Page 105 of So Wild

“Sure.”

Sam accompanied Toby back to his desk, which was neat and void of personal items.

“You can have my chair,” Toby said. “I need to go to the meeting room and check on some stuff, is that okay?”

“Yeah, no worries.”

No sooner had he left than the phone started ringing. Sam left it, but the caller dialed again and again. People from the other cubicles glared at her, as though she was being deliberately incompetent. It rang twice more and Sam sighed and picked up the phone. “Scott Sanderson’s office, this is… the phone?”

“Who’s this? Where’s the Toby boy?” It was a man. He sounded both old and grumpy.

“He’s getting coffee,” Sam improvised. “What can I help you with?”

“I want to talk to Scott.”

“He’s in a meeting, right now. I can I take a number and—”

There was a loud shuffling noise, as though the guy had taken the phone from his ear but was too old to figure out how to hang up.

“Prick,” Sam muttered. She pressed the flashing red button on the phone, but instead of ending the call, the phone beeped twice and Scott’s voice came through the receiver. “I understand what you’re saying. I know personal visits aren’t the norm around here.”

“They’re not,” she heard a woman sniff. “Especially not first thing in the morning.”

Oh fuck, she could hear Scott’s conversation with his boss, Dragon McJizzcrackers. She should hang up. She should hang up…

“There’s something else I’d like to make clear,” Ms McJizzcrackers continued. “If you’re going to have guests, they need to comply with the company dress code. Can you imagine the impression a girl like that would make on our clients if they saw her in your office?”

Sam’s cheeks flared hot. She’d known the minute she’d entered the office that she stuck out but, surely that didn’t require a fucking dressing down from upper management? Thankfully, Scott seemed to be on the same page. “I can appreciate what you’re saying, Martha, but Samantha’s just stopping by.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Personal business,” Scott said deftly. “I’ll ask her not to do it again.”

Not a rousing defense.Still, he did just start working here and fuck knows I don’t want to come back.

But despite her self-reassurances, Sam’s chest was tight. It was a sensation she’d felt before—when she saw Scott leave his house in his private school uniform, or learning to drive in his father’s gleaming black Chevrolet. She felt it outside that neat faux-rustic French restaurant in clothes her socially self-conscious sister picked out for her. The tightness spoke of the differences between them, because whatever their feelings for each other, he was a posh boy from London and she was a broke girl from Melbourne, and one of those things was not like the other and two of those things did not belong together. Posh went with posh. Tattoos went with tattoos. High and low might have a cheeky fuck in the dark once in a while, but they didn’t fall in love. Sam suspected Martha Clarke-Oscar was hinting at just that with her petty sniping about the company dress code and personal visits. A second later, her suspicions were confirmed.

“Scott, I know it’s none of my business,” Ms McJizzcrackers said in a voice that heavily implied it was one-hundred-percent her business. “But, you’re not romantically involved with that woman, are you?”

There was a gaping pause. Sam could fit her foot inside that pause. Actually, she could fit her whole family inside that pause. Her chest clinched even tighter as she waited for Scott to reply.

“We’re seeing each other,” Scott said, with what sounded a lot like reluctance. “Can I ask why that matters?”

“Oh, it doesn’t! You’re free to see whomever you like, it’s just that if I knew you were already dating, I would have given you my niece’s number. She’s a legal assistant for Kempton and Barry and just theloveliestgirl.”

Sam could just picture her, shiny nut-brown hair and rich girl skin. She wouldn’t have a tattoo, even as a fake show of counterculture, she would be smooth cream to Scott’s buttery poshness. She pressed the phone even harder to her ear.

“Thanks for the suggestion,” Scott said with a breeziness that stung. “But I’m happy seeing Samantha for the time being.”

Martha gave a horsy snuffle. “Well, kudos. I hope you’ll bring her to the company Christmas Gala. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone so colorful attend, and I mean that literally. I’ve never seen a girl with so many tattoos.”

Scott didn’t reply and Sam could hear the frosty silence through the phone. She wanted to be comforted by it, but all she could picture was herself at one of Scott’s fancy work functions in a floor length dress—her neck and arms and décolletage whispered about and pointed at. People would say all the things they said about her dad; that she looked ridiculous, trashy, or at best some kind of working class edgy. Normally she wouldn’t give a shit what a bunch of uptight corporate cunts said, but if she was Scott’s girlfriend? If she was required to keep attending and keep being laughed at? Who wouldn’t care about that?

As Scott’s silence stretched on, Martha gave another horsey snuffle. “Fine, well I’ll be leaving then. I’ll see you at three for the quarterly.”

“Right. See you soon.”

Sam only just put the phone down when Dragon McJizzcrackers came out of Scott’s office and immediately caught her eye.

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