“Damn. Rough night?” Sharry was never one to hold her tongue, I guess.
Then again, I do look like shit run over a couple of times. “It most certainly was,” I replied, stumbling to my desk.
“Well what happened? You look terrible.”
I looked at her sarcastically. I mean, does she not realize that I did look in the mirror before I left home “ as if that wasn’t bad enough for my self-esteem. “I just didn’t get much sleep.”
“Trouble at home?”
I threw my hands across my short hair in frustration. “I went to the game last night with Justin.”
“Justin? From the 16th floor?” she exclaimed.
Damn, girl. Calm down. “Yeah, that motherfucker.”
“Dawn! You have to spill. Now!”
“Spill what? We met at the game, watched it, the Sux lost, and then we came home.”
“Together?”
“No, Sharry. I went home to my apartment and he went home to his apartment.” I paused, pinching the bridge of my nose, and finally reconsidering. “Actually, I don’t know where he went, and I damn sure don’t give a shit.”
“Dawn. Am I sensing some sexual tension?”
This girl. “Is it always about sex with you?”
She laughed, watching the phone ring in front of her. “No, actually, it’s all about sex with him,” she winked.
“Answer the phone, whore,” I laughed back, glad that that conversation was over. I shuffled papers back and forth across my desk, trying to appear busy when Justin, decked out in a charcoal gray suit, his usual arrangement of a red and gray tie, and glasses perched on his nose, swaggered into the office with a box full of paper. If his presence didn’t annoy me so much, I’d say Damn, ‘cause that bastard looks good today.
“Yo, Dawn,” he addressed me, over-imitating my New York accent.
“Good morning, Mr. Timberlake.”
“What’s with the formality? I’m still Justin.”
“Well then I’m still DJ,” I shot back.
“Fair enough.” He let the box fall to my desk and began to place its contents on the empty, and even not-so-empty spaces of its surface. “I have some work for you.”
I gave him a definitive scoff of dismissal. “I don’t work for you.”
“Yes, that’s very true,” he calmly agreed, sitting on my desk and pulling off his frameless specs to stare at me as intensely as possible. “But I spoke with your boss and she informed me that I could use you at will, seeing how my secretary is out sick today.”
“Use me, huh? You’re not done with me yet?”
“Oh, I’m just getting started, sweetheart.”
“Well then staht, so that you can finish, sweethaht,” I retorted, mocking his own annoying accent.
“Make fun of me all you want. Just do the work.”
“Your wish is my command.”
As Sharry hung up the phone, she smiled at the sight of Justin. “I think I like the sound of that, Dawn.” God, could she be beaming any more? “Hi, Justin.”
“Good morning, Sheila.”
“It’s Sharry,” I hissed at him, pinching his backside, which was sitting directly in plain view.
“Whatever,” he mumbled, rising from my desk. He gave his attention back to Sharry, sauntering to her work area coolly. “How are you today?”
“I’m absolutely awesome,” she replied, tossing her long brown hair. “Although, I heard about the Sox losing last night. I was so damn upset.” That bitch didn’t even know until I told her!
“You a Boston fan?” Justin asked, replacing his glasses on his face.
“Oh yeah, man. We don’t have any teams back home in Tennessee, so the Sox are all I have.”
He sat on her desk, facing her and nodding. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. So did you at least have a good time at the game?”
“Not really. I was actually pretty bored,” he said, making sure that his words were emphasized for my benefit.
“You know that’s because you didn’t invite me.”
“You’re probably right. Anyone would’ve been better company than Dawn.”
“Seriously,” she agreed. Oh, that bitch is goin’ on my list if she doesn’t quit.
“Justin, don’t you have some work you need to be doing?” I interrupted.
Without even turning his head in my direction, he casually said, “Nope.” With that, he moved in closer to Sharry, being sure to make me wonder what the hell he was doing. “You have the most beautiful brown eyes I’ve ever seen,” he told her. Ugh.
“Well thank you,” she giggled. “I’ve always admired yours from afar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she nodded animatedly. “I’ve always loved blue eyes “ the color of the ocean and the sky. Although, yours are a much deeper, darker tint “ a mysterious blue.”
What the fuck? She stole those words, verbatim, from what I told her last week! “Justin, I think you need to go. You’re distracting Sharry.” And making her lose her damn mind.
“I think that if Sharry wants me to go, then Sharry would ask me to go,” he quipped. “Sharry, do you want me to go?”
“Not at all. You can stay up here as long as you want, Justin.”
Now how did I know she’d say some shit like that. “Well you’re distracting me,” I shot back. “And I do have all this work to do, thanks to you.”
“Dawn, you are so rude. I’m sitting here having a conversation with this beautiful woman, and all you can think about is yourself. How about if you stay over there and leave our business to us.”
