“Oh.” Isabel seemed to be debating what to say. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just got here and I have, like, a ton of stuff I need to take care of before the meeting at two, and Sabrina just told me she has to leave to pick up her kids because her nanny’s sick or something.” She sighed. “Can we talk later? I honestly don’t think I’ll have time to help you today.”
He hoped his disappointment didn’t show on his face. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll text you.” What he really wanted to say was What the fuck is up with you? Usually they texted constantly. At first their texts had been relatively mundane stuff like sup ;) that quickly turned into did anyone tell u that u look amazing today and can’t wait to see u later, and then one day, when he was in a meeting with a potential client, Isabel Snapchatted him a topless selfie that she’d clearly taken in the office bathroom, and as he looked at his phone under the table he felt himself getting hard. From then on they traded nudes on Snapchat several times a week. He’d thought it might be distracting, but it actually broke up the day. But lately Isabel seemed to be taking longer and longer to respond to his texts—even when he could clearly see her sitting ten yards away from him. He’d been preoccupied by all of the money-raising stuff, but now that he thought about it, something was up. “Is everything okay?”
“Hm? Yeah. I’ll see you later.” She slipped out of his office.
As he watched her walk to her desk, he thought back to the last time they’d had sex, two weeks ago. Or was it three? In any case, it had happened the way it usually did; he was working late, and he’d sent her a selfie on Snapchat and written where u at on it. A minute later she’d responded, finishing up dinner, and then he asked her to meet him at his apartment, and she’d agreed. She’d stayed the night, which was unusual, and he had a moment in the early morning when he woke up and saw her lying next to him and was overcome by the urge to make her breakfast—although, given that he had no food in the house, it would have to be breakfast sandwiches brought to them by a Postmate. She’d stirred just as he’d reached for his phone to open the Postmates app, and then she’d groped around for her phone and said, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t mean to sleep this long,” and she’d leaped out of bed and pulled on her clothes and said, “Gotta run home, see you at work,” and then she was gone.
And now he was kicking himself for being so fucking stupid about not locking it down. What had he been thinking? Isabel was special. Pretty, fashionable, ambitious girls in New York weren’t hard to find, but Isabel was so much more; in private, she was charmingly silly and always surprising—she once showed up at his apartment wearing a sweatshirt and when she took it off she had on a T-shirt that said I ? FARTS. She’d worn it, she said, because she knew he would think it was hilarious, and it was, but partly because you’d never expect a girl like Isabel to be wearing a T-shirt like that.
There had been a couple of times in the beginning when they’d actually had sex in the office, which was, of course, incredibly risky but also incredibly hot. He’d pulled the couch away from the wall and they’d hidden behind it without even getting completely naked; he just pulled down her panties, and by then his dick was so hard that it probably could’ve made its way out on its own, and she was lying on the ground practically ripping his pants off. Both times he’d just plowed into her without a condom and she hadn’t protested; she’d mentioned offhandedly one day that she was on the pill and didn’t say anything when he didn’t put one on. Of course he pulled out, but sex without condoms with a hot girl in your office was basically every guy’s fantasy. Very few people knew about his trysts with Isabel, and he was careful that it never got around to anyone at work, but sometimes he just wanted to talk about it so badly. There was so little these days that was actually secret, and even though in a way that made it hotter—much hotter—it also made it seem less real.
He peered out into the office. Most people were at their desks, headphones on, staring at their two monitors. He felt a momentary swell of pride: I built this, he thought. All these people are here because of me. Then a thought occurred to him: Forget about sex; when was the last time Isabel had even texted him a nude? There wasn’t really any way to check on Snapchat because the photos self-destructed after a few seconds, and he was always careful not to screenshot them because then Isabel would get a notification that he had. But…hmm. He left his office and walked to the bathroom, being careful not to look over to Isabel’s work area, and locked himself in a stall. All he had to do was think about the last time they had fucked to get hard. He pulled out his phone, opened Snapchat, and took a picture. He was about to send it to her when he decided to write on it using the app’s pencil tool. We miss u, he scrawled in red, and sent it off.
5
Three’s a Crowd
WHEN KATYA GOT to work the next morning and wiggled her wireless mouse to wake up her computer, her TweetDeck—which she always had open on her second monitor—was scrolling furiously. The TweetDeck never stops, she thought to herself. There was an AM news radio station in New York called 1010 WINS that Katya’s dad and stepmom always listened to in the car because it had traffic and weather on the ones. Katya had told them a million times that Waze was much better for traffic, but her dad’s car didn’t have Bluetooth and he found it distracting to have to keep looking at his phone all the time. One of 1010 WINS’ taglines was “The news watch never stops,” and Katya had updated the slogan in her head. And what the hell was a news watch anyway?
She clicked on the browser tab that had the post about Connectiv’s offices that she had been working on. Did she really need to wait for their publicist to get back to her? She clicked over to Slack. The office was mostly empty, but Dan was already at his desk.
Katya: yo
Dan: hiya. long time no chat
Katya: ha. so I think we should go ahead and pub that Connectiv post, i can just fill in the other stuff when they get back to me
Dan: cool. anything you want me to look at?