You know, it's funny. Most of my friends who have similar jobs to me have always said that theirs run very hot and cold. Sometimes they're so busy they're in the office way after they're supposed to be, and sometimes they're leaving two hours early because they've only had one e-mail the entire day and have had to fill in the rest of their time filing their nails or playing Solitaire. My job has no such ups and downs; it's always hot, hot, hot. I've taken to coming in earlier to get stuff done because I find it easier being up early and working while the office is quiet than being there late at night. It's too depressing looking at the clock knowing that home time went about two hours ago.

It's not like there's no compensation. The money is pretty decent and it's certainly a prestigious job to be able to put down on the old curriculum vitae. Still, it's starting to feel like it's taking over my life. Lily only has to work late if they've got a rush order or something urgent to do, so I see less of her. I'm usually so worn out that I don't feel physically up to having a social life, so we spend even less time together because she wants to be out all the tine, she's got into the party scene with a bunch of the other seamstresses. As though I'm somehow disembodied and watching myself from above, I can see myself getting irritable and crotchety with the lack of downtime but I can't stop it. I'm just lucky that I'm so tanned dark circles don't really show up on my skin.

It's not always bad, I like the people I work with and we find a few light moments in the hustle and bustle, but today has been the crappiest day in the history of crappy crapdom. It's officially The Crappiest Day Ever™.

What else can you expect of a Monday?

First of all, when I got in today I found an e-mail sent exactly five minutes after I left Friday evening warning me that I needed to arrange a working lunch to be delivered for the William Rast meeting I so smoothly set up for Justin at the party. It was about the only smooth thing I did do that evening, I was on appallingly bad form; it was like I'd misplaced all my schmoozing mojo. I was embarrassed by my incompetence. Anyway, that was last week; today I had to beg our caterers who usually require one working day's notice to cover us, and I have no idea how I'm going to explain the extra hundred dollars it took to cajole them into it. I have no idea why it should take so very much notice to knock what amounts to some posh sandwiches together, but then I guess I'm not a caterer.

Then, Nancy decided to hand me a pile of purchase orders that had to be raised. This is part of my job, but it looks like she purposely left them all until they were very urgent so that I'd have to tear my hair out getting them raised before the invoice deadlines and we incurred penalties - for which I would probably get blamed. I'm probably over-reacting, they were probably just stuck in a paperwork pile somewhere and she's only just found them (it's not exactly uncommon), but she seemed to take pleasure in seeing me panic. I managed to do it, but the unexpected diversion means I'm now behind on answering my messages and so on. By rights I should be nearly done on my to do list for today and thus then ready just to take on tasks ad hoc if they come up, but I'm not even half done. And as soon as their late asses get here, I'll have to sit in on this stupid William Rast meeting and take minutes while trying not to show off any body language that might indicate to Elena that her new business opportunity and I spent last summer at it like rabbits.

Why is this day not over?

No sooner do I think such things then the objects of my fear inevitably walk in, as Justin and Trace just have with Elena and Alex, deep in conversation. That's odd; I thought Elena and Alex were at another meeting. What's also odd is that Trace is making faces at Alex behind his back, but a good receptionist PA general dogsbody never tells.

"Oh, Addy, never mind the lunch we all just ate," Alex says absent-mindedly as he reaches into his cubby and pulls out a stack of papers. Oblivious to the gobsmacked and very irritated look on my face, he continues. "Can you please arrange a car to pick up Mr Timberlake and Mr Ayala at three and I guess you can just offer the lunch round the office if they already delivered."

Well, Alex, for that total lack of consideration I'm putting those expenses under your name. You just bought everyone a very expensive lunch, jackass. Suddenly I'm with Trace, I'd like to make some very rude faces behind Alex's back right now.