“Justin, you are not fooling anybody.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing. Just do your thing.”
He took heed and gave all his attention to Sharry, the damn Sexetary. “So Sharry, what are you doing for lunch today?”
“With any luck, you.”
“Today just might be your lucky day,” he chuckled, standing up to walk behind her. His hands crept over her shoulders, removing her suit jacket to reveal a low-cut, black wraparound shirt. He consequently began to rub her shoulders, whispering into her ear. Damn it, I wish I could hear what he was saying. She giggled, rolling her neck into the direction of his face, while his fingers lingered on her bare skin.
“Excuse me,” I interjected, “but this is an office. You two need to save the sex for the bathroom or wait ‘til everyone is gone like normal people.”
Ignoring me, Justin’s eyes scanned the plunged neckline of Sharry’s shirt, smiling at the sight. She famously has a rose tattooed on her left breast, and today, it’s visible. “That’s a wicked gorgeous flower you have there,” he commented.
“Thank you,” she moaned at his touch.
“Would you mind if I took a whiff?”
“I’d mind if you didn’t.” I watched her smile to herself while his nose took a dive for her cleavage and I immediately became sick to my stomach. I don’t know why. It’s not as though I like him like that. We’re just friends “ if you could even call it that. But damn that bastard for looking so good today.
I thanked God when Sharry’s phone rang, startling the three of us, and causing Justin to back off of the little whore. “I’ll see you at lunch,” he said softly to her as she picked up the receiver, beaming. Walking over to me, he grinned rather maliciously. “Have that work on my desk as soon as possible.”
I narrowed my eyes at him before rolling them. “Like I said, I don’t work for you.”
“You work for anybody. You are, you know, just a secretary. Dawn.” With those last burning words, he was gone as quickly as he’d come.
A slight chill ran down my spine when he uttered those three words “ just a secretary. It’s not like it was uncharacteristic of him. In fact, it’s a typical Justin Timberlake statement. I guess it stung so much because I was hoping that he saw more than that in me. If nothing else, I figured he thought of me as more than just a secretary. The more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.
Without another second passing, I rose from my desk and stormed out of the office angrily. My frustration gave me the energy to ignore the elevators and run upstairs to the infamous 16th floor. If that motherfucker thinks he can talk to me like that and get away with it, I swear I’m gonna kill him and then beat him with my… “Where’s Justin!” I yelled, bustling into the Getty office suite.
The receptionist, who Justin claimed was out sick, pointed me towards a hallway to her left. “He’s in his office, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, cautiously moving down the short corridor. At the end of it, stood a tall, gray door with his long, stupid name plastered across it. Banging on the door before throwing it open, I walked in to find him sitting at his desk with Joseph directly across from him. “Get out, Joey.”
“Dawn, we’re talking here,” Justin directed to me.
“Dawn?” Joey asked.
“Yes. Dawn James “ DJ. Now get the fuck out.”
“Stay,” Justin countered.
Joey looked back and forth between us as if he were pondering who to listen to. “Uhh…”
“Get out!” I yelled. I watched in satisfaction as he scurried out of the door like a little bitch. I then glared at Justin, desperately wanting to knock those fucking glasses off of his gorgeous little face. Instead, I asked, “What the fuck is your problem?”
“Problem?”
“Yeah, where do you get off talkin’ to me like that?”
“Like what, Dawn? I was sitting here minding my own goddamn business before you came in here acting like you run shit “ my shit to be exact.”
“’Your shit’ is right. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“The better question is ‘who do you think you are.’ This is isn’t a playground, Dawn. This is an office, and this isn’t how we conduct ourselves in an office.”
“Oh, and feeling up the secretary upstairs is?”
“I haven’t interrupted anyone’s day.”
“Yeah, except mine.”
“Tough.”
I rolled my eyes, plopping into the seat in front of his desk and leaning forward to peer at him. “Are you still pissed about the game, or what?”
“No, Dawn. I’m not that immature.”
Oh, I beg to fuckin’ differ. “Is it about what happened after the game?” No answer. “Justin, I didn’t turn you down last night because of you.”
“Oh, spare me the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech. Just get out, all right?”
Well actually, it’s not me, either. “That’s not what I was gonna say. But since you want it to be this way, fine.” I rose from my chair boastfully and strutted towards the threshold of his office.
“Fine, what?”
“You like me, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No.”
“Justin.”
“Maybe.”
I thought so. “Right. Meet me at the entrance to the 23rd Street station “ Nine o’clock tonight.”
“What for?”
“We’re going to dinner. And don’t be late, because I’m not waiting for you.” I didn’t bother to wait on his response because if it wasn’t some smart-ass comment, it would be an irrelevant one, so I left his office, closing the door and leaving him to his business.
And that’s how it’s done.
Story Tags: Be the first to add a tag to this story
