Final Pointe

This sure was a far cry from stabbing my lecherous Uncle to death and having my ex-fiance help sink the body in a lake.

Most people probably didn’t compare their first day of work to murder. I wish I was most people.

What in the hell did I think I was doing?

My reflection stared blankly back at me, looking just as confused as I felt.

Shit. How long had my hair been sticking straight up off my head like that?

The silver elevator door made for a poor excuse of a mirror. It was enough to help me smooth down my hair with a shaky hand, fighting to contain the mess of curls into a tamer knot on top of my head. The hair tie better hold. The humidity here made my hair about twice the size as it usually was, and I swore I could hear the elastic give a little cry of torment when it was forced around my hair twice. It would have to do. I wiped my hands on my black pencil skirt, desperate for them to stop trembling with nerves.

The virtual job interview had not prepared me for the scale of the building the elevator was slowly lifting me through. Fournier, Inc. was a large security firm specializing in security systems for multimillion-dollar companies and anyone else rich enough to afford their services. So why was I surprised when, upon my arrival on the first day of my new job, I found myself standing in front of a sleek, black skyscraper that towered over all the other buildings in the city? The facade was modern, mysterious, and intimidating … like it was taunting me, somehow knowing that what I was attempting to do was all a farce. When I forced myself through the revolving door into the lobby, I half expected to be mystically propelled from the building, like it found me and all my lies too bitter to stomach.

After all, I was a fraud starting a job at a security firm.

I never intended to seek job opportunities at a security company, but it was hard to resist. The pay was more than I initially was looking for, the benefits were great, the location was ideal, and my ex-fiance would never dream of finding me in a place like this. Even after applying with a padded resume complete with a false job history, my expectations about receiving a follow-up were low. Surprise! They called the next day, set up the interview the same week, and I had my offer letter by the end of the month. It was everything I needed to escape my pathetic little town and the horrible people there, including my ex and best friend. It wasn’t a coincidence they were both on my most-hated people list.

My stomach was in knots, aching to the point of making me want to puke. I wished I didn’t get so worried about things like the first days; never mind that this was my first first day of work in over ten years. They wouldn’t throw me in the deep end and hope I could swim. I knew I’d be training for at least the next month, so what was I so worked up about? All that was expected of me today was a bunch of paperwork, going on a building tour, and maybe meeting some new people. There was absolutely no reason I should be so nervous about it.

I flapped my hands quickly to try and stop the shaking. It didn’t work. It was hard to tell if they were trembling so badly because I was ridiculously nervous or because I failed to eat anything for breakfast. Stupid. I couldn’t afford to fall from the elevator and faint at the feet of my new manager on the first day of work.

Literally. I was broke.

I gave a half-assed laugh at my reflection. “This was your idea.” For a second, I debated whether or not to turn around and go home and give up on this altogether.

Calm down, just calm down.

A bing from the elevator startled me from my inner deliberation. I stumbled back just as the doors opened, and in my haste to move, my purse fell from my shoulder. I caught it before it hit the floor, right as a pair of heavily booted feet entered the elevator.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled, moving further back into the corner and pulling my purse back on my shoulder.

Holy shit.

The most beautiful man I’d ever seen stepped into the elevator.

He didn’t even give me a glance as he turned to press the button for his floor, which was not the same as mine, unfortunately.

My mind begged me to look away. To stop gawking at this total stranger. Instead, my eyes stayed glued on him, soaking in his dark beauty. Dark in coloring and aura. His devastating face was a distraction, like that of a beautiful predator, meant to pull you in with its exotic allure, and by the time you realized it was all a trap, it would be too late to get away, and it’d kill you. It was a juxtaposition to the relaxed way he held his body, leaning a shoulder against the elevator wall, foot crossed over an ankle, and black hair falling into his eyes while he busied himself on his phone.

