an assistant's dilemma: a kendall roy & roman roy love triangle

chapter 2

this chapter is a short one & kinda a filler chapter but the next one is gonna have some definite romance!!

Kendall told Lucy about the debt issue over coffee in the privacy of his office the next morning. She nodded along as he outlined the issue, despite not understanding all of the business jargon. 

"I have the bank call this morning," he said, bringing his almond milk latte to his lips. "Do I go Hulk or Bruce Banner?"

Lucy, who had no idea who the hell Bruce Banner was, stirred the straw in her iced coffee and shrugged. "Oh I don't...I don't know Ken."

He sighed irritably. "I called Rava this morning but she was no help."

"Why don't you ask Rome?," Lucy offered.

He sighed louder this time. "That's exactly what Rava said."

Lucy smiled. "Great minds think alike I guess."

Kendall's attention was soon diverted away from his assistant as Gerri came in the room to oversee the call. Lucy listened in as Ken put on his best alpha male impression, trying to negotiate the terms of the deal and telling Mr. Polk to "fuck off." She cringed at his failure, wishing he would learn to just be himself in meetings and on calls.

"Fuck that was brutal," Roman said after the call ended, inviting himself into Kendall's office.

"You were listening in?," Kendall asked him.

"Of course I was. I'm COO," he said proudly. "Good morning Lucy, you look ravishing today," he told her, patting her shoulder somewhat condescendingly. 

"Who says ravishing?," she responded. "Are you 80?"

Lucy did look nice, Kendall thought, but that should've been the furthest thing from his mind as he dealt with the financial crisis, and it should've been the furthest thing from Roman's mind as well. Kendall's assistant was a pretty girl of average stature with large hazel eyes that always seemed to read his own perfectly. She had a sweet Southern charm, the youngest daughter in a middle class family located in some small North Carolina beach town that Ken could never remember the name of. 

Kendall and Roman squabbled over how the call went. Lucy ignored their brotherly banter, scrolling on her phone.

"That was a fucking shitshow and you handled it like a moron is the truth," Roman told his older brother.

"Fuck off," Kendall responded as Roman walked out of the office, flipping Ken off on his way out. "It wasn't that bad was it?," he asked Lucy.

She offered him a half smile, never able to be cruel to her boss, even if she was telling him the truth. "Of course not Ken. It went fine."

"Fuck, fuck!," he shouted out, recognizing that Lucy was lying to him. "Call Stewy. Tell him I need to see him this afternoon after the board meeting."

Lucy wasn't sure she even wanted to know what Kendall was up to, so she asked no questions, instead just assuring him that she would reach out to his best friend Stewy. She waited for Ken outside the door of the conference room after the board meeting ended.

"Walk with me," he told her. Lucy kshould find his assertiveness obnoxious, but instead, it was attractive. "Can you send flowers to Rava? Nice but not, you know, ridiculous. They should smell like flowers, not desperation."

Lucy sighed and typed a note to herself in her phone to get flowers sent to Rava's apartment. Kendall's attempts to win back his ex wife's affection had turned desperate months before, and Lucy knew that no matter how perfect of a flower arrangement she chose or what she told the company to write on the card, it would do nothing to alter the broken relationship between the ex spouses. Yet, she would do anything to keep her boss happy, so she said "you got it Ken."

"Oh, and I might want to throw a couple of items up on the internal. Not a big deal, couple of TED Talks. Maybe a documentary on the Epics of Gilgamesh, I'm thinking? You know, it's the first story, archetypal quest shit. Because what are we if not storytellers?"

Lucy continued to add to the note in her phone, nodding as he talked. "Okay yeah I gotchu."

"And did you hear back from Stewy?"

"Yup, he wants to meet at the bakery down the street at 2:00."

"You're the best," he told her, placing a hand on her upper arm. She smiled in response.

When Kendall returned from coffee with Stewy, it was nearly 4:30. He marched into his office proudly and leaned over Lucy's desk.

"Tell me I'm the fucking man."

She smiled. "How'd it go with Stewy?"

"Let's just say I'm the fucking man."

"Uh huh, you're the fucking man Ken," Lucy replied with a laugh.

He stood up and crossed his arms over his chest with a smirk. 

"So no more stock issue?," she asked.

"Stew and I figured it out," he explained. "He's taking minority stock in the company."

"Want to go to dinner to celebrate?," Lucy offered, cleaning her personal belongings off of her desk. 

"Oh I'm uh...I'm going to dinner with Rava," he said with an awkward apologetic smile.

Lucy returned an awkward smile of her own and waved her hand dismissively. "Oh yeah sure...yeah have fun. I'll see you tomorrow. Congrats on sorting out the stock situation."

"We'll grab lunch tomorrow," Kendall told her.

Lucy smiled a genuine smile this time. "Yeah, sounds perfect."

Dinner with Rava went even better than Kendall had hoped, and the two couldn't make it out of the restaurant and back to his apartment fast enough. They had their hands all over each other in the limo and didn't even make it to his bedroom to have sex. They did it right there in the foyer, half dressed, and then fell asleep together in his bed. 

Yet, Rava was up at the crack of dawn, insisting she had to get back to the kids. Kendall made one last ditch effort to fix their marriage, asking her why they didn't just get back together. She tried to avoid the question, but ended up admitting to her ex husband that seeing him move on made her feel okay moving on too. Kendall was confused. He hadn't moved on. At least, he didn't think he had. Rava refused to elaborate further, informing him that she had gotten a divorce lawyer and then leaving his apartment.

Kendall was alone with only the humming of his AC and the dim light of the New York City dawn to keep him company. He called Lucy, but she didn't answer. Of course she didn't. She was definitely still asleep. He slammed his phone down against the bed and closed his eyes, letting out an irritated sigh. As he got ready for work later that morning, he tried to come to terms with what he needed to tell Lucy - that he needed her to find him a divorce lawyer.