Noelle August - Boomerang

“And we’re both starting out with hangovers. Sweet.”

“But at least we’re both wearing underwear.”

“At least there’s that.” Mia leans her head back against the seat and smiles. There’s nothing flirty about it. Nothing forced or fake. It’s just a really great smile.

Suddenly we’re trapped in a staring contest. Her gaze is so direct and her green eyes are like prisms. They hold so much light inside them. There are questions and jokes and stories in her eyes. I know right then I want this again. To be looked at by her again.

“Look, Mia, I know this isn’t how—”

The cab jerks to a stop.

“Eighteen dollars,” the cabby says.

Mia reaches in her purse. “I’m paying for his fare, too. Can you add it?”

“Sure thing, lady. Still eighteen dollars.”

Mia and I lock eyes. I can’t believe this. We’ve come to the same place? There’s no way.

Someone lays on the horn behind us.

The cabby curses and pulls closer to the curb. “Twenty-one hundred Avenue of the Stars. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right,” we blurt at the same time.

“Okay. Wow,” Mia says. She shoves some bills at him, and we get out of the cab.

The office building rises up in front of us, a smooth wall of smoke-tinted glass that jets to the sky. It blew me away when I came here for my interview. I remember thinking this was the place that would start my future, but I’m not thinking that right now. I’m trying to figure out the present.

Mia and I walk through the doors and join a cluster of people waiting at the bank of elevators.

We haven’t said a word to each other since we left the cab.

We haven’t looked at each other.

I don’t even know if we’re standing together, or just in the same vicinity.

I shift my shoulders, telling myself that it’s the suit that feels strange and constricting.

The elevator arrives and the doors part. I hold the door, letting a dozen people flood past me. Then I step inside and reach for the button for the seventeenth floor, but it’s already lit.

Mia stands lost behind a wall of dark suits. The urge to shove toward her comes over me. That seems desperate, though it also feels awkward not to stand with her. But then it’s too late. The doors slide closed and I’m trapped in the front, staring at the seam between the steel panels.

We hit the seventh floor, and four people step out.

It’s not until the doors close again that I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

Mia’s still on the elevator.

Twelfth floor. Two people leave.

Fourteenth. Three more.

I glance at the elevator controls. Only one floor is still lit.

“Well, this is a surprise.” Mia is still a few feet behind me. I can’t tell, but I think she’s smiling. I want to ask her at least one of the questions charging through my brain, but doors slide open to the glass-walled Boomerang lobby, and we both step out.

Mia

Q: Dress like a wreck, or dress for success?

My brain decides it’s an excellent time to go on strike, leaving me with zero resources to puzzle through the fact that I, a) woke up next to this lovely male-type person after engaging in activities I tragically can’t recall; b) ended up in a cab with him, which; c) took us to the exact same destination; until d) we found ourselves stepping out on the same floor. A floor that houses one business and one business only: Boomerang.

My new place of employment.

And apparently his too.

“So, this job of yours?” I say. A corkscrew of hair drops into my line of vision as if to underscore my rattled state.

“Internship,” he replies, and the word comes out heavy, like a confession.

“For Boomerang.”

He nods, and his hands busy themselves with the knot of his tie, reminding me of my own less-than-professional attire. I’m itching to get to my cell phone, to find out if Beth’s made it yet. “You too, huh?”

I’m too shell-shocked to frame a reply, so I just nod like a dummy and start what feels like one of those weird dream-walks through a space that seems to shrink and expand with each step.

I joked about never having seen Star Wars, but looking down a long expanse of gleaming bamboo floors, “The Imperial March” sounds in my head. The place is more Ridley Scott than George Lucas, though, with its curving white walls and recessed purple lighting. The cubicles have low smoked-glass walls and funky half-circle workstations. As Skyler would say, it looks like someone drank a feng shui cocktail and puked the decor.

We pass a few cubicles occupied by girls in thick black glasses with asymmetrical haircuts and guys in skinny jeans with various configurations of facial hair. Hipster Central, it seems, though Adam Blackwood, Boomerang’s founder and president, looks like the love child of Ryan Gosling and . . . well, Ryan Gosling.

“I’m supposed to . . .” Quickly, Ethan amends, “I guess we’re supposed to check in with HR, fill out some paperwork, surrender our firstborn. That sort of thing.”

