Elly sighed. “You need to quit saying ‘whatever.’ It’s very juvenile and you can’t say stuff like that to clients and expect them to take you seriously.”
Snarky Teenager gestured to Elly like she was a queen. “I can sound respectable if I so desire. I just don’t really care about what I sound like in front of you. I mean, your pants have a tea stain on them, how seriously will they take you?” With an eye roll, she moved her gigantic aviator sunglasses to the top of her head.
Where do you even get sunglasses like that? Elly wondered as she tried in vain to get the stain off her khaki Bermuda shorts. Snarky Teenager walked toward the office building, her long blond ponytail swaying wildly with each step, heels clicking loudly on the gray granite. She looked chic and confident, someone totally at ease in the business district. She looked like money. Elly tucked a blond curl into her bobby pin, knowing that she did not look like money. She looked like someone who ate pastries. Well, looking like money and being able to make money were two different things and she was pretty sure that Snarky Teenager didn’t know the difference.
Elly looked down at her clipboard, suddenly aware of just how frumpy it was to be holding a clipboard. “The landlord’s name is Zachary—he should be here any minute.” They headed inside the steel and glass building through a complicated revolving door. The center of the lobby was taken up by a vast, two-story rock waterfall. Rising out of the water were bronze sculptures of men emerging from suitcases holding lotus flowers. Water poured out from their hands, mingling with the low plants and white rocks that piled lazily around their ankles.
“Wow,” breathed Snarky Teenager, without a hint of irony. “I love this.”
“Pretty impressive,” mumbled Elly, “if you’re into that fountain thing.”
They sat down at a tiny table across from a Starbucks. “I could get used to this.” Snarky Teenager smiled.
The trickling sound of the fountain lulled Elly into peaceful nothingness.
“So, how’s your brother?”
She opened her eyes and saw Snarky Teenager peering down at her, her thick lashes split wide in honest curiosity. “Um … he’s, you know, new.” Elly had talked to Dennis twice since that horrible night in the shop. Both times on the phone had been clipped and awkward. Keith had checked on him daily at the Holiday Inn Express, and both times, Dennis had cracked the door open, mumbled that he was fine but wanted to sleep, taken the food from Keith, and slammed the door in his face. At the end of her patience, Elly had the front desk deliver him a handwritten note saying that she wanted to see him as soon as she could. Finally, Dennis had called and agreed to meet Elly for dinner tonight. She had woken up full of anxiety, her heart hammering in her chest.
“I can’t wait to meet him.” Snarky Teenager gave a dazzling smile. “I have always dreamed of meeting a male version of you.” Elly rolled her eyes.
“Are you Elly?” A male voice boomed through the lobby. Zachary, it turned out, was a much better salesperson than the previous agent had been. Considerably more attractive, with a chiseled face and a disarming boyish grin, he greeted them with bottles of water and a tape measure—“just in case.”
Elly gave a rhino-like snort. How convenient. How old was this kid? His teeth were so white that Elly suspected that they had been whitened within the last hour. Snarky Teenager was smitten, and a flirty waltz began, much to Elly’s misery. He led them down the hall from the fountain and through the twisted maze of the lobby. “As you can see here, you will have some impressive neighbors: Johnson Investors, Adama and Lee Insurance, Diggory International Shipping, Tacchi Financial, Bears and Bazookas, and about a hundred other companies all have their corporate headquarters here.”
Elly nodded, barely listening, her mind on Dennis.
“Well, here we are.” He gestured to a wide open space framed by glass in between the office doors. “It once was a wrap shop, but they went out of business pretty quickly.”
Elly raised her eyebrows at Snarky Teenager. Zachary saw it and jumped in with alarming charm. “Oh, it would be totally different for you guys. Their wraps were total crap. I heard some guy who works here almost died from their crab rolls.”
Snarky Teenager batted her eyes at the leasing agent. “That’s a shame. I, like, totally love seafood.”