By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 6

“Tell us everything about you, including how you met Dalessandra, how you got this job, and if you really called Dominic Russo a megalomaniacal monster to his face,” Ruth said. She took a bite of her salad and crunched with enthusiasm.

  “Uhhhh.”

  “Okay. Start with meeting Dalessandra,” Gola said.

  “Hey, bus stop buddy!” My orange-sweatered pal popped up next to the table, clutching his wrinkled paper bag. He beamed hopefully. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Have a seat,” I said, gesturing at the open chairs. Turning back to Gola and Ruth, I explained, “We met at a bus stop when Dalessandra gave us both jobs on the spot.”

  “You absolutely need to join us,” Ruth insisted, patting the chair next to her.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m Buddy, by the way.” He held out a beefy hand that Ruth and Gola took turns shaking.

  “I’m Ally,” I told him.

  Gola wiggled in her chair. “Okay, spill it, kids. What was Dalessandra Russo doing at a bus stop?”

  Buddy unrolled his paper bag and pulled out a cute little sub, a bag of chips, and a Fresca. “Well, I don’t know what Ms. Russo was doing there. But I’d just finished one of those under-the-table painting jobs in the Village. And I’m sitting there at the bus stop, and I see Ally here talking to Ms. Russo. Ms. Russo is apologizing about something and then hands her a business card and is all ‘come see me Monday for a job,’” he said, theatrically producing an invisible card.

  Ruth and Gola were enthralled, so I dug into my chicken.

  “I’m thinking, this is my chance. One of those once-in-a-lifetime jobbies. I gotta say something. If I don’t, I’m gonna regret it forever. So I pipe up, and I say, ‘You got any more of those jobs?’ And when she looks at me, she’s isn’t all hoity-toity. She says to me, ‘What can you do?’ I say, ‘Whatever you need me to do.’ So here I am. The newest clerk in the mailroom. I have a desk. I don’t gotta paint anything. And once the health insurance kicks in, I’m taking my wife straight to physical therapy.”

  “Why does your wife need PT?” Gola asked. Another point in my book. They were now more invested in Buddy’s story than juicy office gossip.

  “Got hurt on the job a year ago. She was one of those linemen—line lady, she liked to say. Anyway, she fell on the job. Seventeen feet and landed on her back on concrete.”

  I winced.

  “Bad spinal injury. She’s in a wheelchair. She couldn’t work anymore. Company fought the workers’ comp claim. I lost my job for missing so many days after the accident. Without good health insurance, we couldn’t swing PT appointments anymore. And that was the only thing that made her feel like she had hope, you know.”

  “Buddy, that’s awful,” I said.

  “It’s been a tough time,” he agreed. “But I always knew there was light at the end of the tunnel, and now look at me. Sitting here with three beautiful ladies with a job in a big-time office and brand-new health insurance.”

  I wanted to hug the guy and was deeply moved when Ruth actually did it.

  “You’re a great guy, Buddy,” Gola said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand.

  He hooted with laughter. “Wait’ll I tell my wife!”

  9

  Ally

  Buddy inhaled his lunch and raced back to the mail room, eager to prove his worth on the first day.

  “That was like the most inspiring thing I’ve heard in my life,” Ruth sighed. “I think I love him.”

  “Get in line,” I said in unison with Gola.

  “Okay, girl,” Gola said. “Let’s get your story. What was Dalessandra Russo doing with you at a bus stop?”

  “She was apologizing for her son—who I thought was her date at the time—getting me fired,” I said.

  Gola knocked the remains of her green juice over.

  “Mr. Ice Statue of Perfection did what now?” Ruth demanded, handing over a stack of napkins.

  “Charming—I mean, Dominic—met Dalessandra for dinner at the pizza place I was working at. He was being rude, so I returned his rudeness, and I spelled out an immature message in toppings on his pizza. As one does.”

  Gola was gaping at me like I’d just turned into Tina Turner in front of her.

  “Yeah, I’m going to need the immature message in its entirety,” Ruth decided.

