ACCIDENTALLY SLEPT WITH MY BOSS

Chapter 2: Fake Name, Real Teeth

Tess woke up to sunlight, a ceiling she didn't recognize, and the distinct, sinking sensation of having done something *brave.*

She lay very still. The sheets were the kind of soft that costs a fortune, and the bed was roughly the size of her old bedroom. The room smelled of cedar and rain and expensive soap. On the other side of the mattress, the pillow still held a dent, and the dent was cold.

"Ray?" she said, to the ceiling.

Nothing.

She sat up. The suite looked like something out of a magazine for people who owned islands, with floor-to-ceiling windows, grey harbor light, and a coffee table with a silver cart parked beside it, covered in domes. She lifted one with the wary reverence of a woman defusing a bomb.

Eggs. Bacon. Smoked salmon. A pastry the size of her head.

Tucked against the plate was a card on thick cream stationery. The handwriting was black, slanted, and unhurried.

*Dolores,*

*Thank you for the best night I've had in years. Eat. Don't leave hungry.*

*— R.*

She read it twice. Then a third time.

"Well," she said. "That's either very romantic or a great way to avoid a conversation."

She ate the pastry. She ate the bacon. She ate the smoked salmon with her fingers, standing up, in a borrowed hotel robe, and it was one of the best meals of her life and she tried not to think about what that said.

It was while reaching for the coffee that she saw her shoulder in the mirror.

---

The mark was on the left side, just where her neck met her collarbone. A crescent of small, neat punctures, ringed in a bruise the color of a storm.

"*Oh,*" said Tess.

She stepped closer. Touched it. It didn't hurt, which seemed wrong. It *tingled,* a low, warm hum under the skin, like a pulse that wasn't hers.

"Okay," she said to her reflection. "So he's a biter."

She tried to feel something, outrage or embarrassment, and found only a strange, floating curiosity.

*That's a lot of teeth,* she thought. *That's a lot of enthusiasm.* *I don't remember that part.* *I remember a bit of a nip, and then a very warm sort of—*

She cut that thought off with surgical precision.

She dressed in last night's clothes, found her tote bag, checked the room for a name, a number, anything. Nothing. *Ray* had left no trace except a dent in a pillow and the faintest ghost of cedar in the air.

On the way out, she did something she'd never done in her life: she took the little bar of hotel soap.

*Evidence,* she told herself. *Of a good decision.*

---

By the time the elevator reached the lobby, something was wrong with her nose.

It started with the carpet. She could *smell* the carpet, rich, woolly, faintly chemical. Then the man in the elevator with her, who had eaten onions for breakfast and been crying in the stairwell about it. Then the housekeeping cart in the corridor. Then a woman's shampoo, a different woman's perfume, someone's old cigarette on a wool coat, a baby's wet diaper on the third floor, a chef's garlic, the *sea.*

She stopped dead in the middle of the marble lobby, one hand pressed to her face.

"Ma'am?" said the doorman. "Are you all right?"

"I think I can smell everyone's *business,*" said Tess.

He gave her a polite, professional look that said *I have seen worse before nine a.m.,* and held the door.

---

Priya Nair lived in a fifth-floor walk-up in the Marlowe district, a two-room apartment with a radiator that screamed and a refrigerator that contained only hot sauce and the faint hope of a better future. She opened the door in her scrubs, hair pinned up, an expression on her face like a woman who had been awake for thirty-one hours and had just seen the sun.

"You look like a crime scene," she said.

"Hello to you too."

"No, I'm serious. Where have you *been?* I've been texting you since midnight. I thought you were dead. I had a whole speech prepared. It was *good.*"

"I'm alive," said Tess.

"Why do you smell like a men's cologne ad?"

"Because last night—"

"*No,*" said Priya, grabbing her by the shoulders and steering her inside. "Sit. Start from the beginning. Leave nothing out. Especially the part where you smell like that."

So Tess sat. She told her all of it. The cake, the couch, Nate, Grant, the bar, the rain, the stranger named Ray, the soap in her bag. Priya listened with the stillness of an emergency room nurse hearing a patient describe how, exactly, the thing had gotten stuck.

When Tess finished, Priya was quiet for a long moment.

"Okay," she said at last. "I have a lot of questions, but first: you lost your *job?* Three *weeks* ago?"

Tess winced. "I was going to tell you."

"You *lied* to me. To *Grant.* For *three weeks.* About going to *work.*"

"I didn't lie. I... omitted."

"Tess."

