Page 8 of Whatever It Takes

He sips his coffee. Silence lingering, and his eyes focus on me even harder.

It feels hot in here all of a sudden. I push up the sleeves of my hoodie.

“Garrison,” Connor says after a tense beat. “I don’t want to waste your time. I don’t think you want to waste mine.” He sets down the coffee cup and slides a printed piece of paper across the table. I recognize it instantly as the attachment he sent last night.

Myfaileddrug test.

Awesome.

I read the small details quickly. The chart has a spike for increased levels of THC.Marijuana. I smoked a blunt a couple days before Willow left for London. If I’d known there was going to be a drug test at Cobalt Inc., I wouldn’t have smoked—but this is my first corporate job.

The only other place I’ve worked is Superheroes & Scones, and the employees there were all nerds, geeks, or broken toys needing a home. No one even needs a reference to get hired at S&S.

“You’re firing me,” I assume.

Connor is a hard book to read. Face impassive. He could bluff his way out of any poker hand. It makes this interaction more uncomfortable. I shift in my seat.

“You really think I’d fire you over marijuana?” Connor asks, voice calm.

“I mean…maybe.” I glance around the glass walls and the cubicles outside his office. Women walk around in pantsuits and pencil skirts. Men take phone calls and sit in meetings in boardrooms. Every wall isglass.

Like they want you to see how fucking important they are. I can’t imagine any of his other employees smoking on their free time.

Connor leans back in his chair. “Garrison.” He draws my attention back to him. “I don’t care if you smoke, as long as it doesn’t hinder your performance here.”

My shoulders relax and I release a breath. “It won’t,” I say, almost hurried. It even surprises me. How much I want to keep this job.It’s the only thing I have right now.“I don’t usually smoke weed. I’m not a pot head or anything. It just helps me mellow out sometimes.”

Connor nods like he already assumed this about me. “Company policy is to have you take a confirmation test to make sure the first drug test wasn’t a false positive. But I’ll take this conversation as proof that it wasn’t.” He passes another paper to me. “Because you failed the first, you’re going to have to undergo random drug tests throughout your first year here.”

Sounds fair.Shit, I’m just happy I still have a job.

He glances at the clock on his wall, then back to me. “Make no mistake, Garrison. If I find you’re taking harder drugs like opiates or cocaine, you won’t have a job here. This isn’tWolf of Wall Street.My employees are useless to me if their health is at risk.”

“Noted.” I don’t mention how I’ve tried most drugs. Most I couldn’t care less about. And I’m not around people who’d pressure me to do them anymore.

Connor puts his fingers to his temple. “Let’s talk about your project.”

I grimace. Honestly, I’d much rather talk about my failed drug test again. “It’s going splendidly.” My sarcasm is broken because it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to come out during a meeting with my boss.

“You don’t have an idea of what you’re creating yet.” Connor assumes correctly again.

“I mean, it’s kind of difficult when you said I could createanything,” I tell him. When it comes to tech development, that’s a wide fucking spectrum, and I want to choose the right thing. It’s just figuring out what it is.

“Take your time,” Connor says. “You don’t have a deadline.”

That scares me even more. Because Connor Cobalt is the kind of guy where youdon’twant to waste his time. And he’s giving me infinite quantities of it.

I’m also really aware that not a lot of people get this kind of opportunity. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s married to a Calloway sister—therefore has ties to my girlfriend—maybe I wouldn’t be in this position right now. It feels like nepotism. But I’m not going to throw it away.

“What if I take years to even come up with an idea?” I ask. I can’t believe he’d ignore his bottom line just for me. He’s a business guy. They tend to give a shit about money, and I’m currently on an eighty-thousand dollar salary with benefits.

“Then you take years,” Connor says like it doesn’t bother him. “But I don’t think you will. And I’m always right.”

He’s always right.

A part of me wants to prove him wrong. And I don’t know what that says about me.

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