  “FU.”

  “You said ‘fuck you’ to Dominic Russo?” Gola said slowly.

  “Well, I spelled it with pepperonis. But yeah.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Blew a gasket. Yelled.”

  Ruth and Gola exchanged an incredulous look. “He yelled?”

  “Oh, yeah. He yelled. We called each other names. He demanded to see the manager.”

  “I knew there was a volcano under that iceberg,” Gola said, slapping the mound of sopping wet napkins. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Ruth nodded. “You did. You called it.”

  Gola leaned in. “Dominic Russo has been Frosty the Fine Snowman to everyone since he got here over a year ago,” she explained quietly. The palms probably had ears.

  Interesting. My limited experience with Charming had been the exact opposite. I hadn’t seen frigid. I’d seen hellfire.

  “Who knew it would be a pepperoni pizza that pushed him over the line?” Ruth mused.

  “Okay, so back to the story. FU, demands to see the manager,” Gola recited, waving her hand dangerously close to Ruth’s hot tea.

  “So George waddles out of the kitchen, takes a look at Dalessandra’s red leather skirt and Dom’s fancy coat, and fires me on the spot.”

  “No!” they gasped.

  I liked these two as an audience.

  “Yes. I grabbed my coat and bag and went back out into the dining room, made a speech about how we’re human and people like him shouldn’t treat us like we’re not. And then I left.”

  Gola and Ruth were hinged forward, hanging on my every word.

  “So I’m at the bus stop trying to figure out what to do before my bartending shift—”

  “Ally is poor,” Gola explained to Ruth.

  “Got it.” Ruth nodded.

  “And Dalessandra comes up and apologizes for Dominic and offers me a job on the spot. I didn’t know who she was or what the job was. And here I am.” I decided to leave out the whole vague “Hey, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with morale” part.

  “And here you are,” Ruth repeated in wonder. “This is the most exciting Monday I’ve had in a long time.”

  “She has the desk behind Malina,” Gola told Ruth.

  “Oh, that sounds fun.” Ruth winced.

  “What’s her story anyway?” I asked.

  There was another one of those long, pointed looks.

  “She was Dominic’s dad’s girlfriend,” Gola whispered the word “girlfriend” and looked over her shoulder.

  “You mean side piece,” Ruth hissed.

  “Ruth!”

  “What? It’s true.” Ruth scooted her chair closer. “So, Paul Russo, Dalessandra’s husband and Dominic’s father, used to be the creative director here. But rumor has it he tended to use his position to go fishing in the company pond if you catch my drift.”

  I was an excellent drift catcher.

  “Not all of the fish were willing to be caught,” Gola added.

  This was news.

  “Basically he was a big ol’ perv,” Ruth whispered. “It was common knowledge with the staff, and according to the rumor mill, he’d fired a few of his less-willing victims. So if you wanted to keep your job, you let him grab your ass.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I gasped.

  They nodded.

  “Of course it was,” Gola said.

  “And Dalessandra didn’t do anything about it?”

  “We don’t know if she knew. I don’t think she would have let him get away with it,” Ruth said. “But no one wanted to test the theory that she’d believe an intern or a junior editor over her own
husband.”

  “And then there were the Malinas,” Gola added. “She was happy to lock herself in his office for a quickie. He even took her out of the country for a few shoots and shows.”

  “She thought she was going to be the next Mrs. Russo,” Ruth added.

  “Poor little gold-digging dumbass,” Gola scoffed.

  “Anyway, we don’t know for sure. But rumor has it that Paul finally grabbed the wrong girl. And all hell broke loose,” Ruth continued.

  “What happened?” I pressed.

  “We came in one day, and there was no more Paul. No official announcement. Just Dominic with an assistant clearing out his father’s office. Side note: Another rumor has it he found three boxes of condoms and a bottle of lube in the desk.”

  “He got all new furniture because ew,” Gola chimed in.

