Page 55 of Maneater

“I don’t think so. I told him it was my bag. It was bright blue, but he’s a man. He’s not going to realize it wasn’t mine.” I look away, remembering it all once again before shrugging. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not reallyintome. He’s…immune.”

She stares for a long moment before shaking her head and turning to her computer and continuing to type out the email before hitting send. My phone pings with a new message. I know I was CC’d on it, but I can’t even double-check because then she’s turning to me fully and looking at me with intention.

“I’m saying this with so much love, Jose,” she starts, and my gut clenches because she only starts a sentence like this if she thinks I’m going to deny whatever fact she’s trying to share completely. “But the man is so deeply into you and, from what I’m seeing, has been forsome time. Like,since you were in college, some time.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head, laughing her off. “He likes the man-eater. He doesn’t like Josie.” I laugh, but Rory doesn’t, instead looking at me with a soft, sad tilt of her lips.

“God, I’m so tired of you doing this to yourself.”

“What?”

She stands then, moving to the couch and sitting next to me with a face I don’t really want to see, before taking a sigh and reaching for my hand.

“I love you more than anything. My best friend, my partner, I trust you with my life, literally. You know that. So when I say this, I need you to know I’m saying it with all the love in the world.”

I grimace at her out-of-character, mushy statement. “I feel like I’m not going to like whatever it is you’re about to say.”

“You might not at first, but eventually, like always, you’ll see that I’m a genius and always know best. You are your own worst enemy, Josie,” she says softly.

“They’re all the same, Rory. Men like the appeal of me: they like the flirting, they like the body, they like the package. They don’t like the reality. Theysurely don’t like that my job is flirting with other people, typically men. They don’t like that I work nonstop. They don’t like that I’m unreachable sometimes.” I could go on for days, but this is not the first time she’s heard this rant.

“The right one will.”

“Oh, and the right one is Rowan, I suppose?” I ask with a laugh, ignoring the flutter in my belly.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, with a shrug. “What I do know is you’re into him. What I do know is, despite your own experiences and despite seeing the worst in people, you want a relationship. What I do know is that in the four years of working with you, you’ve never dated someone.”

I roll my eyes, eager to shift the focus. “Is thisnotthe pot calling the kettle black?”

She confidently shakes her head. “No.” I raise an eyebrow at her reply, and she continues. “I don’twanta man. I am incredibly happy with my vibrators and my hand, and my work. You are a people person. You want a person, Josie.”

I twist my lips, not liking the way emotion is bubbling in my chest with her words.

My best friend, though nerdy and introverted and with her thick wall keeping out anyone she doesn’t want to see in, has a soft soul. She continues to stare at me before she sighs and smiles softly at me.

“But you’ll get there eventually. When the right one proves himself worthy,” she says. “In the meantime, let’s figure out who is screwing with this place.”

I smile then and nod in appreciation at her change in subject before we get to work.

An hour later, Rory is still trying to sneak into the backend of the security system, while I’m moving from live feed to live feed, trying to find something of note and trying not to get unbearably bored.

“I’ve got it,” Rory whispers, and my body lights up with excitement.

“Really?”

She nods, continuing to stare at her screen. “Yeah. I think I can get into the cloud, but I need to get into the security room.”

My excitement builds while also tempering.

“The security room?” I ask.

She nods, then gives me a wide smile. “Want to play lookout tomorrow?”

TWENTY-THREE

ROWAN

“You look like shit,” Annette says early the next morning on our weekly call, which I have been struggling to pay attention to. I’ve only been able to think about two things since I left that coatroom last night: Josie’s lips and the purse she was rifling through.