Chapter 11

Cade

Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. I got the job. Even though she’d promised that things would go well, I hadn’t trusted it until she’d given me the contract. And then I’d signed it before she could take it back. I mean, she probably still could, but I had done my best to keep this job.

It wasn’t until she sent me the document later that I realized she had raised my hourly rate. By a lot. This was the most I had ever made at a job by a lot. This job was going to make a lot of my financial issues go away, and I burst into tears when I realized that.

Immediately I sent Eloise a message to thank her.

I was just looking over the contract and realized you raised my pay. What can I say except thank you? Unless it was a typo. In which case, I never sent this message.

She and I talked all day, but this was one of the first times I’d sent her a message outside of work hours. It felt strange.

Eloise responded quicker than I thought she would. You’re welcome Cadence. It’s been a pleasure to work with you and I look forward to it in the future.

The message felt formal, as if she should have written it in ink on vellum and sent it to me in the mail or something. Guess I shouldn’t have sent her a message outside of work hours. She was probably sick of me by the end of the day.

Originally when I’d started the trial period, she had said that if I got hired, I wouldn’t need to work from her house the whole time, but when we’d had our chat today, she hadn’t mentioned anything about me working remotely. I guess I could have brought it up, but I was still too jazzed about getting the job that I hadn’t thought about it until later. I’d ask tomorrow.

After I freaked out about the pay increase, I sent messages to my group chat and announced that I had officially signed on and had a full-time job. A decent, full-time job. I guess I was going to have to start telling people what I did now. My parents were going to be thrilled. I’d scheduled a call with them for this weekend so I could tell them the good news.

Immediately Hunter and Reid said they were taking me out on Friday to Sapph. Reid would be working, but she could sneak away for a little bit to celebrate, which was all I wanted.

Tonight, I’d decided instead of buying a cake for myself, I was going to make one. Sure, it was from a box, and the frosting was from a can, but I hadn’t baked anything in a really long time. I had gone online and found a recipe that used pudding mix to make the cake taste better. I followed the recipe exactly and the smell in my apartment was intoxicating.

Another message came in as I was waiting for the cake pans to cool so I could stack them on top of each other and frost everything before covering the whole thing in sprinkles.

Have you read this? It was accompanied by a screenshot of a book cover.

Eloise had sent it to me. Huh.

I had read the book ages ago. Hadn’t everyone? It wasn’t my favorite.

Overhyped, in my opinion. I don’t know if I would have liked it more if I’d read it without seeing everyone else rave about it, you know? I responded.

Hmmm. I’ve been putting it off because of that. Okay, I think I’ll skip it. What about this?

She sent me another book cover. I hadn’t read that one and told her so.

The author is a friend and I haven’t liked any of her other books, but I haven’t told her. She replied.

Oh yes, give me this TEA. I want to know everything about all these famous authors you know. I sent.

Don’t you dare tell anyone about that. I can still rip up this contract She fired back.

NOOOOOO, you’re stuck with me. It’s too late. And don’t worry, I won’t say anything. But I would like to know more details about other people you know. I don’t have any good gossip.

The cake finally cooled, and I realized I’d been talking back and forth with Eloise for a while. We’d come a long way since those first days when I was literally terrified of her. I still got a twinge in my stomach when I reminded myself that Eloise Roth was a famous author. Probably the most famous person I’d ever come into contact with. That was weird to think about. It was easier to think of her as the woman who made me lunch every day. Who didn’t like to accept the food I brought her in the morning, but finally did. Who worked her ass off and wanted to have her say over every aspect of her career.

In between frosting the cake, I joked with Eloise. Her sense of humor had come out a little more and I liked seeing it. Made her more human.

My frosting job on the cake wasn’t that great, but sprinkles covered up the worst sins and I took a picture anyway and sent it to Eloise.

Made my own cake. Should I save you a slice? She’s not pretty, but she’s going to be delicious.

I had cut myself a massive piece and started shoving it into my mouth before she answered.

Looks good to me. Camille sent me home with this. She sent with a picture of a tiny little lemon bundt cake with glaze dripping down the sides. It looked pretty damn good to me.

Cake really does make every day a little bit brighter, doesn’t it? I sent.

Yes, it does. Goodnight, Cadence. I’ll see you tomorrow.

I finished my first piece of cake and cut myself another.

