Noelle August - Boomerang

“Stop talking to me so I can take care of this. I’ll text to confirm.”

“Thanks, doll.” I really do have the best friends on earth.

“No worries,” says Skyler, who then treats me to a big, toothy grin. “Tell Ethan he’s a hot piece of ass.”

He laughs beside me, and I shake my head in mortification.

“I’m pretty sure he already knows.”

Ethan

Q: Do you plan dates, or do you like to be surprised?

The cab moves down Wilshire at a crawl. I can’t stop my leg from jittering, even when it’s clear Mia notices. I want to swing the door open, throw off my jacket, and sprint to Century City. I know I could get there faster. I smile, thinking of my dad’s favorite comment when he comes to visit. Why is everyone in such a damn hurry here? But if you want to get somewhere, you accept it. Successful people live their lives in a damn hurry.

“Do you work for ESPN or something?”

Mia’s question surprises me. Then I remember she must have seen my weights and soccer gear.

“No, I wish.” Earning a living from sports would be great. I came close to making that happen. Set a few records at UCLA. But a knee injury junior year ruled out pro soccer for me. After ACL surgery, it was never quite the same.

“I’m starting a new job today,” I tell Mia, focusing on the future. “Marketing for an online business.” I can’t bring myself to say “internship.” I have a degree from a top university. You’d think I could find a way to get paid to work, but that’ll change soon enough. “What about you? Swimsuit model?”

I don’t know why I’m flirting with her. I won’t ever see her again, and we’ve already hooked up. Not that I remember it. But she’s hot, and there’s something intriguing about her. She’s a little mystery, wrapped in my favorite dress shirt.

“Well, of course.” She smiles and pats her hip. “With all this to work with, what else would I be?”

She’s so comfortable with her body. Amazing after two years with Alison, who still wanted the lights off when we slept together. I don’t think Mia and I even started in bed. We ended up there though.

“What else?” I say. “I don’t know. Vegas showgirl?”

“Wow, thanks. That’s so progressive of you.”

“Just my imagination speaking. So, what’s it really? What do you do?”

Mia crosses her legs, and I manage to keep eye contact. “Well, actually, I’m still in school.”

“School . . . great.” Please be eighteen. She has to be. “What year and where?”

“I’m a sophomore at LA High.”

I almost choke on my tongue. “You’re what?”

She bursts into laughter. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Actually, I’m a senior at Occidental. Studying filmmaking. But I took on this position for my last semester to get some real-world experience.”

“You’re a filmmaker? That’s cool. I love this one art house film. Star Wars? Maybe you haven’t heard of it. It’s an obscure title.”

That’s all I can come up with to cover my lack of film knowledge. I don’t watch movies; I play soccer. When I’m not playing soccer, I read books about history, or biographies—subjects a girl like Mia would probably hate.

She narrows her eyes like she’s deep in thought. “Star Wars, you say? It doesn’t ring a bell, but you know us film majors. If it’s not some grainy black-and-white transfer, dubbed into Slovak and then back into English, it’s so not worth the time.”

She stretches her legs into my personal space. I can’t tell if she’s flirting or just at ease. Either way, I like it.

“What about you?” she asks. “What excites you, other than toaster panties?”

I laugh. “Hey. That wasn’t my doing.” Though, who knows? It actually might have been. I have a quick debate with myself about whether to tell her about my soccer career and decide against it. “I just graduated from UCLA in June. So, you know, marching bravely into my adult life and all that. First day on the job for me today.”

“And we’re both starting out with hangovers. Sweet.”

“But at least we’re both wearing underwear.”

“At least there’s that.” Mia leans her head back against the seat and smiles. There’s nothing flirty about it. Nothing forced or fake. It’s just a really great smile.

Suddenly we’re trapped in a staring contest. Her gaze is so direct and her green eyes are like prisms. They hold so much light inside them. There are questions and jokes and stories in her eyes. I know right then I want this again. To be looked at by her again.

“Look, Mia, I know this isn’t how—”

The cab jerks to a stop.

“Eighteen dollars,” the cabby says.

Mia reaches in her purse. “I’m paying for his fare, too. Can you add it?”

“Sure thing, lady. Still eighteen dollars.”

Mia and I lock eyes. I can’t believe this. We’ve come to the same place? There’s no way.

Someone lays on the horn behind us.

The cabby curses and pulls closer to the curb. “Twenty-one hundred Avenue of the Stars. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right,” we blurt at the same time.

“Okay. Wow,” Mia says. She shoves some bills at him, and we get out of the cab.

The office building rises up in front of us, a smooth wall of smoke-tinted glass that jets to the sky. It blew me away when I came here for my interview. I remember thinking this was the place that would start my future, but I’m not thinking that right now. I’m trying to figure out the present.

Mia and I walk through the doors and join a cluster of people waiting at the bank of elevators.

We haven’t said a word to each other since we left the cab.

We haven’t looked at each other.

I don’t even know if we’re standing together, or just in the same vicinity.

I shift my shoulders, telling myself that it’s the suit that feels strange and constricting.

The elevator arrives and the doors part. I hold the door, letting a dozen people flood past me. Then I step inside and reach for the button for the seventeenth floor, but it’s already lit.

Mia stands lost behind a wall of dark suits. The urge to shove toward her comes over me. That seems desperate, though it also feels awkward not to stand with her. But then it’s too late. The doors slide closed and I’m trapped in the front, staring at the seam between the steel panels.

