“Can you get me the notes from last week’s interactive design meeting? Also, book the conference room on the sixth floor for tomorrow morning at nine. We have those fifteen product testers coming in to give their opinions on the orange dreamsicle flavored massage lotion,” I distractedly tell Ava as I sort through my emails.
Ava is Charlotte’s sister and a year younger than her. Liz decided that her daughter should do something other than get spray tans and take naps on her summer break from school so she made her take an internship at Seduction and Snacks and work as my assistant. Charlotte and Ava share physical attributes. Just like Charlotte, Ava is slender with long dark hair, but that’s where the similarities end. Where Charlotte is sweet, funny, thoughtful, and amazing, Ava is … not. She’s pretty much just a bitch. Charlotte and I used to argue a lot when we were younger, but Ava and I would get into all-out brawls. Punches were thrown, things were lit on fire … it was anarchy.
I look up after a few minutes when she hasn’t answered me and see her standing there pressing buttons on her iPad, concentrating furiously.
“Ava, did you hear me?”
She sighs in annoyance but still doesn’t look up from the screen. “Yes, I heard you. Book the fifteenth floor and make notes about massages.”
Ava is the worst assistant on the face of the earth. And I can’t even say she means well because she doesn’t. She couldn’t care less about this job.
“Ava, you have an iPad in your hand for notes. Did you even type anything I said?” I ask her in annoyance.
I don’t have time for this crap. I have a ton of work to do and an illness to fake before seven o’clock tonight.
“Oh my GOD this is so hard. I just can’t do this,” Ava whines and stomps her foot just like her sister. Except when Charlotte does it, I don’t want to hurl myself across my desk and strangle her.
“It’s okay, I know it’s a lot to take in at once. Just take good notes and you’ll be fine,” I reassure her.
“Uuuughhhh! I don’t understand how anyone passes level thirty-five of Candy Crush,” she complains, still tapping away at her iPad.
I don’t even bother replying to her. I just lean forward and bang my head against the top of my desk.
I’m still banging it a few minutes later when my phone starts ringing. After five rings, I lift my head and stare at Ava.
“Are you going to answer that phone or what?” she asks in annoyance.
I will not strangle her. I will not strangle her.
“Creative Development, this is Gavin,” I say into the phone as Ava turns and walks out of my office without ever looking up from her iPad.
“You sound like a douche bag. Don’t answer the phone like that,” Tyler tells me.
“Shut up. What do you want?”
“Seriously, you should answer it ‘Dicks for Chicks, how can I help you?’”
I ignore Tyler’s suggestion and quickly close out my email when I see a customer comment about how “Claire can be taken up the ass.”
“I’m bringing your girlfriend to the bar at six-thirty. We’ll meet you in the parking lot so make sure you wear something pretty,” he tells me.
“Actually, I think I’m coming down with something. I’m not feeling so hot.”
I cough a few times into the phone to make it sound real.
“Suck it, dick nose. You’re going tonight,” Tyler states.
He doesn’t even give me a chance to plead my case before he hangs up on me and I hear the dial tone in my ear.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter as I put the receiver back.
“Hey, Gavin, you want some coffee?” Ava yells from her desk right outside my door.
All right, maybe I’ve been too hard on her. I start to feel a little bad about getting irritated a few minutes ago. I’m nervous and frustrated about tonight. And what the hell am I supposed to do with a fake girlfriend? I’m probably taking it out on Ava just a little bit.
“Coffee sounds great,” I yell back to her as I pull up my search engine and type in twenty-four-hour illnesses that aren’t contagious or make people think you’re a leper.
“Awesome. Can you get me a Venti nonfat double shot espresso while you’re out?” Ava replies.
Abandoning my Google search, I smack my head against top of my desk and pray to God that tonight is better than today.
“I cannot BELIEVE you set me up with her. Of all the women in all the world, you had to pick her.”
I’m standing in the parking lot of Wolfey’s, the bar we all frequent when we have something to celebrate. I had pulled in at the same time as Tyler and my “girlfriend” and watched in horror as she stepped out of his mom’s car that he borrowed for the evening.
Right now she’s checking out her reflection in my passenger side window while I rip into Tyler.