* * *

Everyone at Sapphwas happy to celebrate and most of their jaws dropped when I told them who I was working for. Then the questions started, but I’d practiced what to say. No, I couldn’t get them free books. No, I didn’t know what she was working on. No, I wasn’t helping her write the books. No, I didn’t know where she got her ideas from.

Reid kept the drinks flowing and the appetizer plates full and pretty soon I was losing it to the music and having a great time. The only thing I had to do tonight was get back to Hunter’s in one piece. She had demanded that I crash with her, and it wasn’t a bad idea for both of us to watch over each other. She’d stayed mostly sober, but I was on a mission to get smashed.

I must have succeeded because the next thing I knew, I had a rager of a headache and I was peeling my eyes open in Hunter’s guest room.

“Oh motherfucker,” I moaned as I covered my eyes. Too much light. The apartment was quiet, but I could hear Hunter moving around somewhere.

Very carefully, I rolled to my side and found a bottle of Gatorade and some aspirin. Yeah, this wasn’t that kind of hangover. The movement instantly triggered nausea, so I bolted to the bathroom and hurled up my guts. Hunter must have planned ahead because my hair was pulled back in braids that I definitely didn’t have last night. Such a good friend.

I rinsed out my disgusting mouth and then staggered back to bed.

“Having a rough one?” Hunter asked softly as I groaned and laid on my back.

“Little bit. It was fun last night and it’s not so much fun right now.” Even talking hurt.

“Please have something to drink at least,” she said, pushing the bottle of Gatorade into my hand. I didn’t think it was smart to put anything else in my stomach, but Hunter refused to let me argue with her.

It took several hours, but eventually I managed to keep something down and Hunter force-fed me a greasy breakfast sandwich before allowing me to think about my phone.

“I caught you sending something last night, but I couldn’t stop you, so you might want to see if you did something foolish,” she said, giving it to me from where she’d been charging it.

Well, shit. I hoped I hadn’t done anything embarrassing.

I unlocked my screen and checked my messages.

Looks like someone is having a good timethe message read. From Eloise. I’d sent a blurry, drunken picture of myself to Eloise last night.

As far as pictures went, it was fine. My tits weren’t out, and I was smiling. Actually, I looked pretty good, arm raised as I laughed at something while dancing.

I’d only sent her the one picture without a message. What had I been trying to do? No idea, but not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Sorry about that! Hope I didn’t wake you I typed out and Sent.

No problem. See you on Monday.

That sounded like a dismissal, but I sat there with my thumbs preparing to type something out. To ask her if she’d done anything fun on Friday night. If she was doing anything in particular today. I knew the rest of her schedule during the week, but her weekends were still mostly a mystery. She was probably with Camille and the kids. Maybe at the park or the zoo or something. Eloise absolutely adored those kids. They were pretty damn lucky, in my opinion. How cool was it that your godmother was a famous author? Not too shabby.

Hunter dragged me out of the house and to the antiques market. We liked to go on weekends and see the most ridiculous thing we could find that was likely to be haunted. Sometimes one of us would buy it and bring it home and sometimes the item was just too terrifying, and we left it alone.

“What do you think?” Hunter asked when she showed me a tarnished ring with a huge black stone.

“Oh, definitely haunted,” I said.

“But how haunted?” she asked, peering at it and turning the ring in the light.

“Not as haunted as that,” I said, pointing to a vintage doll that was missing one eye and half of its hair.

“Oh yeah, that’s much better.” Hunter put down the ring and went to pick up the doll before we discarded that and moved on, but not before taking pictures and sending them to Reid for her assessment. She’d had a dance class earlier and said she needed some alone time today. Neither of us minding when Reid asked for space. Her job drained her so much that it was a wonder that she was able to talk to anyone in her off time.

Besides, she was seeing us tomorrow for brunch.

On an impulse, I sent Eloise a picture with the words Haunted or not haunted? of a painting that Hunter and I had been staring at. It was a painting of a little girl holding a doll, which wasn’t so bad, except that the little girl’s face was off, and the doll had no eyes. It was also painted poorly (maybe on purpose?), which added to the unsettling quality.

I sent it to Reid, too.

Reid wrote back begging for us to stop sending her creepy pictures. Eloise responded after we’d moved on from the painting.