I think Justin's picked up on my annoyance, because as Elena is consulting her glossy William Rast brochure and Alex is rummaging through his papers he's shaking his head and mouthing 'sorry' at me. See, at least somebody has concern for employees around here. Shame it's not my bloody superiors. One of the vice presidents is so notoriously fickle about which hotels he wants to take and when that every administrator in the office has learned not to actually book him rooms until he's landed at the other end and has told us he's on his way. It's dicey and occasionally they've been full and we've had to pretend they must have lost the booking, but the finance team got really fed up of us charging short notice cancellation fees every time he had us book somewhere and then on landing in the city suddenly changed his mind. There are a few hotels who are now very reluctant to take any bookings at all from us thanks to him, and who gets to deal with that on the phones? Us.

God, I'm such a miserable bitch lately that all I can think about is various gripes about work. I need a life, immediately.

"Well if we're all ready," Elena says in her Spanish lilt. "Where are we, Addy?"

Even as she speaks I'm setting my extension to voicemail and marking myself as busy on my e-mail calendar. "Meeting room C."

They swiftly stride down the corridor and leave me scrambling to grab a notepad and pen before scurrying to catch up. Trace, to his credit, has dawdled a little so I can catch him up.

"Do they always move this fast?" He mutters to me under his breath.

"Oh this is slow for them," I whisper back. He pulls a stupid face at me and I can't help but smile. I can see why he and Justin are friends, because it's a very Justin expression. It's something in the way his mouth curls up.

Hopefully this meeting won't last too long. Taking minutes is one of the most boring things ever.

***

"Is he always such a jackass?" Justin asks in disbelief once he, Trace and I are alone in the room.

"Alex?" I ask distractedly as I'm leafing through Elena's diary looking for her next free spot. I could have just kept their originally scheduled meeting, but that's for next week and since Elena wants to be presenting concept sketches at the next one it's just a tad bit short notice.

"Yeah, Alex, or Dickwad as he shall now be known." Clearly having to make a neutral face for the last hour and a half was killing Trace, because now he's stuck his tongue out and pulled the kind of 'yuck' face I used to whenever my mother told my six year old self that I would be eating the cabbage whether I liked it or not.

"He's not that bad, he's just… creative. You know, creative temperament," I offer as a weak excuse.

"I'm creative but am I a dickwad?" Justin snorts.

I fix him with a warning glare. Alex is a friend, after all. "I thought you were a banker."

"You're never letting that go are you?"

"Not this century," I respond curtly. "Umm, how's 3 weeks today?"

"No good, Justin's got a video shoot."

"Do I have to be there? You know, if it gets things rolling quicker I won't take offence if you go ahead without me."

Heh, he can try to cover it up as altruism but I heard the tiny amount of glee in his voice, I know his game. He doesn't want to attend the next meeting and is hoping to find a way out of it. I can't say I blame him, I know I will be trying to make sure somebody else gets minute taking duty for that one.

"I've also got to get some of our business guys over here." Trace is talking ostensibly to me but honestly I think he's more telling himself. "They should have been here today but we had a crisis with our primary supplier."

"We know all about those over here, it's fine." I wave a hand dismissively while scrolling through the most insanely busy diary ever. Sometimes I wonder when Elena sleeps. "It was only a concept meeting anyway, I'll make sure the contracts get over to your guy asap."

"See, why can't I have one of her?" Trace jerks a thumb at me while looking at Justin. "After all these years of doing your shit I think it's my turn to have somebody organise my life."

"What life?"

I'm bemused to see that Trace is already comfortable enough with me to flip the bird at Justin in my presence. It's even more impressive that he's doing it while in business mode. From what's been said today I gather that Trace is more the designer while Justin throw out concepts and ideas, approves details. It seems to work, because they're wearing their label today and while I don't know much about fashion (awkward when you work for a fashion house) I know about men looking good and the two of them do look good. It's smart and classy enough for a business meeting, but has a more relaxed air than the Prada Alex was rocking. In a way Alex came off worse by comparison; he looked more posed whereas Trace and Justin have this slightly more relaxed look. You might think it was sloppy from the sound of it, but it actually adds an air of quite confidence, like they don't need to pose.

There's nothing relaxed about my clothing. It's a tweed print shift dress which looks very smart but is too tight around the shoulders and thus movement restricting. I'm tempted to strip it off and run around naked as a protest to women being slaves to the bonds of fashion. However, there are far too many pervy guys in this building and also, I think Elena would fire me on the spot. Lily would think it was funny until Elena fired her for associating with me. After that she'd kill me, spot that I borrowed her boots this morning and then have me resurrected just so she could kill me again. It's not my fault her brown boots go better with the dress than my black ones. And that the heels are lower so they're less feet murdering.

