6. SIERRA

CHAPTER 6

SIERRA

O ne of the many reasons why I don't vibe with Conor Mahoney is that his desk is right across from mine. No one can understand how annoying it is to constantly have to see the face of your nemesis, especially when said nemesis is one of the most attractive guys you've ever seen in person.

Right now, he's giving one more pass to our presentation for Richard, due in like twenty minutes. The glare of the monitor light reflects off his glasses, so I can't see his eyes. But he's spent like five minutes tapping the clicker of his pen against his bottom lip without saying anything. Either he's engrossed or bored and I need him to be neither so he can stop drawing my attention to his lips.

They're surprisingly full. The upper one's slightly thinner with a shapely bow, which is infuriating because my own lips aren't that pretty.

Ya va, I tell myself. Where in the heck did that come from? Since when do I wax poetic about Conor freaking Mahoney's lips ?

I duck my head and fix my eyes on a SPORTY magazine in my hands. This has been going on all morning. Earlier, I fixated on his eyebrows. I wish I could say they're ugly and make him look like a creepy clown but… no. They're strong, dark, and with a slant that make him look intense when he's serious even though he rarely is.

This all started yesterday when he returned from taking his grandpa to the dentist. Like, just learning that he has a non evil side softened me. I really wish I could keep the bonus money and get the promotion without working with him, because I'm starting to suspect that Rachel is right. My grudge might be in a bit of danger here.

"I thought you weren't going to work until late last night."

It takes me a moment for his words to register. "What do you mean?"

"Clearly, you put a shit ton of work into this presentation." He lifts his attention from the screen and cocks an eyebrow. "Almost as if you wanted to look real good in front of our boss."

Oops. I got caught.

I deflect by saying, "I'm just taking this very seriously."

"Sure…" He elongates the word to an obnoxious degree. "But anyway, Richard's gonna love it. You did great."

"Are you being sarcastic?" I frown.

"What? No. I mean it." Conor cocks his head as if confused.

"Oh." I squirm and readjust the skirt of my cable knit sweater dress. For the first time, I want to offer an olive branch. "Any, uh—any suggestions for improvement?"

He hums. "I could offer a few but there's barely any time left for changes. Let's just roll with it."

I gnash my teeth, immediately regretting the olive branch. He has a few ? But won't even bother? I bet he's going to yeet them at Richard right in my face to make me look like an incompetent fool.

"Fine." I snap the word so hard that even Rachel, sitting in a Zoom call next to me, turns to give me a look like something's wrong with me. "I—I have to go make a call. See you in Richard's office."

"Okay…"

I jump to my feet and when I'm five paces away, I remember that I didn't grab my phone. I look everywhere but at Conor or Rachel as I return to grab it. But I don't have to call jack squat. I lock myself up in the women's bathroom to wash my face, hoping the cold water helps me get over myself.

*

Twenty minutes later, I feel slightly less like a shitty human being while I sit with Conor in Richard's office. We're on the same side of the conference table at the front of the office, sitting in perfect silence as we wait for our boss to return from a bio break.

My laptop is hooked up to the screen on the wall, showing the first slide of the presentation and of course I'm doubting everything. I thought I was being clever and cheeky when I put one snowman holding a glass of eggnog on one side, another snowman on the other with a baseball, and some mistletoe above them. Now, looking at it while seconds away from starting the meeting, I feel like a little kid who drew her fever dream with Crayons.

I wish someone would tell me that my ideas aren't childish—and for a second I contemplate asking Conor for more validation. Except that he'd immediately whiff my insecurities.

Best I keep pretending I'm the second Camila Puig, the company's top female manager who has been dubbed as the Ice Queen .

Rustling catches my attention and I turn to Conor. He's rolling up the sleeves of his grey flannel shirt and I get a heart attack.

His arms are a weapon of mass destruction that needs to be regulated. It should be obvious by the healthy beard but I'm surprised to see his arm hair from up close. Muscles bunch as he turns his arm one way or the other to fix up his shirt. But the worst part is the veins running under his skin toward his big hands. I am weak.

Of course, that's when Richard waltzes in.

"All right, what do we have here?" He pulls up the chair right across from me and turns to the screen.

I freeze, my brain turned into complete mush incapable of thought, only of existing.

"Sierra?" Conor whispers beside me.

Slowly, I turn to him. Where I expect gloating in his expression if he caught me salivating over his arms, what's actually reflected in it is concern. Like maybe he thinks I'm panicking over the presentation.

That snaps me out of the haze. I'm nothing if not professional. And I'm not going to show any weakness in front of my rival.

My pulse spikes. I tuck my hands under the table so neither of them can see them shake. I hate this. I hate that I feel this visceral need to be the best, to prove I know more than anyone else, which makes the possibility of that not being the case feel so much more terrifying than it makes sense. It's why I snapped at Conor. It's the real reason I can't stand him. For some reason, his presence alone has the power to make me feel inadequate. And if Richard says something to critique my presentation and Conor joins him… I'm a raw nerve right now—it wouldn't be pretty.

