"His personal assistant?" Daphne's sculpted red eyebrows lurched upward as she studied my face, waiting for my reaction to her reaction. "Ha, so you traveled all the way over there to meet the rockstar, but came out with his personal assistant's phone number after he ditched you? Interesting." She heaved herself up onto my desk, her silky, tanned legs dangling near me, her black high heels slipping from her feet. "Has he called or texted you yet? It's been two days."

Gosh, she was a killer, for sure. Were we not best friends and co-workers and so not good for each other, I'd have had a spin with her ages ago. But she knew too much about me, and I too much about her, and we'd settled on being BFF's. In any case, I didn't think I was her type—as far as I was aware, she was one hundred percent straight.

"No, not yet. I'm not going to get my hopes up, though. I agreed to go on a date with him, and he said if it doesn't make up for missing out on encountering Leo, he'd refund me twice the amount of the tickets." I stared at my computer screen, double-checking the time: ten more minutes before the end of the boss' meeting.

That meant ten minutes of being able to breathe before Mr. Ivy and his little mini-me Marshall came strutting out of the meeting room to hurl veiled insults at me in the guise of lunch orders and coffees to pick up.

"A personal assistant dating a personal assistant," Daphne giggled, "I like that headline." She hopped off the desk and fixed her bright pink pencil skirt. "But I think he should double your refund anyway, hun. Didn't you say there was no way to reschedule this experience, since Leo is booked up solid for the next, like, five hundred years? I think it's only fair if they give you your money back, regardless. Whether or not you bone this guy."

I winced as I pulled away from my computer screen. She was right. My one-hour commute this morning had reminded me why I'd been saving up so much money in the first place—to move out of Hamilton Heights and get somewhere closer to work. Even if I was just north of Central Park, that'd be enough; traveling down to SoHo every day, and then navigating back up in the evening was a nightmare. A nightmare I'd been enduring for two years, with no end in sight.

This luxury building and all its arched, floor-to-ceiling windows and neon light-beams and high-quality stools and white tables and state-of-the-art technology had been my secondary home for a while now. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I'd slept on the velvety off-white couch in this waiting area where my desk was. How many times I'd considered sneaking into Mr. Ivy's enormous and elegant office, instead. And how many times I'd had to scramble to get up before anyone else arrived, borrow some clothes from former photo-shoots, praying Mr. Ivy wouldn't recognize them, and pretend like I'd gotten here at the crack of dawn to impress him, only to get a mere nod and a snicker as he walked by.

Daphne tipped sideways, checking the doorway for anyone coming over. She was supposed to be monitoring the hallway, in case Mr. Ivy's meeting ended early and she had to sneak off to act like she was working. As a beauty trend columnist, she was an important employee, and less inclined to get in trouble. But Mr. Ivy still watched her carefully and hated that we were friends. In fact, Mr. Ivy hated anything that had to do with me, or so he and his favorite assistant Marshall often implied.

With all my complaints and struggles, I wondered why I was still employed here. LuXe, the high-end fashion magazine that was taking the U.S. by storm. That was the motto they'd indoctrinated in our heads, at least; but it really was an up-and-coming news review that dished on the best trends in the beauty and fashion industries, and interviewed celebrities about their rituals, favorite brands, etc. Like a Cosmopolitan but run by a man who thought he knew what women wanted. Sadly, he was good at figuring that out—a high majority of his staff were women, and he leeched all their ideas for himself, taking all the credit.

Though I was considered staff, I wasn't in on the creative process. I was the editor-in-chief's secondary personal assistant—the one who typed up schedules, booked appointments, fetched breakfasts, lunches, sometimes dinners, and tons of coffee, and ran the dumbest errands. I was more or less a nobody who made more or less nothing to do more or less everything for the big boss.

Daphne was right—Cameron needed to give me my money back, plus more for interest.

Okay, fine, I was being dramatic. It wasn't that big of a deal that Leo Lee had canceled our meet-and-greet. Did I want to see him up close and personal? Absolutely. But would not seeing him stop me from listening to his music? Absolutely not.

I did my research on the way home after the insanely amazing concert. Not only was it not his first time canceling a backstage experience, but other celebrities tended to do that too. "They can't predict how busy they'll be, and they take so much time getting ready that they get stuck in traffic or caught up and they just...can't make it. It's stupid, but it happens all the time," 'I'd read, in LuXe, no less; an article written by one of Daphne's friends who always got the hot scoop on superstars.

"You can barely make rent as it is," whispered Daphne, yanking me out of my reverie of recollections about the concert night. It was two days ago, and I'd only that morning recovered my voice from screaming the song lyrics so loud. "That sweet little studio of yours was a catch. I'd hate to see you lose it over pointless tickets for yet another hot singer who couldn't care less about his fans."

"Hey," I pointed a finger at her, "he does care. He's a philanthropist and donates a lot of time and money for several charities. And he does great things for his fans. Just not," I gulped, "me."

I couldn't complain too much. I had seen Leo, albeit not as up-close as I'd hoped. My seat was right in front of the stage. I was near enough to ogle his rippling muscles under his tight, white t-shirt, which became slightly see-through once he started sweating. I fawned over his gorgeous smile as he sang to me. Well, to the audience, but I liked to daydream he was singing only to me.

