My Boss & Me

Business Trip

We pretended as if nothing happened in the elevator all day. At least he did; I, on the other hand, thought about it all day. I am not good at hiding my feelings. If something is bothering me, you will know whether I want you to or not. Boy, was this bothering me.

During the meeting, I was distracted thinking about it; Markus had to pull me out of my thoughts at least three times in one meeting. He asked me if everything was alright like he didn't know, but I told him I was fine. Did he do it to confuse me? To mess with me? Maybe to prove the statement he made on the first day? If he did, then he's more manipulative than I thought.

I really did try to pay attention, but every time we made eye contact, I could feel my cheeks growing pinker, and I would think about the kiss again and why it happened. It was a vicious cycle that we could not stop.

Thankfully the meetings for the day were over, at least the meetings I was required to go to. Right now, I was reading manuscripts of books from countless authors who sent them from all over, hoping to get published by the most prestigious publishing agency in the world. It was my job to narrow down the choices. I was to read them and write a list of bullet points about the book so Markus could decide which would get published without actually reading them. Except I don't know if he actually reads them or if he just wanted to give me more work since I wasn't exactly on my "A" game during those meetings. I don't mind though, I'm a huge bookworm, so I live for reading, plus I'm getting paid, so why complain?

By the end of the day, Markus had gotten at least twenty calls from his mother, each one I had to inform her that he was much too busy to speak with her. Eventually, she got tired of it and accused me of lying for her son and didn't call back. Of course, I wasn't offended, though I wasn't lying; I did most of the time because he asked me to, and the last time I didn't, it ended horribly for all of us. He'd gone through at least fifteen meetings, and I had read at least ten out of the thirty manuscripts he had given me.

After his last meeting, I waited a little while before giving him my written bullet points to give him a breather. He needed a break from...people...I guess.

When I finally decided to go in, I found him sitting at his desk with his head resting on the desk.

"I have the bullet points for you. Not all of them, just about ten or eleven. There are a lot of manuscripts. They are all so good, and it was tough to describe them in just a few meaningless bullet points, so some of them may be a little long, but.."

"Janice!"

I hadn't noticed him sit up or even move out of his seat to stand in front of me, considering I was flipping through my notes on the books.

He wasn't so close that it made me uncomfortable, but he wasn't standing too far from me to say he wouldn't try something again.

"Calm down. I never expected you to get through them by the end of the day. Hell, I'm surprised you got through ten of them. It took me days, almost two weeks to get through them." He said, taking the bundle of papers from my arms. He looked through them as he slowly made his way back to his chair.

"Wait, if you read them already....why did you make me read them?"

He sat but said nothing until he looked up from my well-thought-out notes. "I needed a second opinion before I decided. Someone who has an eye for books and isn't in this business for money."

"For money?"

He nodded, "All of these decisions go through a board of people who analyze the book to see if it will make money or how it could make more money. That's not what I want. I want to publish actually good books. If they are as excellent as we hype them up to be, it shouldn't be hard to sell them, right."