"Are the snowmen drunk and about to make out?" our boss asks .

Conor seems to find this funny by the way his mouth twitches, but stays suspiciously quiet.

"Yes," I respond with fake bravado.

"Sounds like a good party. Go on."

Conor's grin stretches wider. Is he genuinely amused or making fun of me?

"Right." I click on the next slide. "So the brief is called SPORTY Christmas. We decided to hold a series of competitive events fueled by spiked eggnog and assorted alcoholic beverages, each one celebrating an organized sport but with a Christmas twist."

I launch onto the basic idea, a circuit of different activities where people can get progressively jollier while also burning the previous station's alcohol by playing something. We couldn't come up with a lot of activities in the course of a day, but the gist is there. We even managed to comb together a semblance of a budget.

I finish the presentation and sit back, waiting for them to rip everything to shreds and laugh in my face.

Instead, what happens is worse. Richard says, "While I really like the direction, I'm still disappointed."

I feel Conor stiffen next to me as well.

"I gave you four days, so I expected a crystal clear plan. This still feels very brainstormy."

"Four days?" Conor shakes his head to snap himself out of the shock. "You gave us two. Last Wednesday and yesterday."

"But you're two people, so realistically I gave you four days." Richard gyrates on the chair and leans his elbows on the table. "I'm going to be straight. I had high expectations of this event and raised them even more when I decided to put you both on it together. That's how boss math works, FYI. If you let me down, I'll remove the promotion from the table and will reduce your ten-thousand bonus accordingly. Is that clear? "

"Yes, sir," we both answer at the same time like the well trained former pro- and college-athletes we are.

"Now, like I said, I do like the idea a lot. But when you give me next week's update, I expect an impressive amount of progress."

"Right."

"You got it."

Conor and I scramble to stand up before we're even dismissed. I hug my laptop against my chest as we walk out.

We take a few hasty steps away from Richard's office until Conor suddenly grabs my elbow and pulls me into a storage room. The door clicks shut behind us and for a moment, there's only dark. After some kind of scratchy noise, the light turns on and Conor turns to face me with wide eyes.

"I can't lose a single cent of that bonus," he says.

I nod super fast. "Me neither."

"I think we need to pull all-nighters and weekends to make this thing a smashing success."

"I agree." I swallow hard.

"We have to take this as if it were the playoffs of our career."

"I—sure. That's one way to look at it."

"So… truce?"

I glance down at his outstretched hand.

I must be taking so long to react that he drops it and expels a heavy sigh. "Sierra, I'm with you on this thing. Why are you acting like I'm your enemy?"

"Aren't you?" I lift my eyes to his. "Are you really telling me you're not just waiting for the right moment to stab me in the back and get the promotion and the glory?"

"What?"

"It's what you do, Conor. You always point out everything I do wrong and throw it in my face right when it's going to be the most embarrassing for me. I'm surprised you didn't share all your suggestions for my presentation in front of Richard just now."

He scrunches up his entire face. "When the hell have I ever done that?"

"The tennis shoes presentation?" I start, hugging my warm laptop tighter. "How about the TV commercial pitch? Or the radio jingle."

"You critiqued my ideas in return."

Heat creeps up my neck because that's true. "Maybe but there's a big difference between us, Richard always sides with you. He worships the ground you walk on and if you truly don't know it, you're a fool. Having to work so hard at competing against a fool would piss me off even more."

"Oh, so that's it. You'd rather keep up this nonsensical cutthroat competition with me and screw us both over just to prove your—by the way, completely wrong—theory that I have it out against you?"

"It's not wrong?—"

"Yeah, it is." His brow darkens. "You're conveniently forgetting that I critique the others just as much as I critique you, and they do the same in return."

"You're so much nicer to them, though!"

"Yeah, because you intimidate the shit out of me!" He, a 6 foot 2 wall of muscle who used to be a professional hockey player, releases this collection of words from his pretty mouth that make no sense. "You glare at me like I hurt your puppy. I breathe and you snap. You sit as far from me as you can as if my smell were nauseating, or something. How the hell am I supposed to treat you the same way as I do everybody else? What if it makes it worse? What if being nicer to you just makes me seem weaker enough so you can go for the jugular?"

It's as if a donkey had kicked my chest. Suddenly I can't breathe and it's hard to stand up straight, yet all I can do is stand there gaping at him .

Conor throws his hands in the air. "Fine, keep hating me. I'll plan this damn party on my own if I must."

He yanks the door open and leaves me standing in the storage room as still as the shelves. They keep me company as I examine my own actions and find myself very firmly in Santa's list of people who only deserve coal.