You know, I never used to be quite so look-conscious when I was a teacher. The kids don't care unless you're stupid enough to turn up in something that emphasises your boobs or your bum.

"The week after on Tuesday?" I ask.

"Done," says Trace, scribbling it into a notebook. I try to ignore the few crude drawings that surround it, some of which I suspect to have been made by Justin earlier.

Justin sighs a bit, which I take to mean he's available that day. "And I'll make sure that we take them out for lunch so you don't have to arrange another one that don't get eaten."

"Oh, it's not a problem," I shake my head while flushing a little bit. I don't want to come off like the stroppy receptionist who can't cope if something doesn't go to plan.

"No, that was rude," Trace agrees with him. "I'd never have suggested lunch if I knew you'd laid on something here. Still, they don't charge you for it right?"

"No, I just charged Alex. Petty revenge."

"My kind of woman. You know, I bet Rach would love her," he says to Justin as if I'm not in the room.

"Rachael has way too much shit on me for me to ever let her near any ex of mine," he snorts in response.

"What, and I don't already have quite enough shit on you?" I riposte. "US Weekly's a phone call away."

"Bitch."

"Trace, did Justin ever tell you about El Diablo?"

Before Trace can respond Justin's moved behind me and clamped a hand over my mouth. Quite tightly, I might add, it's a good job he didn't get my nose as well or I'd be asphyxiating right now. El Diablo is just the hiking trail that Justin insisted was no match for his big buff self… until he saw the incline and suddenly decided that he was allergic to cacti. The fact that there are cacti everywhere on my island and he'd seemed just fine was apparently irrelevant, this was an allergy only brought on during exercise. Quite a unique medical condition, really.

"Point taken, Addison." He takes great detail in calling me Addison and I take great delight in jabbing my index finger sharply into his ribs. As a bonus, he's so busy emitting a high pitched shriek that he lets go and I get to breathe through my mouth again.

Trace is guffawing. It sounds scarily akin to a donkey. "I can see why you two went out."

"Wow, you can tell he bought me seven tequilas by that?" I ask sweetly. It's a true story, but it happened well before we hooked up in the carnal sense.

"See, you're so much more fun when you're not all uptight and shit."

He's very lucky he's one of my boss's most favoured people right now, or Mr Ayala would have been bitch slapped into the next decade for that.

"Trace!" Justin at least has the grace to look mortified.

"Sorry, but the first few times I saw you, you were obviously stressed. Now you're more chilled and cracking jokes and it suits you, you should do it more often. In fact, I think you should come meet Rachael with us tonight," he says as if totally oblivious to how ready I was to kill him. "Seriously, you two would hit it off like crazy."

"I'll be working late tonight." And if Mr Trace is always that bloody blunt, I'm not sure I'm sorry. A nagging voice asks if I'm just pissed off because the bastard's right, but I quickly smother it with irritation.

"You can't be working until nine, that's insane," he persists.

I shrug. Actually tonight it'll be more like six but nine is really not unheard of. "I don't know."

"I promise I'll muzzle him first," Justin offers.

I don't know. It was but earlier I was bemoaning my lack of a social life, and I was saying to Lily the other day that I wished I had time to make some non work friends in LA. Still, friends who are also Justin's friends? Do I really want to go down that road? We long ago agreed to leave last summer in last summer where it belongs, and though obviously there'd be no sex involved I still find the idea weird. Especially since the stupid lie still has me slightly bruised, if not as sore as I was at first. He's also now in business with my boss, which could get awkward if it all goes awry.

But… then… social life. I do miss having one of those.

"Umm… go on then. Why not." Even as I say it I'm wondering if it's a good idea, but Trace has already chucked his business card at me and has pulled one of mine out from the folder in front of me while Justin is yabbering on about whatever restaurant we'll be hitting.

Sometimes I think I ask for trouble.