Even his clothes gave off a false sense of approachability. I glanced at his ass - I couldn’t help myself - and let out a little sigh. He gave no indication of hearing me. His faded jeans fit him well, as did the black t-shirt under an open white and blue button-up shirt. A silver chain glinted around his tan neck, drawing attention to the fine lines of a tattoo that peaked from under his collar. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, his muscled forearms on display, and when he shook his wrist to adjust his watch, I glimpsed a few lines of another tattoo – some type of writing - on the inside of his arm.

Having tattoos just shot him up and off of my Hot-as-Hell meter. I tugged the cuff on my blouse, eyeing the edges of my tattoo, and wondered if I should have been so concerned with covering it up.

Our ride together was short. We arrived at my floor, and I was forced to get off. I gave him a shy smile as I stepped past.

“Have a nice day.”

He didn’t even look up from his phone. Maybe I spoke so softly he didn’t hear me. Or maybe he was just rude. I didn’t have time to dwell on it. The doors were beginning to shut behind me as I took a few steps forward, and was suddenly left alone again, still wondering what the hell I was doing.

As soon as I saw the double doors that led to my new place of employment, my stomach somersaulted, and I fought back a gag. Now, I was glad I skipped breakfast. Straightening my shoulders and patting my hair to make sure it was still where I put it, I took two very determined strides forward and grabbed the door handle. Nothing happened. I was stumped. Wasn’t that how these things usually worked? Turn the handle, pull, and voilà – open, says me.

Nothing about the smooth wooden doors or ordinary door handles clued me into why it wouldn’t open. A security camera in the corner blinked red at me, and I blushed, embarrassed that there might be someone on the other side of it laughing at me trying to open the damn door. Then, I saw a keypad and card scanner on the wall to my right. That made a bit of sense. However, I was still stuck out here without the code or some type of card.

“Crap,” I sighed.

Guess I’d wait for someone to either come out or go in.

Right on cue, the doors flew open.

“There you are!”

Lucille, my new boss, barreled through the doorway, and her cloud of fiery red hair followed soon thereafter. Like the last time I saw her, her infectious, goofy grin was plastered to her face, and her cheeks flushed.

“Oh, thank goodness! I was afraid I’d be stuck out here all day.”

She glanced over at the keypad. “Yeah, sorry about that. I forgot I’d probably need to come down and get you.” She motioned me to follow her through the door. “I’m surprised you got this far.”

“Shouldn’t I have?”

I quickened my steps to keep up with her as we moved swiftly down a windowless hallway towards another set of double doors. Lucille moved fast. She shook her head. “Well, technically, no one without an access card should even be let through the lobby, let alone get to the elevators. But no worries, you saved me a trip downstairs. Come on, let’s meet the team.”

When I walked in a few moments ago, the security officer smiled and waved me on by, not mentioning anything about an access card. What an inefficient process they had down there … for a high-end security company. Maybe my total sham of an identity wouldn’t be as difficult to pull off as I originally thought.

She swiped a card through the keypad at the second set of doors and pulled them open before I could make a comment.

As I stepped through the door, gripping my purse even tighter to my shoulder, row after row after row of sleek black and grey cubicles, each with an individual tucked away inside, their heads just visible over the walls, spread out before me. Everyone had the same black office chair and wore the same silver and black headsets, typing away on their keyboards, framed by identical sleek computer monitors, screens changing as they typed. It was like a set of a sci-fi flick. With the light grey carpeting, slate blue walls, and dim fluorescent lighting, it could have been the main hub of a spaceship. Not that I’ve ever been in one, but I imagined this is what it would look like. At least floor-to-ceiling windows let in enough light so it didn’t completely feel like a dungeon.

Lucille gave me no time to take in the redundancy of what lay before me. She waved me to continue following, and we headed over to a group of cubicles near the back corner of the floor. Very few people looked up as we approached; everyone was on the phone. The muted, one-sided chatter was a little unnerving until I heard a giggle from a nearby cubicle as we passed.

