The Boyfriend Project Read online

  “Of course you wouldn’t have discovered the volcano sushi roll if not for Craig,” London said. “But I get your point.”

  “Her point,” Samiah stressed, “is that we’re three beautiful, successful women who swallowed the bullshit society tries to feed us. Every single one of us is much too good for Craig Walters. Or whatever his name is. The point is—”

  Their heads turned at the sound of two sharp knocks on her front door, followed by the distinct click of the lock disengaging. A second later, the door opened and her sister and brother-in-law, Bradley, walked in with wide eyes and big smiles.

  “Oh, wow,” Denise said as she took in the sight before her. “I didn’t think I’d find all three of you here.”

  “It’s a good thing we went with the half-dozen bagels instead of just three,” Bradley said, following his wife to the sofa.

  “Carbs,” Taylor said with a dreamy sigh, making grabby hands toward the bag Bradley carried.

  He held up a finger. “Just a sec.” He pivoted toward the kitchen.

  “So, how are you, ladies?” Denise asked as she rested on the arm of the sofa next to London. “It would seem you all had quite a night.”

  “Yes, we did,” Taylor said with a cheeriness Samiah couldn’t comprehend after the night they’d had. Her disposition was as bright as the sun streaming through the tall windows.

  Samiah made the introductions. “Ladies, this is my sister, Denise, and her husband, Bradley. Guys, this is—”

  “Oh, we know who you both are,” Denise said, her cagey smile setting off an alarm in Samiah’s head.

  “I’m pretty sure the entire world knows who they are by now,” Bradley said. He set a platter of bagels with flavored cream cheeses on the glass sofa table, then rested his hands on Denise’s shoulders and started massaging her neck with his thumbs. “Well, maybe not the people in Australia.”

  “Yet,” Denise added.

  Dread slithered down Samiah’s spine. “What are you two talking about?”

  “I figured you hadn’t seen it yet, based on how calm you all are.” Denise pulled out her phone, swiped across the screen, and held it up. “It was at five hundred thousand views last I checked.”

  “What!” Samiah, London, and Taylor all yelped at the same time.

  Samiah grabbed the phone. London and Taylor gathered around her. Someone at the restaurant had captured their argument with Craig and posted it online. Her stomach dropped.

  “Bossip picked it up. So has BuzzFeed. No TMZ, though,” Denise said around a mouthful of the cinnamon raisin bagel she’d just bitten into.

  “Only a matter of time,” Bradley chipped in.

  Samiah increased the volume on the phone, although now that the fogginess of the alcohol had worn off, she recalled what was said last night with stunning clarity.

  Lying piece of dog shit?

  Yikes. She hadn’t remembered that.

  “There’s another video that was shot from the opposite angle. That’s the one I saw first,” Denise said. “I was so afraid you’d punched that Craig guy, but then I saw you’d only poked him.”

  “You should have punched him,” Bradley said. “I would have punched him if I was there.” His ginger-colored brows curved inward with his frown.

  Samiah looked up at him and wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. Craig wasn’t linebacker-big, but he probably had a good seventy pounds on her perpetually thin brother-in-law. What Bradley lacked in heft, he made up for in heart. She handed the phone back to Denise, then stood and walked over to him, wrapping him up in a hug.

  “Thank you, honey.” Samiah sniffed. “But I don’t think any of us have to worry about Craig anymore.”

  “I’m just hoping his other women have seen the video and know not to trust him either,” Taylor said.

  “You think there were others?” Bradley asked.

  “Yes,” the four women in the room answered.

  Her sister and brother-in-law left them with breakfast and a promise to check up on Samiah later in the week. Once they finished off the bagels, she, Taylor, and London sat in her living room, encountering the first awkward silence between them since their eventful meeting. The horror of knowing the most painfully embarrassing moment of their lives was now fodder for memes around the world muzzled all other thoughts.

  London was the first to break the silence. After crossing her legs, she rested her clasped hands on her knee and said, “I’m happy I changed out of my scrubs before going to the restaurant last night. If I’m going to get caught on camera, I want to get caught in something that shows the world I have a nice ass.”

  “You have a great ass,” Taylor said.

  “So do you,” Samiah told her.

  There was another beat of silence before the three of them burst out laughing. Now that the dam had broken, Samiah couldn’t hold it in. She rolled over on the sofa, cackling until she caught a stitch in her side.

  “Oh, my God.” She took another moment to catch her breath. “I needed that.”

  “We all needed that,” Taylor said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. Silence fell over them again, then Taylor added, “Well, I should probably get going. I’ve got a bunch of meal plans to put together for my clients.” She reached for her ankle-high boots and slipped them on.

  London slapped her hands on her knee and stood. “I should go too. It’s been forever since I drank like this. I need to sleep off the rest of those Moscow Mules before my shift tomorrow.” She braced her hands against her lower back and stretched. “Thank God I pushed those hernia surgeries to the middle of the week.”

  Samiah looked from one woman to the other as something akin to panic stole over her.

  “So is this it?” she asked. “This is how this ends?”

  London hunched her shoulders in a cautious shrug. “Are we supposed to hug or something?”