"I went to the library! I was *productive!*"

"You pretended to go to work every day for three weeks because you were too scared to say a sentence out loud," said Priya. "Do you hear how that sounds?"

"Yes," said Tess in a small voice. "I'm hearing it right now."

"Good." Priya sat back. "So you're unemployed, you're homeless, your brother and boyfriend are—*together*—and you've had a one-night stand with a stranger named *Ray.*"

"When you put it like that—"

"I'm putting it exactly like that." But her expression softened. "Come here."

Tess went. Priya hugged her, hard, and it was the first time anyone had held her since the night before. That was when she finally cried, not the elegant kind. The ugly kind, with sound effects.

"I'm so *tired,*" she said into Priya's shoulder.

"I know."

"I made him a *cake.*"

"I know. I'm sure it was a great cake."

"It was a *rustic* cake."

"Of course it was."

When the worst had passed, Priya held her at arm's length and frowned.

"What's that on your neck?"

"Oh." Tess touched it. "A bite."

"A *bite?*" Priya crouched, tilting her chin toward the window light. Her professional face slid on like a mask. She prodded the edge with two careful fingers. "Human. Not a dog. *Enthusiastic,* but human." She frowned. "Huh."

"What?"

"This should be a lot worse." Priya traced the mark. "Look at the color. Bruises like this go purple, then green, then yellow over a week. This is already yellow."

"It's been, like, eleven hours."

"I *know.*" Priya's frown deepened. "That's not how skin works."

"Maybe I have good moisturizer."

"Tess, nobody has moisturizer that good."

"Maybe he's a very clean biter."

Priya looked at her. "Say that sentence again, slowly, to yourself."

"...Okay, that was a lot."

---

By noon, she had a plan, or at least a list. Priya made her write it down.

**1. Money.**

Tess had $14.37 in her checking account. The rest of her life savings, $212, was in a coffee can labeled FOR EMERGENCIES. Her student loan was $41,300. Her father's memory-care facility, Harbor Pines, cost $2,400 a month, and she'd been paying half out of her paycheck while Nate paid the other half.

She dug out her phone. There were seventeen missed calls and eleven texts. Most were from Nate. Two were from Grant.

**Grant (8:14 a.m.):** *Can we talk?*

**Grant (8:51 a.m.):** *Also, did you take my Peloton shoes?*

She stared at the second text for a long, quiet time.

"I'm going to kill him," she said.

"Do it," said Priya. "I'll provide the alibi. I've got three years of paperwork on him."

Then the third missed call from Harbor Pines showed up on her screen. A voicemail.

She played it on speaker.

*"Hello, Ms. Brannigan, this is Denise from billing at Harbor Pines. I'm calling because this month's payment of twelve hundred dollars has not been received from the secondary account. Your brother's card was declined. We'd like to resolve this by the fifteenth. Your father's care is of course our priority, but—"*

Tess hung up on her own voicemail.

"The *secondary account,*" she said. "That was Nate's half. He didn't pay."

"He didn't pay *last month* either," said Priya, who had a skill for reading other people's text messages upside down. "Look at the dates."

Tess looked.

"He's been taking it," she said, understanding at last. "From the shared account. The one we opened for Dad. He's been *skimming* it."

"Oh, honey."

"For *months.*"

She sat down on the floor. It seemed like a sensible place for it.

---

**2. The storage unit.**

There was also a letter, sitting on the pile of mail Priya had been collecting for her, a pink notice from Harbor Self-Storage. *Unit 214: three months past due. $267 outstanding. Unless payment is received by the 30th, contents will be sold at auction.*

Tess stared at it for a very long time.

Unit 214 was where her father had put everything after her mother died: boxes of old photographs, recipe cards, a sewing machine, a ratty blue sweater that still faintly, impossibly, smelled like her mother's shampoo.

"I'll pay it," she said, to no one. "I'll figure it out."

"With what?"

"A job."

"You don't have a job."

"Then *with a job I'm about to have.*"

"That's not how that works."

"Shh," said Tess. "I'm manifesting."

---

**3. The job.**

The call came at 2:47 p.m.

"Hi, is this Tessa Brannigan?" said a bright, efficient voice. "This is Clarice at Pinnacle Staffing. You applied for the contracts coordinator role at Ashcroft Holdings, and they'd like you to start Monday."

Tess blinked.

"Ashcroft Holdings," she repeated.

"Yes! Temp-to-perm, ninety-day contract. Thirty-four dollars an hour. Benefits after probation."