“Now, Greg, how many times have I told you how to do this, and you still refuse to listen?” The laughter came from a stunningly beautiful girl with sleek brown hair and a killer smile. She laughed again and shook her head as we walked by, her hair swinging side to side. She smirked up at us, probably because I was staring. Instead of giving me a weird look, she made a circling motion toward her temple and mouthed the word ‘crazy’ at me. I smiled a little as she kept laughing.

“Greg, I don’t care how you think this should work. That’s not the way it does. So, are you going to listen to me finally, or do you do this just so you can call in and talk to me?”

“That’s Miranda. She’s going to be your neighbor.” Lucille stopped and motioned to the empty cubicle in the corner. “Here’s your desk. I’ve got to get on a conference call here in a minute. It should only take a little bit, so while I’m doing that, how about you hang out, get comfortable, and you can put your stuff away.”

Lucille didn’t give me a chance to answer as she spun on a heel and trotted back toward what I assumed was her cubicle on the other side of the room. Sighing, I plopped down in my surprisingly comfortable chair and unloaded my purse onto my desk. The desk was dark grey, keeping in style with the rest of the bleakness surrounding me. There had to be some way to brighten it up a bit. Maybe I could bring in some of my artwork from home and arrange them around my computer monitors. Flowers would be nice, but they’d probably die awfully quickly with it being so dim. I swiveled in my chair, happy to see that the opening of my cubicle was facing the windows.

The view wasn’t great … not horrible either. The top of a neighboring parking garage was closest to our building, and then right behind that was the face of the next building over, completely blocking my view of the rest of downtown. Frowning, I noticed the styles and types of cars on the garage roof. Most of them were European in make and model. I thought about my sad, blue Ford sedan and how out of place it would look alongside all those sleek, fancy cars. Who was I kidding? It looked out of place alongside any car. That wasn’t anything I needed to worry about anymore. I had to sell it in order to afford the move here.

I loved that car. It was old and ugly, but it had been mine that I purchased with my own hard-earned money. Teaching all those extra classes during my last two years at the academy was exhausting yet worth it when I was given the keys to my little Blue Bomb. The title had my name on it and no one else’s. My Aunt and lousy Uncle couldn’t take it away like everything else they had stolen from me.

“Howdy, neighbor!” A sweet southern drawl startled me out of my thoughts, and I whirled back around. Miranda leaned on the wall separating our desks, her arms crossed along the top. She was still smiling, her shiny hair spilling over her shoulders, bangs in a perfect line across her forehead. “So, what brings you to our neck of the woods?”

Her thick drawl was throwing me off. When I heard her speaking to Greg a minute ago, she had no such accent. My confusion must have been evident on my face and my hesitation to answer because she laughed again.

“Sorry, I’m an actress. I tend to fall into accents from time to time. You’ll get used to it.”

“Oh, okay.” It was the only thing I could think of to say.

“So, what’s your name?”

“I’m Sera.”

“Sara?”

“No, Sera. Like Seer-a. It’s okay … people always pronounce it Sara. Sometimes I just go with it.”

“Seer-a,” Miranda repeated. “I like it. Different.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re obviously not from around here. Where are you from?”

Obviously? I didn’t realize I was making it so plain for people to see that. “It’s a really small town in Virginia that I’m sure you’ve never heard of before.”

“Virginia? No,” she scoffed as if it was preposterous to think she knew anything about the state. “Other than the Nation’s capital, I never bothered to learn about it. Seems a little too backwoods for my tastes.”

She paused, biting her lip. “Sorry, not only do I do a lot of accents but I also seem to be missing a filter between my brain and mouth.”

“No, you’re not wrong. At least about the town where I lived.” I ran a hand along my hair to make sure it hadn’t escaped again. “Backwoods and close-minded.”

“Stuff happened, huh? You can tell me about it later. Right now, you need to meet the rest of the team.”

