Read Because He Torments Me for Free Online

  Kiersten
shook her head.   “It’s just not
coming together the way we envisioned, and it’s frustrating, because Wayne is
the one who worked on this, and I’m going to get the blame.”
    Wayne.   Right.   Kiersten’s
predecessor, the guy with the porn addiction who’d put blinds up in his office.
    “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
    “Come to the meeting and take notes,” she
said.   She picked up her bag and set
it down on her desk, rummaged through it until she found her lipstick, pulled
it out and gave her lips a relining.
    Her phone buzzed, and she pushed the button for
speaker.
    “Yes?”
    “Aubrey Zane and her people have arrived,” a
voice said.
    “Please show them to the conference room.”   Kiersten ended the call and turned to
me, the first time she’d really looked at me since I’d gotten here.   “Do you have any ideas?”
    “What?”
    “I need ideas,” she said.   “A way to take the content of the book
and make it more front and center.   We need to get away from the book being all about Aubrey and find a way
to make it more about the broader conversation involving mental illness.”
    My mind went blank and my throat went dry.   “I’m not, I mean, I’d have to think
about it.”
    “You read the book, right?”
    “No.”   I shook my head.   Had she
forgotten that I’d told her yesterday that I hadn’t read the book?   I’d specifically mentioned it to her.
    “You haven’t read it?   I told you to read it!”
    “Oh.   I thought you meant, like, at some point in the future.”
    She shook her head, like she couldn’t believe
she’d hired someone so incompetent.
    “I’ll read it tonight,” I said.   “I’ll pick up a copy as soon as –“
    “Don’t bother,” Kiersten snapped.   “By then it will be too late.”
    She started walking out of the office, and I
followed her, but she turned on me.   “I can’t have you come to the meeting with Aubrey and her people if you
haven’t even read the book.”   She
shook her head.   “Go to human
resources and fill out your paperwork, then find Betty and she’ll show you how
to put prize packs together.”
    “Okay,” I said.    “I’m so sorry, Kiersten, I thought
– ”
    “I don’t care what you thought.   And I don’t want your apologies.   Get your shit together before Callum
comes in this afternoon, Adriana.   I’m going to need you on that.”
    And then she turned on her heel and stalked off
down the hall.
    Before Callum comes in this afternoon? What?
    I felt like someone had sucker punched me.
    I was going to see him again, already, and here
I was, wearing one of the outfits he’d sent to me.   It would have been much better if he’d
seen me wearing something of my own, or better yet, something amazing and
perfect and beautiful, just as nice as the things he’d gotten me only purchased
on my own.
    Get it together, Adriana.   You need to keep things professional.   Stop thinking about
him.
    I had to get to human resources, and then find
someone called Betty to show me how to stuff prize packs, which seemed like
something they’d give a college intern, not a publicity assistant.
    I turned and hurried down the hall, back toward
human resources.
    Job:   One
    Adriana:   Zero.

 
    **

 
    The anticipation of seeing Callum consumed my
thoughts, causing a physical response that made it almost impossible to
concentrate.
    Of course, it wasn’t like I had much to
concentrate on.
    Filling out forms in human resources was
mindless, as was addressing the prize packs, which literally meant writing
addresses on envelopes, slipping a book inside of them, and fastening them shut
before tossing them into a bin that would be sent to the mailroom.
    I ate a quick lunch in the Archway cafeteria with
Betty, the publicity receptionist who’d shown me how to do the prize packs, not
that there was much to show.   She
was a nice woman, Betty, but she was in her sixties, and there wasn’t much