Free The Reality of You by Jean Haus

inspected my
paper-strewn room, collecting my thoughts on Reese. “Ego. Slave driver. Rude.
Rich, cold asshole.”
    A snicker sounded.
“Whoa. Things worked out better than I imagined.”
    “Um…” I said slowly,
trying to think of a tactful way to explain my current predicament. Kara’s firm
had recommended me, which, with the way things were going, wasn’t too good for
her or her firm.
    “Um, what?”
    Explaining this was
going to be a major riot. Not. I took a fortifying sip of spiked coffee. “Yeah,
I’ve kind screwed things up as far as the secretary gig.”
    Silence filled my
ear until Kara asked, “How? You have a computer degree. You do charts and
graphs like nobody’s business. You’re far more qualified than the average
secretary.”
      I set my empty cup on the dresser. “It’s not
the secretary stuff I’ve bombed at.”
    “Huh?”
    Inwardly cringing, I
explained the first day from Pilates to golf to dinner.
    Kara gasped and
giggled through each story, especially the golf incident.
    “Then the next day,
I went snorkeling—”
    “ You went snorkeling?” Kara’s tone was
disbelieving, most likely thinking of spring break junior year in Fort
Lauderdale when I refused to put any more than my toes in the ocean. I’d seen
one too many Shark Weeks on the Discovery Channel over the years.
    “Well, I wasn’t
about to admit I’m terrified of sharks, so yeah, I went with a group from the
resort while Reese went diving. Even had an instructor. It was actually pretty
amazing. Underwater pictures of the ocean don’t lie. The fish, the
plants—everything was beautiful. For about a whole twenty minutes.”
    “Oh, no,” she said
in a short breath. “You freaked out?”
    “Yup,” I said as I
stacked papers in neat little piles. “What would you do if you saw a shark?”
    She gasped. “No way!
You seriously saw a shark?”
    “Well, a tail and
fins amid a school of brightly colored fish before I swam to the surface
Olympic style and ran to shore yelling, ‘Shark,’ at the top of my lungs. They
blew the warning horn, and everyone from swimmers to snorkelers to sail surfers
evacuated the water.”
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah, wow. We all
stood in the sand, breathing heavily after racing to the beach, watching the
water, and out jumped a trio of dolphins.”
    A loud laugh escaped
her. “You mistook a dolphin for a shark!”
    The paper in my hand
crinkled at the memory of all the beachgoers
giving me the stink eye. “Apparently, and Reese didn’t find it as funny when he
heard about it. He canceled all of my activities for the rest of the week. I
can guarantee he’s not happy with his secretarial choice.”
    “Oh well, we didn’t
recommend your athleticism. We included people with athletic stuff on their
resumes. He can’t blame us for all that.” She let out another giggle, which
calmed me a bit since with each mess-up I became more worried about her
recommending me. “Other than the Pilates, which I get because of your leg, what
the heck is your problem?”
    I groaned. “I don’t
know. Probably being around Reese. He makes me nervous. This whole thing makes
me nervous. It started with the guacamole incident and keeps getting worse.”
    “He still makes you nervous?”
    “Nope,” I said,
folding one of the papers lying on the bed into an airplane. “He just irritates
me now, but he doesn’t let me do anything other than mountains of paperwork.”
    With the flick of a
wrist, my airplane landed on top of the bedside lamp. Of course, the paper
started smoking. I rushed over and yanked it off. A fire would be the icing on
the cake after everything else.  
    “You’re doing
paperwork for the next three days?” Kara asked.
    “Yup.” My nose
wrinkled from the burnt smell in the air, and I rushed over to the balcony
doors and threw them open before the fire alarm went off.
    “That has got to be
boring.”
    “You should see my
room. It’s a sty filled with stacks of papers.” I reached in