“Crap, I already surrendered my firstborn at the last job. Do you have a spare?”

He grins at me. “How would I have a spare firstborn?”

“Oh, fine, you’re going to drag logic into the conversation?”

A towering blond woman in an emerald-green suit with lapels sharp enough to slice cheese stalks toward us, her expression set somewhere between rabid and murderous.

“You have got to be kidding me!” she shrieks as she comes alongside us and casts a tundra-cold glance in my direction.

Immediately, I think she’s talking about my clothing, which, while not precisely appropriate, wouldn’t seem to merit a Teutonic hissy fit. But her eyes bounce away from me again, and she presses her hand to her ear. “If this guy doesn’t work out, I will have no problem jamming an ice pick up your skinny ass, Paolo,” she says, and I finally notice the Bluetooth device tucked up next to a chignon tight enough to give her cat eyes.

She clips away, leaving flowers to shrivel and birds to drop from the sky in her wake.

“Jesus,” Ethan mutters, and I realize I’ve actually grabbed onto his arm in terror. “Here’s hoping she’s not the HR rep.”

I allow myself a moment’s enjoyment before releasing him. “Here’s hoping she doesn’t even work here.”

He smiles. “Here’s hoping she’s leaving on a ten-year cruise.”

“To Antarctica.”

“To reunite with her clan, the snow beasts.”

I laugh. And my eyes find his again. Maybe I’ve lucked into more than just an internship here.

“Sorry to break up the party,” says a voice behind us.

I turn to find Beth standing near a doorway marked with a pink heart made of two boomerangs. She wears a stick-straight black wig over her kinky hair and rocks a ridiculous blue gingham romper. Like some kind of vampire farm girl—from Harlem.

Rattling a plastic bag at me, she says, “Chop, chop, girl. Let’s jump in here and get you fixed up. I have another go-see at noon, and it’s way the hell up in Burbank.”

“Thank God you made it.” I rush to her side, calling out a quick intro as I push open the door to the ladies room.

Her shrewd black eyes take in every inch of Ethan, and she reaches out a perfect set of purple acrylics to shake his hand.

“I like your . . .” Ethan makes a sweeping gesture that manages to encompass pretty much all of Beth.

“Yeah, I like yours too.” She slaps my butt, moving me through the door. “If you’re a good boy, maybe Mia will share sometime.”

“Beth!”

The door swings shut on his gape-mouthed expression, and she lets out a big, open-throated laugh. “That boy did not know what hit him.”

Before I have a chance to respond that I know the feeling, she has my dress off over my head and has replaced it with a violet silk blouse. Beth comes from a long line of dressers and stage managers, so this is a feat I’ve witnessed several times before, though it’s my first time on the receiving end.

“Where’d this come from?” I ask.

“It was on my body when I left the house this morning,” she tells me. “Or did you think I walked around looking like some broke-down Dorothy from Oz?”

She drops to the floor and pulls a heather-gray skirt from the bag.

“Step in,” she orders, holding the garment open for me, and I do.

She stands, spins me around, tugs down the bottom of the blouse, zips up the skirt, and then reaches her hands beneath my clothes to do some adjusting.

The outfit is, not surprisingly, absolute perfection.

I plant a hand on Beth’s shoulder as I zip on her pair of soft leather boots, which she trades for my strappy sandals. “You really are so good to me.”

“As good as Ethan?”

I straighten and look in the mirror. My skin looks sallow in the fluorescent lighting, and half my hair has escaped its bonds, making me look like the spawn of an anemone. But still, it’s an improvement. “You’re going to kill me, but I barely remember.”

She tsks. “What a shame. And also why I don’t drink.” Then she grabs my hair like reins. In a flurry of purple nails and chunky silver rings, she wrestles it into order, smoothing it into a neater version of the low bun I’d attempted.

It seems a pinch ungrateful to remind her that she actually stopped drinking after accidentally making out with her cousin.

“I’m glad you had yourself a little fun, though, Mia. You deserve it after that tool Kyle.”

“Thanks, gorgeous.” I give her a quick hug, and then I turn last night’s dress and shoes over to her. I think of returning Ethan’s shirt to him, but some impulse makes me hand it to her too. “And thanks so much for this. You’re a lifesaver.”