Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 161

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Chapter 161

You were late, but not late enough that anyone noticed other than Gemma who immediately noted that you weren't wearing one of your usual work outfits. She raised an eyebrow and smirked at the two of you, and a few minutes later she and Sabrina stepped out of the intern conference room and came back fifteen minutes later - Sabrina's makeup was clean and fresh.

Nothing out of the norm, or at least the new norm, happened that morning. Joy came in late, as usual. Joy was a simmering pot of bitchiness, as usual. And Joy left early for lunch, as usual.

The rest of you ended up all grabbing lunches from the bodega and eating up in the office, so you didn't get a good chance to chat with Gemma beyond the usual work jokes and teases. That actually made things feel lighter though - most of the morning you'd been thinking about the conversation with the Uber driver, and how you needed to have some heavier conversations with Gemma.

Despite the quiet morning and lunch, things started picking up in the afternoon when Garrisson stopped by right at 1 pm and summoned Sabrina to his office.

She wasn't back by the time Joy did, and after ten minutes of Joy futzing around with her 'obsolete piece of shit' laptop she seemed to finally notice that Sabrina was missing. "Where's Twiggy?" she asked, gesturing at Sabrina's usual seat.

"In a meeting," you said without looking up from your work. "And her name is Sabrina."

"Ugh. What do you mean, in a meeting?" Joy asked. "What possible reason does she have to be in a meeting?"

"We didn't ask," Gemma said, staring down the length of the conference table at her.

"Well, she better be able to explain herself," Joy muttered. She pounded a finger on her laptop keyboard a few times, then closed it. "John, there's a cleanup job in the basement my mother just emailed me about. We need to go take care of it."

"I'll go with him," Gemma said, standing up.

"No, you won't," Joy said. "There are sensitive documents, so I'm supposed to take care of them."

"Then why is John going?" Eric asked. "And why not me, or Andy? John always gets to do these other jobs. I could use a break from document scanning."

"Because I said so," Joy sneered at him. "Come on, John."

"One second," you said, typing quickly on your laptop as if you were finishing something off. You weren't actually on any screen and just used it as a reason to let Joy finish at her seat and grab her purse and start towards the door. That gave you the time to pull out your phone and turn on the recording app without her being able to see it.

You stood and went around the table, Gemma touching her fingers to yours for a split second as you moved past her. Enough to try and reassure you, but not give you away to the others. You followed Joy out of the conference room and towards the elevators.

"So, which room are we cleaning?" you asked her.

"It's down in the basement," she said. "One of the storage rooms."

"Yeah, but which one?" you asked again.

"I'll show you," she said, pursing her lips disapprovingly. The problem was that you couldn't tell if she was doing it because she thought you should have been eager to do what you thought she had planned, or if this really was a job sent to her by her mother and she just didn't like being questioned.

Once you were in the elevator, you cleared your throat and shuffled your feet and didn't really want to even get down to the basement alone with her. "So, Joy," you said. "About the last time we, ah, talked..."

"Not here," she said.

That... wasn't what you expected. Wait- You glanced up at the ceiling of the elevator but there wasn't an obvious security camera. What if there was one, though? Hidden behind a grill or in a light or something. Fuck, what if people checked it and saw you openly kissing both Gemma and Sabrina? Did a security guard review the footage? Was there one actively watching?

In the short time it took to reach the basement, you had started to sweat bullets. Not only were you in a rough position now, but you'd accidentally done that to yourself and the girls before, too.

Why couldn't you just follow the rules? No PDA at work!

"Come on," Joy said, motioning for you to follow her into the winding corridors of the basement. She seemed to wander for a moment, but then stopped us at a door and pulled out a key, opening it up. Inside was a storage room not unlike the one that you had helped clean up before, down to the tables and chairs and racks of bankers' boxes full of old files.

And, surprisingly, it was a mess.

"You start in the stacks and make sure you grab any garbage, and bring me any boxes that look like they are out of place," Joy said. "I need to start on the documents. Just try not to read anything, OK?"

"Uh, yeah," you said, a little surprised she wasn't trying to succubus you. The job was real. "Sure."

You went into the stacks of files and ended up coming out with an armload of garbage. Someone had spent a significant amount of time down in the room working. Then you came out again with a trio of filing boxes that had been displaced. "Are these of use to you?" you asked her.

"Let me see," she said, and quickly read the labels as you held them up. "Yeah, put that one here on the desk and that bottom one on the couch, then try to find where that last one is supposed to go back. Please."

"Sure," you said.

Joy said 'please.'

She was being... pleasant?

You did as she asked, and it took you a couple of minutes to find the right spot for the box since she'd already had four more around her at the work tables. Once you did and slid it home you returned to her. "What's next?" you asked.

"Do another quick check for garbage and then empty it out and bring it to one of the drops in the hall," she said, not looking up from the page she was reading to try and re-file it properly. "I should be able to give you some files to alphabetize after that."

You nodded and went to it, finding a last couple of wrappers in the stacks and behind the couch before tying up the garbage bag and replacing it with a new one, then walking it out to one of the big grey rolling bins in the corridor. You weren't really sure what to expect at this point, and before going back in you took out your phone and checked that it was still recording before putting it back in your pocket.

Alright, you thought to yourself.Let's see if anything happens.

You went back into the room and Joy pointed to a stack of files. "Start alphabetizing those," she said. "Just don't look inside them, alright?"

"OK," you said. "Uh... what about that... conversation?"

She glanced up at you with a raised eyebrow. "We have work to do, John. We can talk some other time."

"OK," you said, and started working.

What the fuck?