  “Yeah. No.” Samiah shook her head. “I mean…maybe?”

  She didn’t know what she meant, but she knew it didn’t feel right to just walk away from one another after everything they’d been through over the past twelve hours.

  “This just feels…I don’t know…anticlimactic. We should share phone numbers. Or, at the very least, connect on social media.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Taylor said. She reached into her black clutch and drew out a couple of business cards. “I like you two. You get to have my real number,” she said with a wink. “Give me a call sometime and let me know how you’re both doing.”

  “I’ll go you one better,” London said, slipping the business card in her back pocket. “Why don’t we meet for drinks next week? Just to check in on each other. I have a feeling things will get a little crazy following this viral video.” She shot Taylor a good-natured grin. “I’ll even bring the kombucha.”

  “I prefer the ones with ginger, thank you very much.”

  Relief flooded Samiah’s veins. She would explore just why it was so important not to lose touch with these two later. For now, she was just happy they were going to connect again.

  “It’s a date,” she said. “Shoot me a text with whatever time works best for the two of you and I’ll come up with a place to meet.”

  “Aww, now I do want a hug,” Taylor said. She stretched her arms wide and gathered London and Samiah in an embrace.

  Samiah saw both women to the door with a promise to contact them later in the week. Then she went to her bedroom and fell face-first onto the bed. She grabbed her phone, pulled up the YouTube video, and groaned. Another twenty thousand views since she’d last watched it less than a half hour ago. This was such a freaking disaster.

  She set the phone beside her on the mattress and twisted around, staring up at the stark white ceiling. She wondered if she should add another item to her list.

  Item 58: Have half a million people witness the most humiliating moment of your life.

  At least it would be an easy one to check off.

  Chapter Three

  Samiah had always v
iewed her condo’s proximity to the high-rise that housed Trendsetters IT Solutions as a bonus.

  Today, she regretted the hell out of her short commute to work. The compulsion to retreat grew stronger with each loathsome step she took toward the building.

  She’d considered calling in sick, but quickly recognized the futility in that. Her coworkers’ scrutiny would be waiting for her whenever she returned to the office. It was better for her to face their judgmental reaction to Saturday night’s disaster now and get it over with.

  As she pushed through the building’s revolving doors, trepidation slithered along her spine like a serpent, poised to bite her in the ass at any moment. The lobby teemed with employees of the various tech companies occupying the building. As usual, Samiah felt overdressed in her Anne Klein jacket and pencil skirt, surrounded by all these people who had never grasped the concept of Casual Fridays. Every day in the Austin tech world was Casual Friday. Maybe she should have opted for jeans today. Maybe then she wouldn’t stand out so much.

  Hyperaware of the gazes that followed her as she walked through the brightly lit lobby, Samiah focused on the bank of elevators straight ahead. The swirling hum of the floor buffing machine drowned out any chatter before it hit her ears, but she caught several people pointing out of the corner of her eye. One woman even gave her a thumbs-up. Samiah acknowledged her support with a brief nod and smile before slipping onto a nearly full elevator.

  Familiar faces surrounded her, but she didn’t know a single name. This building had over thirty tenants. Everyone treated one another with reserved politeness and congenial respect, but other than the smokers who congregated in a corner of the concrete patio on the south end of the property, no one took the time to get to know anyone who was not a coworker.

  Unless someone was hunting for a new job, of course. That’s when Samiah usually found herself engaged in a casual conversation with a fellow building-mate. It would start out innocent enough, but would eventually meander into a discussion about possible job openings with the company that occupied the building’s top two floors. Trendsetters’ forest-green-and-white badges were the envy of the building.

  She was blessed to have joined the firm just before its newest iteration of WiMax integration software hit big, making them the industry leader in providing Wi-Fi hotspot payment systems in developing countries. Numerous hotels, fast-food chains, and coffeehouses around the globe utilized Trendsetters’ products to pay for the “free” Wi-Fi they offered their customers. And their client list continued to grow. Everyone wanted to work here. Samiah wouldn’t give up her position for anything or anyone.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use a day off every once in a while. Like today. She’d have loved to play hooky today.

  With stops on nearly every floor, it took a full eight minutes to finally arrive at the twenty-second. The elevator doors opened directly into Trendsetters’ very trendy lobby. Its focal point, the Water Wall, took up the entire space behind the receptionist’s semicircular desk. It featured a waterfall that changed colors throughout the day and cascaded down a steel wall speckled with embossed quotes from tech giants. Her favorite was the one from Steve Jobs: I want to put a ding in the universe. She’d made it her motto the moment she first read it.

  On either side of the Water Wall stood twin glass-and-chrome curving staircases that led to the twenty-third floor, where Engineering and Security were housed. Even more eye-catching than the water feature was the row of brick-red benches on either side of the lobby. Each seat was held up by a strong, transparent acrylic rod that extended from the wall, making it appear as though the benches were suspended in midair.

  “Good morning.” Jamie Claiborne, Trendsetters’ receptionist, greeted her with a bright smile.

  Samiah braced herself for the onslaught of questions she knew awaited her. “Good morning,” she replied.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  When Jamie returned her attention to her computer monitor without mentioning what happened Saturday night, Samiah breathed her first easy breath of the morning. Maybe today wouldn’t be awkward after all.

