Jess hated job interviews.
This time last month she'd been working in a bar in a small town in Thailand, swimming every day, eating yoghurt and papaya for breakfast every morning, fresh seafood for dinner every evening, dancing the night away every night. Basically living her best life. Now here she was, sitting in the foyer of a glaringly bright office building that was trying too hard to be edgy, waiting to be summoned by the grumpy receptionist, while far hipper looking people, who seemed way more suited to this world than she was, waited with her.
She didn't fancy her chances.
The sound of her own name startled her back to the present. She stood, too quickly, and grabbing her jacket from the arm of her seat, she tried to hold herself as confidently as she could as she followed the woman out of the foyer.
There were three people sitting at the table in front of her. The women were both pretty, manicured, fashionable, their smiles and handshakes were warm but professional. The man immediately put her on edge, for reasons she couldn't immediately place. He was that typically brooding type, with messy windswept hair, and dark hooded eyes and a crisp white shirt which stood in stark contrast to the rest of his appearance. It seemed a bit excessive to have three people on an interview panel for what was essentially an entry level administrative role, but this was a company that seemed to take everything it did very seriously.
The dark haired women - Jade, indicated the only seat on her side of the table. Jess thanked her and sank gratefully into it; and tried to tuck herself neatly into the corner.
It was her third interview that week and she could already see the same sceptical expression arrive in their gaze. As soon as she explained the gaps in her CV, they would all start wondering the same thing; if they give her a job was she going to stick around, or swan off back to somewhere warm and tropical as soon as she'd saved enough money?
Well ordinarily they'd be right. She was broke and she hated London in the winter. It was cold, perpetually raining, and grey and dark and grim. No one smiled, no one talked. It was all so depressing. But her gran needed her. She was a lot better than she had been for the first few weeks after the operation, but for the next few months at least, she couldn't be left alone, for long periods, and as the globetrotting wastrel in the family with no commitments, the responsibility lay with Jess. Not that she minded, she was happy to help, even if it did mean being stuck in a city that she hated in rainy october.
They asked all the usual questions. She felt like it was going well, she was holding her own. There had been so many interviews over the last few days, that the nervous edge that she usually felt seemed to be wearing off, so it was only when he let out a huff in response to something on his macbook that it dawned on her that she couldn't recall the man on the panel looking at her since she'd arrived, he hadn't spoken since she'd walked into the room. He hadn't asked her a single question. Instead his eyes kept drifting back to his screen. There was definitely something more important on it than her. One of the others was speaking. Her eyes flew away from him, and towards the source of the voice.
"So tell us Jess," Jade asked. "Why do you want to work for this company in particular?"
She blinked, and for a moment she was entirely lost for words, which was ridiculous -it was an interview cliche.
She stumbled and stuttered, and then stopped speaking altogether. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and cast her mind back to the preparation she'd done. When she opened her eyes again she found, for the first time since the interview started, he was looking right at her.
Of course he was.
She was thrown all over again, by the glacier like intensity of his gaze, by the pure beauty in his bone structure, by the savage masculinity that he seemed to ooze from every pore. And for what seemed like a small eternity they both just watched each other, while her chest fluttered like a cathedral filled with starlings, and Jess had to use every last bit of strength she had to pull herself from the enchantment he had somehow trapped her in.
She looked away, finally breaking the spell, and churned out some guff about liking the company ethos, about putting quality and style before the latest fads (at least she'd the good sense to google the company ethos before she'd arrived) but she knew it sounded fake. she'd blown it. This strange chemistry that existed between her and the arrogant oaf sitting before her, had knocked her right off balance and more generally, she just couldn't get as excited as she knew she should about working for a boutique fashion company.
She thought about the row of girls sitting in the foyer, with their moleskine notebooks, and their perfect hair, and their expensive pointy shoes, their oversized glasses, looking like they'd just stepped out of vogue. They'd gone to much more of an effort, appeared so much more nervous, more committed, far more deserving of this post than she could ever be. This was a lifestyle to them, it was simply a job to Jess.
The questions were still coming, but they seemed much more perfunctory.
She'd tried her hardest to ignore him, but he was no longer ignoring her, she had his full and undivided attention now, and it was doing nothing to ease her sudden case of nerves. Increasingly she became more and more aware of the utter dominance he seemed to exert over everything in the room, even the very air she was trying and failing to breathe. She wondered how the two women interviewing were apparently so unflustered in his presence.
Between one stuttering heartbeat and the next she managed to answer their questions. But she was on autopilot, just counting the seconds until she could escape the stifling effect he was having on her.
Until all of a sudden, she was being dismissed. Jade's voice was soothing and apologetic; it told her if she did hear from them again, it would only be to explain why she was not the successful candidate.
Esme, the blonde one, walked her to the door. She risked a final glance back at him before leaving. He wasn't looking at her. He was studying a paper. Probably the CV of the next applicant.
Finally free of the interview and all that corporate splendour, she took deep gulps of the cold air. The sky was a blanket of dull grey that gave the world around her a mediocre hue that starkly contrasted the world she had just left, but at least it wasn't raining. She noticed the Cafe Nero across the road, she needed to use a bathroom, and perhaps she'd treat herself to one of their lattes before she went back to gran and made lunch.
There wasn't a queue. That was her decision made. She smiled at the cute barista, tall slim with shaved sides and dyed orange hair. 'Can I get an oat latte to take away please?'
'What size?'
'Regular.' She touched her card against the reader
*
'I need some fresh air.'
With that, Gabriel stood up from the table and strolled out the room. He turned as he reached the door.
'Don't wait for me, carry on.'
Jade and the other one both looked stunned, there were still candidates to interview, but they were both too polite to say so. He wasn't sure why they needed him there anyway, the two of them more than capable of conducting the interviews, and unlike his, they were going to be working directly with they recruited, he wasn't sure why he needed to be there. It was something this company and its silly ethos of .... Waste of time if you asked him
he felt unsettled, but he couldn't say why, he just needed to get out of the building for a moment.
*