*Thirty-four dollars an hour.* It was almost *double* what she'd made before. It was Dad's bills. It was the storage unit. It was a thing that looked a lot like a life.

"Ashcroft?" said Priya, listening in. "The Hollow Crown people? The ones with the creepy wolf logo?"

"Yes," whispered Tess.

"Rich people vomit money," Priya said. "Take it."

"I hate wolves."

"It's a *logo.* You don't have to pet it."

"I'll take it," said Tess into the phone. "Yes. Thank you. *Absolutely.*"

She hung up and sat very still, heart pounding.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. This is good. This is a new start. Monday, I go in there, I'm professional, I do excellent work, and I never, ever think about the man named Ray."

"Great plan," said Priya. "What's his last name?"

"I don't know."

"What does he do?"

"I don't know."

"Where does he live?"

"Priya."

"I'm just saying. You slept with a ghost."

"A very *polite* ghost."

---

Nate came at five.

She heard him before she saw him, the doorbell buzzing three times in quick, nervous bursts, the way he'd always rung it when he was in trouble. Priya opened the door with the expression of a woman greeting a process server.

"Absolutely not," said Priya.

"I just need five minutes," said Nate.

"You can have four, and I'm timing it."

Tess came to the door. Nate stood in the hallway, hands shoved in his pockets, rain-damp and hollow-eyed. He looked like he hadn't slept. He looked about twelve.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," said Tess.

They stood there. In the silence, Tess could *smell* him: guilt, sour and sharp, like old coffee, and under it, something raw, a smell like fear. It was bizarre. It was like reading the fine print on her own brother.

"I'm sorry," said Nate.

"For which part?"

"All of it."

"That's a lot of it, Nate."

"I know." His voice cracked. "I'm so sorry about Grant. About you finding out like that. I should have told you. I should've told you years ago. I was scared."

"Of what? Me?"

"Of *everything.* Dad. You. What Mom would've—" He stopped. "It doesn't matter. I know that's not an excuse."

"No," said Tess. "It isn't."

"And the money," said Nate, so quietly she almost missed it.

"Say it."

He looked at his shoes. "I borrowed from Dad's account. I was going to pay it back. My app was about to get funding and then it didn't, and I was in a hole, and I thought, I'll just cover it for a month—"

"How much?"

"Sixty-four hundred."

She shut her eyes.

"Tess—"

"You took *sixty-four hundred dollars* from our *father's care fund.*"

"I'll pay it back! I swear! I'm going to get a job, I'll—"

"You told me you were paying half. For *months.* Every time I asked."

"I know."

"You looked me in the *face.*"

"I know."

She opened her eyes. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to be nine again, in the backseat of their mother's car, with Nate beside her making a face at the window.

"I'm not forgiving you," she said at last. "I want to be clear on that."

"Okay."

"I'm just too tired to hit you."

"That's fair."

"If you come near me again before you've paid back every cent, I'll tell Dad's facility *exactly* what you did, and you can explain it to Denise from billing."

Nate flinched. "Who's Denise?"

"You do *not* want to meet Denise."

He nodded. For a moment he looked like he might say something else. Then he turned and walked down the stairs, shoulders hunched, and she listened to his footsteps fade until the building's old radiator drowned them out.

Priya closed the door.

"For the record," she said, "I would've let you hit him."

"I know."

"I would've held your coat."

"I *know,* Priya."

---

That night, Tess lay on Priya's couch with a blanket that smelled of lavender and old pizza, and she listened.

She could hear the radiator knock. The neighbor's TV. A dog barking three streets away. A drunk argument on the corner, every word clear as a bell. She could hear her *own heartbeat,* slow and strong, steadier than it had any right to be.

At some point she got up for water, and as she stood at the kitchen window, a dog in the alley across the street lifted its head.

Then another.

Then a third.

All of them turned toward her window and stared. Not barking. Not growling. *Watching.*

"Oh no," Tess whispered.

She stepped back. Pulled the curtain shut.

"It's the cologne," she told herself. "It's got to be the cologne. Dogs hate cologne."

She went back to the couch and pulled the blanket up to her chin. The mark on her shoulder gave one slow, warm pulse, like a heartbeat.

*Monday,* she thought. *Monday, I start over.*

She would be professional. She would be excellent. She would be, as a matter of principle, a person who had never been on a couch, or in a bar, or in a hotel suite with a stranger named Ray.

It was an admirable plan.

It lasted until 11:02 a.m. on Monday morning.