Mr absolutely not a roma.., p.1
Mr. Absolutely Not!: A Romantic Comedy, page 1
MR. ABSOLUTELY NOT!
A ROMANTIC COMEDY
ALINA JACOBS
CONTENTS
1. Mandy
2. Salinger
3. Mandy
4. Salinger
5. Mandy
6. Salinger
7. Mandy
8. Salinger
9. Mandy
10. Salinger
11. Mandy
12. Salinger
13. Mandy
14. Salinger
15. Mandy
16. Salinger
17. Mandy
18. Salinger
19. Mandy
20. Salinger
21. Mandy
22. Salinger
23. Mandy
24. Salinger
25. Mandy
26. Salinger
27. Mandy
28. Salinger
29. Mandy
30. Salinger
31. Mandy
32. Salinger
33. Mandy
34. Mandy
35. Salinger
36. Salinger
37. Mandy
38. Salinger
39. Mandy
40. Salinger
41. Mandy
42. Salinger
43. Mandy
44. Salinger
45. Mandy
46. Salinger
47. Mandy
48. Salinger
49. Mandy
50. Salinger
51. Mandy
Sneak Peak
Synopsis
1. Mandy
2. Salinger
Read Mrs. Absolutely Yes!
Acknowledgments
Family Tree
About the Author
Mailing List
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2024 by Adair Lakes, LLC.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Created with Vellum
To comfy pants—the real MVPs of this story.
1
MANDY
“God, I could just kill him!” I gasp in the empty elevator.
Or at least it’s supposed to be empty.
A large hand grabs one of the heavy metal doors before it closes, wrenching it back open.
My heart pounds. In the elevator doorway, the man’s head tilts like he can hear it.
My emotional-support corgi looks up from her Puppuccino and barks as he steps into the elevator. Normal people turn to face the front, pretending like the other riders don’t exist.
Not Salinger Svensson.
The doors slam, trapping me with him. He crosses his arms, regarding me.
Did he hear me? He heard me, right? He had to. And I’m going to pay for it.
His gray eyes flick to the oversized Starbucks cup in my hand. “We provide coffee here, you know, instead of that overpriced flavored sugar water.”
“Sometimes you just want someone to hand you a personalized beverage and act happy to see you.” I clutch the cup, hating the tears that threaten to come.
I need to get it together. I need this job.
I wouldn’t be this unstable if it had been any other morning, if I had just had two-and-a-half minutes of time alone in the elevator to get my shit together before I had to face him.
I huddle in the back corner of the elevator as it lurches up.
The corner of his mouth twists into a triumphant sneer. “At the end of your rope? The office offers mental health days, you know. It’s a wonder you’ve lasted this long. I’d have thought you would have had a nervous breakdown months ago.”
“Joke’s on you.” The words come out in a rasp, my mouth dry from the earlier panic. “People with mortgage-sized student-loan debt don’t have the luxury of nervous breakdowns. Unlike some people in this elevator who don’t even do their own laundry.”
His lips thin then part slightly with a flash of teeth.
It reminds me of…
“I don’t know why you try and fight me,” he says. “We both know you’re going to crack like my last assistant.”
“Your last assistant didn’t have to spend her childhood fighting early-2000s beauty standards and a mom who liked to beat her over the head with seventies-diet-culture tips.”
The back and forth is aggravating but familiar. Safe. Closing my eyes, I take a long sip of the warm, sweet, slightly spiced coffee.
I am safe here. Well, not here in the elevator but generally in the office.
“Going to your happy place?”
“Oh yeah.” I open my eyes.
“Oh yeah? What do you fantasize about?” he purrs.
I choke on the coffee, and it dribbles down my chin. He’s never been sexually aggressive—gotten close a few times. This is weird.
“I, um—”
“It’s me, isn’t it?”
“I—that’s not—”
“Yes, you do.” He takes a step toward me. “You fantasize about me.” His baritone is smug. Self-assured.
Just that one time. I was very drunk. I got over it and signed up for that god-forsaken singles mixer. Really, if you think about it, everything that’s wrong in my life right now is because of him.
“And about how you want to kill me,” he adds.
“Right!” My relieved laughter echoes in the tight space. “Kill you. Right. I was totally fantasizing about drowning you in a vat of roasted-toasted caramel syrup.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Seriously? It’s the latest in Starbucks’s monthly themed syrup promotions. You’re one of the investors, Mr. Svensson. You’re on their board. You know how hard it is out there for a corporation trying to pander to middle-aged millennial women. We have the attention span of a cricket.” I slurp the coffee.
“You’re not middle-aged,” he says quickly.
“I’m in my thirties. Compared to the college-age girls you usually sleep with, I’m shocked you don’t think I’m geriatric.”
His jaw works. He’s mad. I know he’s mad. Usually I wait to detonate that particular weapon until later in the week, not at 8:12 on a Tuesday, but like I said, it’s been a morning.
