From Now On by Louise Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

when Mark tapped on her door.
                  “Hey,” he said, as though nothing unusual had happened the last time they were together. “How’s Italian sound for today?”
                  He walked into the room with a plastic bag filled with several restaurant containers. He pulled one out and set it on her desk in front of her. “Linguini with clam sauce. I vaguely remember you mentioning this as one of your favorites.”
                  “Yeah, I think I might have mentioned that.” Jo opened the container and held it up to her face so that the fragrant steam could bathe her senses. “Hmm,” she groaned. “Manna from heaven.”
                  Mark smiled. “Glad I could be of service.”
                  Jo gathered her food and walked over to the small couch shoved in the corner of her office, some remnant of the previous occupant of the space. “I think I would starve if you didn’t come by every day and feed me.”
                  Mark settled beside her and opened his own container. “What are friends for?”
                  “You should really let me provide the food from time to time. It’s not fair, this whole one-sided thing.”
                  “I don’t mind,” he said with a soft smile. “Besides, I was raised to be a gentleman. Gentlemen pay, especially when the whole thing was my idea.”
                  Jo concentrated on her food for a long minute, trying not to look at Mark. So many questions spun around in her head. Was he saying that this was something like a date? Daily dates over lunch? Then why did he call himself a friend? And why had he run out on her last week when they nearly kissed? Was it her? Him? His past? Was he afraid? Of what?
                  “Your hair is different today,” he said suddenly.
                  Jo reached up and touched the bushy ponytail protruding from the back of her head. “Yeah. I got it cut and it’s a little short for a braid now.”
                  “You should wear it down.”
                  Jo glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was studying his food. “Maybe I will sometime.”
                  Silence fell again. It seemed they were both a little more awkward with one another today. She wondered why, but, again, she didn’t really want her thoughts to go that way.
                  “Can I ask you something?” she asked as she picked at her food.
                  “Sure. I just can’t promise I’ll answer.”
                  “If you knew you were up for a promotion against a coworker and that coworker was cozying up to the supervisor charged with making the decision, what would you do?”
                  Mark put down his fork and took a long slug of his soda before he answered. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it depends on how badly I wanted the promotion.”
                  “What if you really wanted it?”
                  “Then I would fight for it. Go to the supervisor and have an honest discussion with him, talk about my qualifications and some things I would do with the new position.”
                  “Would you do it face to face, or in an email?”
                  “Oh, definitely face to face. An email is too impersonal, and there’s always the chance it might get stuck in the spam folder or something. Besides, if you do it face to face, you can gauge how the supervisor responds to you. You can’t do that with email.”
                  Jo nodded. “It just seems so…almost like begging.”
                  “Don’t think of it like that. Think of it more like advertising. You’re selling yourself to the supervisor, trying to prove that he can put confidence in choosing you for the