice, or it takes twice as long or something. Whatever.”

I poured another gulp down my throat but kept going.

“Number two… uh… shit. Oh, number two… the whole goal is to not talk about work. Or, at least, use the time working together to show her I’m a shit boss, and I would make a much, much better boyfriend. That sounds sleazy. Hold up, I just wanna get real with her, ya know?”

Charlie nodded seriously, then grinned knowingly. “Oh, yeah, man, I know. Believe me, I know.”

“Shut the fuck up, Charlie. You piece of shit. You and she are the fucking same, thinking that I’m always just talking about sex. No, man. I feel like a broken record, telling you how this girl is different. I can’t tell if the thought of being with her is more exciting or terrifying. It’s like being the fucking baker’s boy… and here comes the goddamn princess, scientist, sex machine, supermodel – and she’s funny, too. God, she busted my balls.”

“You told me.” Charlie sighed. “Please stop telling me.”

I suddenly felt more awake, steadying myself, and remembering that I had a point yet to make.

“Anyway, Charlie. Charlie boy? You asleep? Wake up, goddammit! I’m tearing my heart out over here, you piece of shit. Fuck! Anyway, getting her to teach me her job is a fucking dogshit idea. But going with her to Wyoming…”

It took Charlie awhile, but he shot upright like a rake that had been stepped on.

“Whoa! Holl! I was fucking kidding, man! You can’t!”

“Why not? It’s work, isn’t it? She said that she was cool with us getting to know each other at work! No, I’m not going to show up and be like, ‘Hey, Tisha, fancy seeing you here. Small world, huh? Hey, you mind if I stay in your hotel room with you? I am paying, after all.’ Fuck you, Charlie. You’re a goddamn moron sometimes, you know that?”

He looked flabbergasted. In fact, Charlie was so drunk that he almost looked like he was being blinded by some kind of unseen space-age weapon. “Wha-th-fuck-di-I-do?”

I shook my head, feeling myself slipping. “I don’t know but shut up. I’ll show up and… I don’t know. Wait! I’ll cancel her tickets, and we’ll take the jet! Wait! I don’t want her to be freaked out. I don’t know. Whatever. But I’ll tell her that I just want to get to know her and, if she wants, I won’t even see her unless we’re at the offices or whatever while we’re there. Oh! And… I’ll tell her she can tell me she wants me to leave and come back here three times and… on the third time, I’ll actually go. But I don’t think she would. I don’t know, man. There’s been a couple times where I really thought she hated my fucking guts.”

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