“Pathetic.” His voice has dropped an octave.
Oh shit.
The elevator is still climbing up, the numbers flashing slowly.
I’m unsteady as he takes a step toward me.
“Is that why you want me dead? Because you’re bitter and jealous?”
Everything in me is screaming, You’re trapped, trapped!
My face turns away from him.
He rests one hand on the cool metal wall behind my head.
“Mandy, Mandy, Mandy.” He’s mocking me. “Next time you want to threaten me, man up and do it to my fucking face.” His fist slams into the wall next to my head.
I bite back a scream.
The elevator dings.
The doors open.
Salinger adjusts his suit jacket and steps out.
He doesn’t hold the door for me as I rush to collect my corgi, our drinks, and all my bags.
The elevator doors jam into my arm before I can step off. “Ow!”
I wouldn’t put it past him to have tinkered with it to make sure the doors close extra-fast just for this moment.
The tears threaten again.
Because he doesn’t know that I wasn’t talking about him—I was talking about the other horrible man I wish I could violently and permanently remove from my life.
Pepper yelps as I schlep us to the bathroom, praying it’s empty.
It’s not. Of course it’s not.
The brand-new college interns collectively pause in front of the mirror as I stumble in, huffing and puffing, with my laptop bag, corgi, lunchbox, oversize purse, and garment bag with my boss’s dry cleaning.
The door to the handicap stall barely slams behind me before they start snickering cattily.
“I mean, is it, like, really that hard to be Mr. Svensson’s assistant?”
“Please. If it were me, I’d already be Mrs. Salinger Svensson.”
“I don’t care how mean he is—he’s so fucking hot.”
“And rich!”
“You’d think he’d spring for someone who could at least wear a skirt.”
“Like, I thought there was, like, a dress code here?”
Sucking in a breath, I yell over the partitions, “I can hear you talking, and—word to the wise from someone who’s been in the corporate world longer than you’ve been shoving tampons up your vaginas— save your shit-talking for girls’ night, not the office!”
They make disgusted noises, then their heels clack on the tile as they leave me to my tears.
I’m not crying over them—maybe if I was still twenty, but now? I am officially too old for that shit.
No, I have bigger problem.
Taking out my phone, I scroll through to delete the text messages that have already accumulated in the forty-five minutes since I’d seen him.
Not Salinger. His text messages usually consist of complaints about the printer, demands that he wants me to meet, and issues like, Why the fuck does it matters that it’s two in the morning, because it’s eight o’clock in London and he needs that memo written now.
The other guy has sent three dick pics, two death threats, and a photoshopped picture of my corgi next to a wood chipper. A sob escapes.
Pepper whines and head-butts my legs. It’s comforting, or it would be if her whines didn’t quickly devolve into howls of anxiety. Picking her up, I hold her to my chest.
“We’re breathing in, we’re breathing out,” I say, trying to calm down the panting dog. “Have your Puppuccino.”
She slurps the rest of the whipped cream while I stuff her into her anti-anxiety jacket.
It’s escalating, right? This is escalation.
It’s my own dumb fault. I have a college degree. I should have been smarter, should have seen it coming, should have handled it differently.
“I’ll move. I’ll just move to another state.”
It won’t work though. He has money—he’ll find me.
I’m not safe anywhere.
Well, except here.
In his office, Salinger paces back and forth behind the glass wall that separates him from the unwashed masses of the interns. Sensing movement, his eyes lock on me as I scurry to the safety of my desk, collapsing in a puff of dog hair, bags, and stress next to Jess.
Mumbling, “Coffee,” I suck down the last of my drink, wishing I’d bought two.
Behind his glass wall, Salinger is seething. At me? At his phone call?
“Okay, sure, that can be a new fashion thing, I guess.” Jess jabs me in the thigh. “Prepare to get a dressing down from the new interns. I swear you’d think this was the Vogue office or something. They haven’t even been here twenty-four hours, and I say that literally because I was literally here from sunup to sunup yesterday when Johnson’s team was going after that Genome company buyout.”
Jess looks pointedly at my shoe.
“Wh—what? Oh!” I pick the toilet paper off my heel, and it flutters down into the trash can. “Sorry, I’m really out of it. Had to ride in the elevator with Salinger. I don’t know if I’m going to recover.”
“Yummy!” Jess grins and spins around in her chair.
“Um, no, not yummy. Nerve-wracking and a terrible start to the morning.”
“Aw, did he have you in a state?” Jess giggles then swings around in her chair to face the young man approaching our desks.
“Did someone bring donuts?” Jess coos at the intern.
“I figure you ladies are the ones who run things around here and we should be friends.” The young man gives us a winning smile.
“Isn’t he adorable?” Accepting the box, I inhale the scent of sugar and fried bread. “Just what I need.”
The kid’s wavy dark hair falls over his forehead as he grins, leaning forward.