  But the moment she stepped behind the Water Wall and into the main work area, an eruption of applause broke out. Heat suffused her face; her ears felt as if they were on fire.

  She was all for being applauded at work, but not for something like this.

  Get it together. Be cool. Be charming. Don’t let them see you sweat.

  Holding her hands up, she summoned a smile from some part of her being that hadn’t shriveled up and died over the weekend and addressed the office as a whole.

  “I know everyone is dying to hear whether or not I beat Craig up after the video ended. I did not. See.” She flipped her hands back and forth, showing them her unblemished knuckles. “No scars.”

  Laughter and more cheers rumbled throughout the office. Samiah hoped that was enough to satisfy them.

  She should have known better.

  She couldn’t take two steps without being stopped by a coworker wanting to know how it felt to be YouTube famous or asking if she really didn’t know that Craig had been conning her. Because of course she would knowingly date a guy who was conning her. Managing to not roll her eyes every ten seconds would likely be her greatest feat of the day.

  It took a full twenty minutes to make it to the sanctuary of her private office, although it wasn’t all that private. Ninety percent of Trendsetters’ office space was transparent—literally. The walls and doors of most offices and conference rooms were made of tempered glass.

  Before she could stow her purse in her desk drawer, Aparna from Research and Development and Christy from Engineering came into her office wanting to know the scoop, followed by Rashad and Ali from the Marketing Department. Samiah didn’t know which she wanted to do more, bang her head against her desk or scream at the top of her lungs. Neither was acceptable, so she pasted on a fake grin and entertained the teasing jibes.

  She wouldn’t have to feign an illness if she wanted an excuse to leave work early. Pretending this was all some hilarious joke and not her fucking life they were laughing about had sparked a headache the size of the old Houston Astrodome.

  An announcement that there were donuts and hot chocolate in the communal kitchen granted her a reprieve from the constant stream of nosy coworkers dropping in. Grateful for the first moment of quiet she’d experienced all morning, she used the opportunity to read over her notes for the presentation she and the members of her Implementation team were scheduled to give this afternoon. As she edited one of the slides, a message popped up, informing the entire team that their two o’clock meeting had been moved to noon.

  “Shit.”

  It was bad enough she’d lost half the morning to coworkers pestering her about that viral video. Now Grant Meecham was stealing another two hours of prep time from her.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. Grant, Trendsetters’ director of Global Sales, had called the meeting, and whenever Grant set up a meeting he did everything he could to schedule it over lunch so that he could eat on the company’s dime. Cheap bastard.

  “Hey there, Miss Celebrity,” came an irritatingly sweet voice from somewhere over her shoulder.

  Samiah’s eyes fell shut at the nauseating sound. She dialed up another fake smile before turning her chair around.

  “Good morning, Keighleigh. Can I help you?”

  Her coworker moved from where she’d stood just outside the door, sauntering up to Samiah’s desk. “I just wanted to know how you were doing. Sounds as if you had yourself an…um…interesting weekend.”

  Samiah fought the urge to roll her eyes.

  There was one in every company. For Samiah, Keighleigh Miller was the one. The one who clawed at her nerves on a daily basis, the way Denise’s pesky cat Boomer used to claw at Samiah’s bedroom door whenever her sister wasn’t home. The one who constantly kissed up to management. The one who, on more than one occasion, had tried to take credit for
Samiah’s work.

  She was willing to play along with the rah-rah, we’re all in this together, there’s no “I” in “team” bullshit Trendsetters pushed onto their employees, but only to a certain point. If the side-eye she’d caught several members of their team throwing Keighleigh’s way at last week’s meeting was any indication, Samiah wasn’t the only one who’d grown tired of her coworker’s shenanigans.

  “Yes, it was an eventful weekend,” Samiah said, dropping her smile. She was tired and overwrought and unwilling to engage in any further pretense. She sat back in her chair and asked again, “Can I help you with something?”

  “No.” The purple tips of Keighleigh’s white-blond hair swished along her leather jacket’s upturned collar. “Like I said, just checking on you.”

  Keighleigh tried way too hard to be the rebel who thumbed her nose at society’s rules, but Samiah knew better. She’d happened upon her Facebook page while killing time one lazy Friday evening and encountered several pictures her coworker had been tagged in from high school. Keighleigh had been your average, run-of-the-mill cheerleader type. This edgy persona was all an act. Samiah wouldn’t be surprised if her nose ring was a fake.

  Stop it.

  She despised cattiness among women in the workplace. Things were rough enough for their gender, especially in the male-dominated tech world.

  But Keighleigh Miller had started this shit. From the moment she’d joined the Implementation team, she’d shown her willingness to double-cross whomever she deemed a threat or impediment to her rise to the top. Another of their coworkers, Amy Dodd, had learned that the hard way after Keighleigh innocently let it slip that Amy had confided in her that she was struggling with a project she’d been assigned. Their supervisor, Justin Vail, had placed Keighleigh on the project and she’d taken over—after Amy had already completed most of it.

  Samiah refused to fall victim to Keighleigh’s backstabbing.