Famished - Meghan O'Flynn (learn to read books TXT) 📗

Noelle sipped her coffee, willing the caffeine to enter her bloodstream ASAP. The morning had been shitty enough already. The second she’d walked in the door, her manager had come over to interrogate her, giant teeth flapping in the breeze.

“I noticed you had a few files left the night before last.”

She’d sat straighter. “I thought I could finish them the following morning. I didn’t have too much lined up, and the workday was over.”

“The overseas offices are in a completely different time zone. Some needed those reports to begin the next day, and you put them another day behind.” His beady eyes had radiated disapproval.

“I’m sorry, sir.” She’d hung her head.

“Don’t let it happen again. There are plenty of people who can do this job.” He had marched away, clenching his ass as if he were trying not to shit his pants.

Noelle’s cheeks were still burning from the episode. She took another sip of coffee.

Hannah poked her head over the cubicle wall. “Everything okay?”

No, I’m just blowing everything. As usual. She was ashamed to admit it, but Hannah’s willingness to pick up the slack was probably the only reason Noelle was still employed. And Hannah’s support in her personal life was probably the only reason she was still sort of normal. Sort of.

Noelle loved her. Maybe more than she should.

“Everything’s fine,” Noelle said, drawing her lips into her best smile to prove that it was true. She held the manufactured grin until Hannah nodded and went back to her desk.

But everything wasn’t fine. She didn’t want to lose this job. She couldn’t go home to a customer service job in a small town where nosiness was written into the charter. She could hear the meddlesome locals now: “I’m so sorry about your mother. How are you holding up?”

She would have to bite her tongue to keep from responding. Those assholes just wanted the story. Noelle’s father being unfaithful was juicy enough, but her mother swallowing a bottle of pills over it was delectable.

Here in Ash Park, no one knew, not even Hannah. Noelle’s life before Harwick Technical belonged to someone else, shoved into a closet in the corner of her brain. That was also where she hid Mr. Cantonelli, big shot attorney with sausage fingers and breath that reeked of sauerkraut and coffee. New York: where the buildings were as high as the crack addicts and stiff as the boss’s cock, especially if you were desperate enough to do anything not to have to return to your nosy hometown and your father’s disapproving stare.

Things had fallen apart as quickly as they had come together. She’d worked hard both on and off her feet, and Cantonelli had still given the promotion to some redheaded bitch.

He had paid for that one.

Noelle had brought him coffee that night for the last time. “Just so you know, Harry, I’m pregnant. I’m pretty sure there’s a case there for sexual harassment, right?”

His face had gone from disbelief to outright terror.

The next morning she had clicked on the television. “And in breaking news, a local attorney was found dead late last night in his office by the cleaning crew. Foul play is not suspected.”

She had faked a resume and gotten in at Harwick Technical before Mr. Cantonelli’s body was in the ground. Faker or no, there was no one to dispute her credentials.

Not anymore.

Noelle’s heel was doing a wild dance under the desk. She closed her eyes and saw Cantonelli behind her eyelids, his bulldog face contorting in ecstasy above her.

I’ll make sure you get that job, honey.

Then Harry’s face turned into her mother’s, eyes open and vacant, vomit on her pillow like the day Noelle had found her.

Fucking slut, her mother said.

You weren’t any better, Mom.

I got a house and a family out of it, her mother sneered. What the fuck do you have?

Noelle opened her eyes. Her boss walked by the glass doors.

She picked up her coffee cup and wondered if it would smash through the window and actually hit him if she threw it hard enough. Her fingers tightened on the mug as if all her fury was pooling in her hands. She was going fucking insane. Noelle slammed her cup against the desk, and coffee splashed over the brim.

“Noelle?” Ralph, her coworker across the way, was wringing his hands next to her cubicle.

“I was wondering if”—his eyes dropped to the floor—” if you might want to go out sometime? I mean, I know I’ve asked you to do stuff before, but I just keep…hoping?”

Noelle took in Ralph’s nerdy glasses and weak, vulnerable gopher face. Her first day there, he had watched her breasts as she panicked at the stack of paperwork. Her jaw clenched in anger.

“Sure,” she said, trying to look excited.

Ralph’s face lit up. “Really? I mean, great! Let me know where I can pick you up.” He almost skipped back to his cubicle.

Asshole.

The next night, they ate at a small Italian restaurant off Orchard Lake Road.

“So what do your parents do?” he asked.

“They’re in real estate.”

“Cool. It’s a good area for that. They live nearby?”

“No. They live in Texas,” she said, hoping she would remember the information later.

“Oh.”

After dinner, she let him walk her to the elevators in her building. “Good night, Ralph,” she said, pushing the button as she turned her back on him.

“Good night.”

The following week he took her to a Tigers baseball game. His excitement was palpable as she sat with him behind third base. She stifled a yawn.

“Do you like baseball?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“My ex hated it. But then again, she hated me, too. Thought I was unstable when really she just couldn’t keep up with me.” He had a laugh like a donkey’s bray.

Couldn’t keep up? Right. Noelle kept her eyes on the first baseman as he reeled back to catch a