“And from Belltown Bites,” I add. “I feel so special.”
“Only the best for you!”
“He’s trying to flirt with us,” Jess whispers to me.
The kid’s cheeks, still slightly plump with baby fat, redden.
“I know—it’s so cute!”
“He has eyes like chocolate chip cookies.”
He soldiers gamely on. “You ladies let me know if you need anything.”
Jess makes a heart shape with her hands. “I just want to wrap him up in warm blankets and feed him hot cocoa and keep him safe from this bone-crushing finance firm that’s going to suck the life out of him.”
Those big brown eyes grow even wider and more alarmed.
“They just get younger and cuter every year.” Jess rests her chin on her hands. “So, what kind of donuts did you bring us, darlin’?”
The scent of sugar wafts out as I open the box.
“The chocolate one is mine. Did you get a donut? Have the cream-filled one—neither of us like them. Go on.” I wave it at the intern. “You’re going to need your energy. You’re about to enter hell week.”
His hand extends, fingertips grab the crackling glaze…
A deep voice snarls, “You eat that fucking donut, and you can kiss this internship goodbye.”
The intern screams and claps his hands over his mouth. The donut drops on my desk then rolls onto the floor as Salinger pounces.
“Are you trying to butter up my assistant?” Salinger growls, stepping around my desk.
The intern tries to scuttle back and run away but Salinger’s circling him now.
My boss smiles. It is not a friendly smile.
“You think you’ll get in good with her and she’ll talk sweet nothings into my ear and you’ll get a promotion? Guess what, smartass—you miscalculated. I can’t stand Mandy. Even if you tied her down and force-fed her coffee and fried pastry until she agreed to sing your praises to me, I wouldn’t care. I am not someone who you can use social engineering to manipulate. Save that for the idiots we milk for investment cash. If you want to impress me, bring in a contract. Don’t think you’re going to coast on your frat-boy drinking-buddy bullshit.”
“Yeah,” the intern squeaks, nodding.
“Yeah?” Salinger snarls softly. He’s a good head taller than the brown-eyed intern, who’s shaking in his shoes as Salinger lowers his face so his nose is almost touching the intern’s.
“Yes”—the intern gulps—“sir.” His teeth are clenched. He’s going to go to the nearest supply closet and burst into tears.
My heart melts. “Go away, Salinger.”
“The fuck did you just say?” Salinger turns on me.
Ignoring him, I wave the intern over. “Here, pet the corgi.” Pepper, who has just inhaled a cream-filled donut, is drooly.
“Maybe not the corgi. I think she’s going to puke.” Jess makes a face.
The intern is making those heaving noises when you’re trying not to cry.
“Come here—you have a little donut glaze.” Pulling out a napkin, I reach out to rub his face with it, because tending to the interns is going to be the closest I ever get to motherhood.
Salinger’s annoyance has turned to premeditative murder. Anger and testosterone practically waft off him as I clean the intern’s face.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” the intern whimpers.
“I believe in you, and I’m proud you made it this far! Lots of people apply to this internship. It’s very competitive.”
Behind me, Salinger makes a disgusted noise. “And now he’s crying.”
I shove a donut and some tissues in the sobbing intern’s hand. “Fifth floor on the left. The exhaust fan in the IT closet disguises noise.”
“Yeah, and no one should be using it for a quickie,” Jess adds, “because it’s before lunch.”
“I better not see you on this floor again unless you’re about to bring me a contract,” Salinger bellows after the intern. “Who the fuck is hiring these losers?”
“I’m sure you’ll break them down and build them back up in your image, boss.” Jess salutes him.
My inner mama bear with no other outlet is itching to slash things.
“You don’t have to be nice to the interns, but you don’t have to be so much of a dick to them,” I snap at Salinger. “Just let him bring the donuts then send him on his way.”
Salinger’s large hand comes down, crushing the box and the pastries inside. Little flecks of obsidian glint in his gray eyes as he looms over me.
“Do not,” he hisses through bared teeth, “ever tell me how to run my business. If I want to terrorize my interns, I will. If I want to fire them, I will. If I want to make them feel like scum under my boot, I will. Because that is what I pay them for. I am not running a day care—I am running a finance firm. You are not their babysitter—you are my assistant. Do you understand, Mandy?”
I don’t avert my gaze. “Yes,” I say then add “sir” for good measure.
He shoves the box of donuts toward me. “Clean up that mess. Then finish the presentation for the all-hands meeting today.”
2
SALINGER
I’m so fucking sick of her neediness.
No, not Mandy. My assistant is aggravatingly self-sufficient, despite the donut brigade. And she won’t quit. She’s breaking my streak. She already cost me ten thousand dollars in lost bets.
The text messages from my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend come in, rapid and emotional and whiny. So whiny.
Alma: I love you.
Alma: I want to have your babies.
Alma: We’re perfect together.