  “A week later, HR rolled out a shiny new harassment and fraternization policy, which pretty much confirmed the rumors.”

  “Paul immediately got a job with Indulgence,” Ruth said, naming another fashion magazine. “All of the executives here have non-competes, so who knows how he pulled that off.”

  “What about the women?” I asked.

  They both shrugged. “We’re not really sure what went down. There was an exodus of almost a dozen people. Again, it was super hush-hush. A handful are still here, including Malina,” Gola said. “None of them ever answered any direct questions.”

  “I heard from an acquaintance of a friend of a friend that there was some kind of settlement involving iron-clad NDAs,” Ruth explained.

  “Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. No wonder the vibe was so off here. It didn’t sound like a solution, it sounded like a cover-up.

  “But things are better now,” Ruth insisted. “The sexual harassment policy wasn’t drafted in the 1950s. And a fraternization policy kind of sort of adds more protection.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Basically relationships can’t exist between executives and underlings,” Gola said.

  “That’s not exactly what it says,” Ruth disagreed.

  “It’s the spirit of the rules. They’re trying to prevent relationships with lopsided power dynamics. But it kind of comes across as ‘we fucked up, and now we’re holding the rest of you responsible,’” Gola sighed.

  “She’s touchy because she’s in love with a junior VP in fashion,” Ruth teased.

  “Used to be. And I’d say it was more lust,” Gola corrected her.

  “He is really, really cute,” Ruth mused. “But not cute enough for either of us to lose our jobs over.”

  I picked up my fork and cut my last bite of chicken in half, hoping to make it last. I was beginning to get a few ideas about where Dalessandra had gone wrong.

  “So, how come you’re poor?” Ruth asked cheerfully.

  “It’s a long, long story,” I sighed.

  I felt an arctic breeze skim down my spine and looked up.

  Two tables down, Charming was glaring at me while pulling up a chair next to the Linus guy I’d met in Dalessandra’s office this morning. I returned his withering stare with a phony smile and a finger-wiggling wave.

  “Girl, you are the bravest person I have ever met,” Gola whispered without moving her lips.

  “Your vagina must be made out of steel,” Ruth guessed.

  “Aren’t they all?” My phone timer buzzed, and I sighed. “Okay, ladies. Back to work.”

  I was a planner by nature. Things got lost or went undone if there wasn’t a plan in place. Commitment to me meant doing what I said I was going to do.

  I just happened to have to commit to a lot of things. So I planned. Ruthlessly. There were dozens of daily alerts scheduled in my phone.

  Plan out week.

  Choreograph dance class.

  Leave for dance class.

  Teach dance class.

  Buy more ramen.

  Leave for bar shift.

  Start bar shift.

  End bar shift.

  Catch train home.

  Send design invoices.

  Make payment on astronomical debt.

  Go the fuck to bed.

  Wake the fuck up.

  Do it all over again…

  If I didn’t schedule every single task, it might fall off my plate and get kicked under some piece of metaphorical furniture only to be remembered months later in the middle of the night. And if someone was counting on me, I needed to deliver.

  “Let’s get drinks after work tonight,” Ruth suggested. “I feel like we have so much more gossip to impart.”

  I grinned, standing. “I can’t. There’s that whole I’m poor thing, and I’m working tonight.”

  “You have a second job?” Gola asked.

  “I have four second jobs.”

  “Girl, you need a vacation.”

  And a mango margarita.

  10

  Dominic

  I hated these kinds of meetings.

  This whole face-to-face brainstorming thing was bullshit. How the hell was I supposed to know what designer should dress our models for a fall office fashion shoot? Or what makeup products were at the center of a social media maelstrom?

  Photo shoots and everything leading up to them were more politically fraught than a UN meeting. Designers that clashed with models. Photographers that wouldn’t shoot certain designers. Inventory miscommunication. Too many editorial opinions. Sales reps who made promises they shouldn’t. Last-minute location disasters.

  And I was expected to make the most diplomatic decisions. Ha. Some fucking joke.