She waved me out from my desk and looped her arm through mine without hesitation. She stood well above my 5 foot 4 inches, and I was even wearing heels. I took in her tight jeans and bright red blouse, wishing I was in jeans. The office has a casual dress code, and I was well aware of it, except I figured I should dress up a bit for my first day. My skirt and blue blouse weren’t too outlandishly dressy and were still comfortable. Tomorrow was definitely going to be a jean day, though.

“That’s Chris on the other side of me,” Miranda pointed at a thin, dark-haired boy in the cubicle next to us. When I said boy, it was being kind. Chris didn’t look a day over fifteen. “He doesn’t talk much, so you’ll hardly ever know he’s there. Say hi, Chris. This is our new team member.”

Chris gave us a halfhearted wave and pushed his glasses up on his nose, never taking his eyes off his computer screen. Miranda moved on to the next few desks, glossing over names too quickly for me to remember them. I thought one of them was Thomas, the girl was Carly, and I had no idea who the other two guys were. She pulled me along, excitedly stopping outside the cubicle at the far end of the row from us. She held a finger up, indicating to wait a minute.

“This is Scottie. He’s my favorite.”

Scottie was an enormously muscled black man, somehow able to fit himself in that small square of a cubicle. He was dwarfing everything around him: the desk, the monitors, the chair. How did the chair even support him?

He saw us and smiled at Miranda, motioning he’d be just a second on the call he was finishing up. His voice was deep but soft as he thanked whoever was on the line for calling and wished them a great day.

“Miranda, baby, how you doin’?”

“Excellent!” she beamed. “I want you to meet the new girl.”

Scottie unfolded himself from behind the desk, and I gasped as he stood to his full height. He was probably close to seven feet tall. “Well, who is this gorgeous little thing? I’m Scottie.”

He extended his hand, and I accepted it, his grip swallowing mine as we shook. “Sera.”

“Seer-a, not Sara. She needs to learn to speak up if she doesn’t want people to get that wrong.” Miranda adopted a new voice. It was nasally and choked with an East Coast accent.

Scottie chuckled, a deep, soft rumbling noise, and placed his other hand over our still joined ones. “Give her a minute to adjust, baby. Not everyone can be as loud as you. Don’t let her intimidate you or scare you away on your first day.”

“Me? Scare her?” Miranda swatted him on the arm. “What about you, you big oaf?”

“I might be big, but I’m as gentle and cuddly as a teddy bear. I’m not scary at all.”

He was gigantic, but I already felt he had the big brother vibe working for him. Or teddy bear, like he said. He wasn’t loud or quick to crowd your space like Miranda. I thought I was going to like him.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Scottie. And no, you’re not scary.”

“Ha, see? Not scary.”

Miranda rolled her eyes at the both of us. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I gotta get back at it. I’ll come say hello again when I have some more time. Nice meeting you, Sera.”

“You too.”

I was pulled away as Miranda directed me around the end of the line of cubicles. “He’s probably the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. So sweet. He watches out for all us ladies here. Plus, he’s a bouncer at one of the hottest clubs downtown, so whenever we want to get in, we need to make sure it’s on a night he’s working. We should go this Friday, how about it?”

It was a little hard to keep up with her constant chatter. “Club? I don’t know –“

Miranda stopped and turned toward me, hands on her hips. East Coast Nasal was back. “That small-town girl needs to hurry it up the hell outta here, Sera. You’re in the big city now, and big-city girls go to clubs. What’s the matter? Wait, are you married or have a boyfriend or someone who won’t want you to go? You can tell him not to worry. I can be trusted.”

“No, no, no one like that, I just –“

She held up her hand. “Just nothing. You’re coming with me. End of story. Now, who else do we need to meet?” She returned to surveying the row of employees, and I saw her eyes narrow.

“When did he sneak in?” she muttered.

“Who?” I followed her gaze. “Oh shit.”

“Shit?” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “You seem to have already met the enigmatic Mason.”

The hot guy from the elevator was named Mason. And he was sitting in the desk directly across from mine.