Pleasurable Expectations

o n e

"Kiara, you have to see this," Adrienne pushed for the thousandth time. She pushed her phone into my face, completely disregarding that I was busy working on my laptop.

"Adrienne, if I look at the stupid article, will you leave me the hell alone?" She nodded. I grabbed the phone from her grasp, skimming the headline quickly. I dropped the phone on the bed before turning back to my work.

"Kiara, what the hell?" She grabbed her phone from the mattress, scrolled back to the top of the article, and attempted to hand me the phone again.

I shook my head and continued working, denying the offer of her phone. "Girl, no. You know I don't touch anything that's got the word 'business' in it." I shut my laptop and shifted, so I was sitting with my legs crossed.

"KiKi, you know I wouldn't show you anything that has anything to do with the toxic world of business unless there was a yummy face attached to it." I crossed my arms over my chest. "¿Por qué hacen esto? I'm just trying to find you a boyfriend!"

"Adrienne, I am twenty-three years old! I'm able to go find a man if I wanted to." She cocked an eyebrow. "I can don't give me that look. I'm just doing me and, when I want a man, I'll find one. And he'll definitely be far from the business world."

My hostility towards business and everybody involved with it was entirely justified. My parents used to have an extremely successful chain of hotels, Sunshine Suites. I always thought it was clever, the play of our last name, Suns, like that.

However, the company went bankrupt quickly when a trusted employee who my parents plugged as a temporary CEO handled their funds wrong. They came back to their company a couple months later, it on the downfall. My parents tried their best to bring the company back to its feet, but not without the cost of over half their hotels.

"Sure you can, KiKi," Adrienne sarcastically remarked. She had trouble believing that I'd ever been able to find myself a man because of how I duck them. It's not my fault that every man who approached me wasn't worth the energy.

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes at my best friend before swinging my legs out and dangling them over the bed. "Look, sis, I've gotta bounce. I have work that I gotta finish at the office before I get to take my weekend off. I'll hit you later?" I gathered up my things and threw them all into my bag, slinging it over my shoulders.

"Yeah, sure thing." She nodded her head before following me out her bedroom door. She opened the front door to her apartment and let me out, blowing me a kiss before I left.

Adrienne and I met years ago in high school. I was out on a date with this guy and she came up, yelling and all that. It took her dumping my smoothie on his head for me to realize that he was her boyfriend, and he was playing me. She bought me a new smoothie, and the rest was history.

I left the apartment complex and stepped out into the damp Seattle air. I glanced up at the sky and noticed the storm clouds rolling in, swiftly picking up my pace. I neglected to bring an umbrella with me, and I wasn't planning on walking into the office a dripping mess. However, I did have enough sense to bring my windbreaker with me just in case it did start to rain.

I pulled my headphones from the side pocket in my bag before plugging them into my phone and pressing play on one of my many playlists. I stepped in time with the beat, bobbing my head with the music as I walked.

I arrived at the office and started work. I tidied up all the desks and made sure everything was filed correctly before beginning to work up schedules for my higher-ups. I then went into the mailroom and made sure everything was sorted and put in the right mail slot.

This, organizing the office for my superiors, wasn't exactly my ideal profession. Still, I had to work from the bottom to make my way to the top, especially in the business of publicity. It was hard enough finding this job, so I'd do anything just to keep it.