  “You ready?” Linus, the snarky production manager, asked joining me in the hallway. He adjusted his glasses

  “I’m ready.”

  I hated not being good at something. At the age of twelve, I’d been tossed out of a baseball game for hurling my bat over the fence when I’d struck out yet again. Baseball hadn’t been my game.

  My dad—a high school baseball star of his own time who, for some inexplicable reason, actually made it to the game that day—told me I should focus on something I was good at… like watching TV or whining.

  We’d had a similar conversation when I’d told him I was taking his position here. He’d given me the same sneer of disdain and wished me luck filling his shoes. I’d told him I’d rather burn his shoes and everything that was in this office to the damn ground.

  It wasn’t a healthy sense of competition that drove me in this position. No, it was a pulsing need to prove to myself that I was better than the man who’d never earned the loyalty I’d once so freely given.

  That’s what I’d done with baseball. I practiced every damn night. Spent hours in batting cages and running drills. In the end, I’d gotten good enough to earn a scholarship offer to play in college. Something my father hadn’t managed in his own life.

  That was a good enough measure of success for me. Challenge conquered, point proven, I’d quit and never picked up a glove again.

  I’d do the same here. Force myself to rise above an innate inability, do my fucking best, and when it was all over, never ever look back.

  “Remember what we talked about,” Linus said, pausing outside the conference room door.

  “Yeah,” I said. Then for some stupid reason remembered Ally’s passionate exit speech at the restaurant. About people deserving better treatment and all that garbage. “Thanks,” I said.

  Linus’s eyes widened a fraction behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “You’re welcome?” he said after a beat.

  I called it Proof of Asshole. It was something I tallied up on occasion. When someone looks at you cross-eyed for saying thank you because apparently you’d never said it before? Definite Proof of Asshole.

  I stopped abruptly inside the door.

  She was there.

  Arranging coffees and pastries—that no one was going to eat because carbs were evil—like it was her job and not some cosmic joke.

  Everyone else was already settled around the table and conve
rsations came to a halt. I had that kind of effect on a room.

  Ally looked up and didn’t bother hiding the eye-roll. “Oh, great,” she muttered under her breath.

  Yeah, well, I wasn’t happy about seeing her either.

  I ignored her and took my seat at the head of the table. “Thanks for being here,” I said gruffly. “Let’s get started.”

  From the looks I got around the table, none of these people were used to the “t” word coming out of my mouth either. I bit back a sigh.

  Ally planted herself at the foot of the table behind some ancient dinosaur of a laptop. She was wearing a cropped mock neck sweater in cheery fuchsia over black pants. She wore bracelets made out of some sort of fabric—maybe denim—wrapped up her right wrist.

  “We’re interested in your input on the fall makeup tutorials, Mr. Russo.” Beauty editor Shayla was baiting me again.

  Ally lifted a questioning eyebrow as she typed. Our gazes met, and I knew she’d noted the tone too. The last thing I needed was two of them.

  “Let’s take a look,” I announced.

  Everyone scrambled through their handouts to the spread that was up for discussion. I didn’t bother flipping to it. I’d been coached.

  “I think the bones are good, but you’re missing the mark not including some kind of bronzer. It’s a transition season, and all women aren’t necessarily ready to let go of the sun-kissed look.”

  Both of my evil little notetaker’s eyebrows winged up in surprise.

  Shayla played it cooler. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “That’s not my area of expertise,” I reminded her. “I’m sure whatever you choose will be fine.”

  Fine. Not “good.” These subtle little digs back and forth were boring, annoying. In my old job, we’d lock ourselves in an office, yell for twenty minutes, and move forward with a solution. Here things just festered. The bottom line was it didn’t really matter if Shayla wanted me here or not because I was here, I was in charge, and we all had to deal with it.

  “Moving on,” Linus said, smoothly steering the meeting back to the agenda.

  I found myself watching Ally throughout the meeting. She seemed to find it impossible to hold still, typing while swaying side to side ever so slightly to a beat only she could hear.