Read Online Slightly Settled by Wendy Markham - Free Book Online Page A

gape at Mike’s big grin, searching for words, coming up with only, “Wait a minute. What?”
    “My roommate,” he says. “Jack.”
    Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.
    “Jack’s your roommate?”
    You have got to be kidding me.
    “Yup.”
    Clearly, nobody is kidding here.
    This development sinks my Office Party Don’t-dom to a whole new level.
    “Jack? Jack, uh—” Okay, I don’t even know his last name. “Jack the guy I, um, met—” that’s one way to put it “—is your roommate?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “But…I didn’t even know you had a roommate,” I say weakly. (Yes, I know, Dianne did mention it on the phone, but I do not remember that conversation at the moment. It will, however, come back to me eventually.)
    Here’s where Mike says, “Just kidding. I don’t.”
    But he doesn’t. Say it, that is.
    He does, apparently, have a roommate and his roommate’s name is Jack.
    Mental Note: Update résumé during lunch hour.
    “So what’d you think of him?”
    “Jack?”
    “Jack,” he says with an anticipatory quirk of his eyebrows.
    Christ, I feel like he’s shoving a microphone in my face.
    Well, Mike, to be honest, I thought Jack had nice, tight buns.
    “Jack was a good guy.”
    There. A nice, G-rated reply.
    Thank God, thank God, thank God I didn’t sleep with Jack.
    I wanted to. I really did. Standing there on the street in front of my building, with everything hanging in the balance and his big warm arms around me, I desperately wanted to give in and let him come upstairs with me.
    But I mustered every ounce of willpower I possessed, and I didn’t. I just kissed him one last time and ran inside.
    How the hell did I, in my Stoli-soaked, turned-on state, manage to find and embrace my inner Catholic schoolgirl?
    It can only have been divine intervention.
    Like I said, Thank God, thank God, thank God.
    My inner Catholic schoolgirl zaps me with stinging Catholic guilt.
    Mental Note: Unearth rosary beads from bottom of underwear drawer and check Sunday mass schedule.
    “Yeah, Jack’s a great guy,” Mike is agreeing. “He’s the best.”
    I smile. Nod pleasantly. Yup. That Jack’s the best.
    Mercifully, the phone on my desk rings before the painful conversation drags out any longer.
    “That might be Dianne,” Mike says hopefully.
    No, it might not. Because it isn’t his extension that’s ringing; it’s mine.
    Probably Buckley, wanting to know about lunch. Plus, I screened his calls yesterday.
    Or it could be Kate. Or Raphael. I screened them, too.
    I had a massive hangover and spent the entire day lying on my bed in sweats eating carbs, rehydrating and watching made-for-TV movies on Lifetime. And shivering, because my apartment is so drafty. Oh, and cringing every time I thought about what I’d done the night before.
    All in all, I’ve had better days.
    “Tracey Spadolini,” I announce into my phone in a brisk, efficient voice—only because Mike is standing here. Calls that come in on my own extension are almost never business-related, but he doesn’t have to know that.
    “Hi,” says a voice.
    A male voice.
    Not Buckley’s. Not Raphael’s.
    I make it’s-for-me motions at Mike, who nods and disappears.
    “Hi,” I say cautiously into the phone.
    “It’s Jack. From Saturday night.”
    Jack. Boss’s roommate Jack.
    “Hi,” I say again. My heart is beating a little faster. Despite my ambivalence, he’s got a great voice. It was hard to tell when we were screaming over the music at the party. He sounds low and manly, unlike Will, the tenor, who was sometimes mistaken for a woman back when he did telemarketing.
    “Tracey, you work for my roommate.”
    No shit.
    “I just found out,” I tell him. “I, um, didn’t even know Mike had a roommate.”
    “Yeah. I was telling him about you yesterday, and we figured it out.”
    Cringing, I imagine that conversation.
    Say, Mike, I met a liquored-up strumpet in a skimpy red frock last night.
    Why, Jack, that sounds like my