Oh definitely haunted. You going to buy it?

I snorted. Not this time. I already have a few haunted paintings and don’t want to press my luck too much. What about you? It would look lovely in your foyer.

If you bring that abomination into my home, I will put your employment contract in the shredder and incinerate your computer. she sent, and I burst out laughing.

“What’s funny?” Hunter asked, poking my shoulder.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.

I sent her more haunted items and she kept making more and more hilarious threats and Hunter was getting annoyed at me being distracted.

“Okay, this is it,” she said, stopping in front of an old photograph of a house that had a threatening aura. The house itself was run down, but there was something I couldn’t put my finger on that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“Yup, definitely,” I said. The picture was fifty bucks, way out of our agreed-upon price range of thirty bucks max.

So instead, we took pictures and then Hunter dropped me off at my place.

I didn’t send you the most haunted thing we found today. You’re welcome. I sent to Eloise.

I appreciate that. You may keep your job.

Getting silly messages from her on a weekend was lighting me up inside and I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t stop it. Talking to her brought me joy. You would have thought I’d be sick of her by the weekend, but not exactly. When she was working, the last thing I was going to do was talk her ear off. But now that I had the chance, I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

The only downside was that I couldn’t hear her voice. See her face. Watch her expression when I said something outrageous. It was my new favorite hobby. To say something she didn’t expect and watch her reaction.

But sending messages was better than nothing.

Eloise and I went back and forth the rest of the day. She told me she’d been with the kids and sent me pictures of them running through the sprinklers at Camille’s house.

Three little kids, two girls, one boy. The girls had blonde hair and the little boy was dark. Cute. So cute.

She also sent me a picture of hugging all of them that must have been taken by Camille or her husband.

It made me happy that Eloise had them. That there was someone to love her that way. Eloise hadn’t told me much about her family, other than that she’d grown up poor, and I got the impression she’d cut off contact with her parents. Or maybe they had died. I wasn’t going to be an asshole and ask if she didn’t want to talk about it.

Eventually we both went to bed, but we kept firing messages at each other until pretty late.

Sunday was brunch and nonsense and more messages with Eloise. Nothing serious. I told her about what I’d been like in high school, and she told me about her favorite music as a teen. She asked about my favorite movies, and I went on a long tangent about one of my favorites that I got a little too enthusiastic about, but she didn’t seem to mind. I didn’t get that she was bored, or that I was showing her too much.

My brain still told me to pull back, but I couldn’t seem to. As if she’d opened a door and I’d walked through and couldn’t close it again.

If I wasn’t careful, I was going to hurl myself so completely into talking with her that I wouldn’t be able to do anything else, so I forced myself to take regular breaks. Getting addicted to things that gave me dopamine was a real problem that I fought with all the time. I hadn’t lost myself in a while, but there was always a chance that I’d encounter some new show or book or thing to research that would plunge me into a hole that excluded everything else. When I’d been younger, it had been worse. Summers were bad when I was in school, due to all the free time I had on my hands. If I wanted to barely sleep for three days while I marathoned online videos and articles about the sinking of the Titanic, I could. And had.

The thing that really got me the most about Eloise is that even when I’d sent her a wall of text about bullshit, she didn’t tell me to stop or ignore me or be like hey, thanks but no thanks. She responded and asked more questions. Seemed to want to keep things going.

Curiosity was soooo fucking sexy to me, specifically. When someone said, “that’s so interesting, tell me more,” they might as well have said “take your clothes off.” It smashed all of my buttons at once, and Eloise kept doing it. Plus, she was hot as fuck. Working with her had only made her more attractive to me.

I knew from the first few messages that I was in deep fucking shit. That the feelings I was having in my chest and stomach and between my legs and making my nipples hard were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wrong and bad and inappropriate. Not the kind of feelings an employee should have for their boss.

Instead of what I should have done, shut it down, I…didn’t. In fact, I did the opposite. I sent her more messages and gorged myself on her attention and let it run through my veins, setting me on fire and then when it got to be too much, well, I took myself somewhere private and fucked myself quick and hard. I’d never been so goddamn horny in my whole life and getting myself off just seemed to make it worse.

There was something seriously wrong with me and I needed to get a handle on it because I could not sneak off to masturbate during work hours. In my boss’s house. While thinking about my boss.

That was just crossing too many lines.