I saw Cameron on my way out, grinning at me, then fixing his face into a frown.

He had to destroy my hopes and dreams of meeting Leo.

"I'll be fine," I said to her, refreshing my browser to double check what was next on the agenda today. "You have a workshop in five minutes, Daph, and he might not be attending, but you missed the last one and he bitched about it all day last Friday."

Daphne rolled her eyes as she twirled a strand of her vivid red hair around her finger. "He can't fire me. He needs me. No one writes about make-up like I do."

I scoffed at her boasting, but she was correct. Daphne's resume was long and thick enough to make a celebrity make-up artist blush. She knew her shit, and wrote it well; but she did tend to get a bit pompous about it. That was where I came in, to keep her grounded.

"No one." I cringed; that wasn't helping much. "But it'd still look better if you showed up."

She waved at me. "Fine, fine. But you'd better let me know if this dude texts you. He's got a lot to make up for if he's covering for Leo being a douchebag."

"Leo isn't a douchebag!" I called to her as she swayed out the room, her hips bouncing side to side in a way I wished I could mimic.

Not that I didn't know how to flirt or seduce—my little black book of conquests proved otherwise—but I admired Daphne's bluntness and her bold approach to seduction. She was straight-forward, never mincing her words, always saying exactly what she wanted. I'd seen her in action in a bar once, and had she been bisexual and open to it, I'd have let her take me home.

I was a tad more reserved, but I wasn't unsuccessful. I knew my shit, too, and my shit was fashion. Runways, trends. What singers wore in music videos. The collections of outfits actresses were gifted for big Hollywood movies. I'd seen it all, written about it all, been praised for the ways I'd described it.

Just...not by my boss, the person whose praise mattered most. He preferred to demean me, refer to me as his secretary with halfway decent taste, who was lucky enough to be assisting him. I should have thanked him for all he'd done for me, or so he said. Like the days when he let me dig through the hand-me-downs and rejects from our photo-shoots—once Marshall had had his pick, naturally. He told me to play nice with his precious fabrics, because even though he was giving them to me, they still belonged to LuXe. "Whatever belongs to LuXe, belongs to me. I AM LuXe. You are nothing."

My job wasn't terrific. But I needed it, not only to pay the bills, but to keep pushing forward. That was how it happened in this industry, in New York City. You stuck it out, you worked hard, and you got what you wanted.

Sometimes.

Inside my desk drawer, my phone buzzed, shocking me out of my daydreaming about the next fashion photo-shoot that Marshall and I would get scraps from. I pulled the drawer out and glanced down at the screen—as discreetly as possible, since Mr. Ivy didn't permit texting unless it was at his behest.

I almost fell out of my chair.

Cameron, the P.A. guy you thought was cute: Hi, Emma. Remember me?

I chortled. "Uh, yeah, how could I forget?" I chortled louder at the name he'd given himself in my phone; that wasn't my doing.

Monitoring the doorway—which Daphne abandoned the watch of, since I forced her to actually go to work—I reached into the drawer and took hold of the phone.

Me: Hi, Cameron. Definitely didn't forget you. Pushing it kind of close, waiting two days to contact me, aren't you?

The three dots signaling his imminent reply appeared immediately at the bottom of the screen.

Cameron, the P.A. guy you thought was cute: I would have texted earlier, but I figured you'd need to vent to your girlfriends first about how you didn't get to meet Leo. He's sorry, by the way.

I gritted my teeth; the jerk, teasing me!

But I wouldn't fall for it.

Me: So, when are we going out?

I didn't get a chance to check his reply, because I heard the stomps before I visualized the cavalry. Marshall was hurrying over, and I saw his flushed expression through the glass windows separating our entryway from the rest of LuXe's upscale headquarters.

"He's livid," he said, swooping in as if wearing a grand ball gown and being photographed by famous reporters. That was Marshall's motto—always be camera ready.

Though he was the first assistant, attended events and went on trips with Mr. Ivy, he still was just an assistant, like me. Yet Marshall venerated Mr. Ivy, and believed the world revolved around them, that the sun shone out of their asses.

It didn't. They were both bullies, but no one was bold enough to put them in their places.

I threw my phone back into the drawer. "Should I request another shot of espresso in his coffee today?"

Marshall's eyes snapped to me, their vivid blues almost unreal. "More like a shot of brandy, if you want to keep your job. And that friend of yours, Daphne?" He lowered into his seat, in front of his desk that was closer to Mr. Ivy's door than mine. "She had better have gone to that workshop, or he's going to write her up. He complained about her non-stop today."

I wasn't sure why he was warning me—Marshall was never nice, and this would be considered a nice gesture. I nodded in thanks. "She went. I urged her to."

"Well, one extra fat chocolate cookie for you, Emma." He sneered, logging into his computer. "Now order those coffees and hurry the hell up, would you? He stayed behind to berate Josh about the new formatting, but he won't be pleased if you're still sitting there when he comes back."

I bit back my retort, like I always did, turned my computer screen off, grabbed my phone and purse, and ran.

♪♪♪