We hit the seventh floor, and four people step out.

It’s not until the doors close again that I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

Mia’s still on the elevator.

Twelfth floor. Two people leave.

Fourteenth. Three more.

I glance at the elevator controls. Only one floor is still lit.

“Well, this is a surprise.” Mia is still a few feet behind me. I can’t tell, but I think she’s smiling. I want to ask her at least one of the questions charging through my brain, but doors slide open to the glass-walled Boomerang lobby, and we both step out.

Mia

Q: Dress like a wreck, or dress for success?

My brain decides it’s an excellent time to go on strike, leaving me with zero resources to puzzle through the fact that I, a) woke up next to this lovely male-type person after engaging in activities I tragically can’t recall; b) ended up in a cab with him, which; c) took us to the exact same destination; until d) we found ourselves stepping out on the same floor. A floor that houses one business and one business only: Boomerang.

My new place of employment.

And apparently his too.

“So, this job of yours?” I say. A corkscrew of hair drops into my line of vision as if to underscore my rattled state.

“Internship,” he replies, and the word comes out heavy, like a confession.

“For Boomerang.”

He nods, and his hands busy themselves with the knot of his tie, reminding me of my own less-than-professional attire. I’m itching to get to my cell phone, to find out if Beth’s made it yet. “You too, huh?”

I’m too shell-shocked to frame a reply, so I just nod like a dummy and start what feels like one of those weird dream-walks through a space that seems to shrink and expand with each step.

I joked about never having seen Star Wars, but looking down a long expanse of gleaming bamboo floors, “The Imperial March” sounds in my head. The place is more Ridley Scott than George Lucas, though, with its curving white walls and recessed purple lighting. The cubicles have low smoked-glass walls and funky half-circle workstations. As Skyler would say, it looks like someone drank a feng shui cocktail and puked the decor.

We pass a few cubicles occupied by girls in thick black glasses with asymmetrical haircuts and guys in skinny jeans with various configurations of facial hair. Hipster Central, it seems, though Adam Blackwood, Boomerang’s founder and president, looks like the love child of Ryan Gosling and . . . well, Ryan Gosling.

“I’m supposed to . . .” Quickly, Ethan amends, “I guess we’re supposed to check in with HR, fill out some paperwork, surrender our firstborn. That sort of thing.”

“Crap, I already surrendered my firstborn at the last job. Do you have a spare?”

He grins at me. “How would I have a spare firstborn?”

“Oh, fine, you’re going to drag logic into the conversation?”

A towering blond woman in an emerald-green suit with lapels sharp enough to slice cheese stalks toward us, her expression set somewhere between rabid and murderous.

“You have got to be kidding me!” she shrieks as she comes alongside us and casts a tundra-cold glance in my direction.

Immediately, I think she’s talking about my clothing, which, while not precisely appropriate, wouldn’t seem to merit a Teutonic hissy fit. But her eyes bounce away from me again, and she presses her hand to her ear. “If this guy doesn’t work out, I will have no problem jamming an ice pick up your skinny ass, Paolo,” she says, and I finally notice the Bluetooth device tucked up next to a chignon tight enough to give her cat eyes.

She clips away, leaving flowers to shrivel and birds to drop from the sky in her wake.

“Jesus,” Ethan mutters, and I realize I’ve actually grabbed onto his arm in terror. “Here’s hoping she’s not the HR rep.”

I allow myself a moment’s enjoyment before releasing him. “Here’s hoping she doesn’t even work here.”

He smiles. “Here’s hoping she’s leaving on a ten-year cruise.”

“To Antarctica.”

“To reunite with her clan, the snow beasts.”

I laugh. And my eyes find his again. Maybe I’ve lucked into more than just an internship here.

“Sorry to break up the party,” says a voice behind us.

I turn to find Beth standing near a doorway marked with a pink heart made of two boomerangs. She wears a stick-straight black wig over her kinky hair and rocks a ridiculous blue gingham romper. Like some kind of vampire farm girl—from Harlem.

Rattling a plastic bag at me, she says, “Chop, chop, girl. Let’s jump in here and get you fixed up. I have another go-see at noon, and it’s way the hell up in Burbank.”

“Thank God you made it.” I rush to her side, calling out a quick intro as I push open the door to the ladies room.

Her shrewd black eyes take in every inch of Ethan, and she reaches out a perfect set of purple acrylics to shake his hand.

“I like your . . .” Ethan makes a sweeping gesture that manages to encompass pretty much all of Beth.

“Yeah, I like yours too.” She slaps my butt, moving me through the door. “If you’re a good boy, maybe Mia will share sometime.”

“Beth!”

The door swings shut on his gape-mouthed expression, and she lets out a big, open-throated laugh. “That boy did not know what hit him.”

Before I have a chance to respond that I know the feeling, she has my dress off over my head and has replaced it with a violet silk blouse. Beth comes from a long line of dressers and stage managers, so this is a feat I’ve witnessed several times before, though it’s my first time on the receiving end.

“Where’d this come from?” I ask.

“It was on my body when I left the house this morning,” she tells me. “Or did you think I walked around looking like some broke-down Dorothy from Oz?”

She drops to the floor and pulls a heather-gray skirt from the bag.

“Step in,” she orders, holding the garment open for me, and I do.

She stands, spins me around, tugs down the bottom of the blouse, zips up the skirt, and then reaches her hands beneath my clothes to do some adjusting.