The Job by Claire Adams

out? I just want to
get this done. I wouldn’t look any further into it than that.”
    She
just betrayed herself. If it weren’t for the last sentence, she might have
convinced me, but specifically telling me not to look any further into it tells
me that there’d be something to find if I did.
    “All
right,” I tell her. “Only one thing left then, you know, apart from finishing
up today.”
    “Yeah?”
she asks. “What’s that?”
    “I
owe you lunch,” I tell her. “I know that we haven’t really gotten along so well
over the last stretch, but I really would like to follow through on that.”
    “I
don’t want to have lunch with you,” she says.
    Getting
turned down by the hot chick always stings. However, that doesn’t stop me from
trying.
    “If
it makes you feel any better, I don’t really want to have lunch with you,
either, but it’s the civilized thing to do.”
    If that doesn’t get her to let me buy
her lunch, nothing will.
    My
motivations? Well, those aren’t worth going over unless she says yes.
    “So
you think we should both go to lunch with each other, even though neither of us
wants to, just because it would be the civilized thing to do?” she asks.
    “Yeah,”
I answer.
    One
of the things she’s tried not to let show too much is just how much more
civilized she finds herself than me. I’ve just called her out on it in a pretty
direct way.
    Let’s
see what happens.
    “All
right,” she says. “What time?”
    “Well,
why don’t you open up so your people can get going and my men can get the
project finished up and we can slip out in a few minutes?” I ask.
    “It’s
not even nine in the morning,” she says. “How does that equate to being lunch?”
    “Call
it breakfast,” I tell her. “It really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’d
rather not go to some restaurant covered in sweat and sawdust, and I would
imagine you’d rather not have that kind of lunch companion either.”
    “You
do make a good point,” she says. “All right, then, let me get everything going
and we’ll pick up a quick bite.”
    “Sounds
great,” I tell her. I want to tease her, saying, “It’s a date,” but I resist
the temptation. I’m on thin enough ice with her as it is.
    Jessica
goes and unlocks the door and I lock eyes with Linda. She and her coworkers
must have arrived somewhere during the discussion between Jessica and me.
    The
door’s open and Jessica heads to the register.
    It’s
the strangest ritual. Despite having cashiers that clearly know what they’re
doing, big boss lady doesn’t even seem to trust them with something as
fundamental as opening their own registers in the morning.
    “Hey,”
Linda says. “I hope this doesn’t disappoint you, but I just got back with my
old boyfriend, so you and I are going to have to stop seeing each other.”
    “That’s
fine,” I tell her. “We agreed early on that this was just going to be a casual
thing anyway.”
    Truth
be told, I am a bit disappointed.
It’s not that I thought she and I had something serious, but it was nice to have someone to feel close to,
if only as a casual thing, even knowing that it was only ever going to be for a
little while.
    Oh
well. There’s always Jessica. With her attitude and body she must be amazing in
bed.
    Maybe
that’s who I should go after.
    “Okay,”
she says. “I think it’d be great if we could stay friends, though. I don’t want
you to think that I’m just tossing you out of my life entirely. Just, you know,
the bedroom.”
    I
laugh. “You’re fine,” I tell her. “This is pretty much what we’d already agreed
to, so don’t even worry about it.”
    “Great!”
she says. “Listen, Jessica’s done opening my register, so I’m going to get to
work, but I’m glad we could talk.”
    “Why
does she do that?” I ask.
    “Control
issues,” Linda says. “I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to tie my shoes yet.
If anyone needed a long, hard, sweaty—Jessica, how are you