Boomerang Read Online Free

about you?” she asks. “What excites you, other than toaster panties?”
    I laugh. “Hey. That wasn’t my doing.” Though, who knows? It actually might have been. I have a quick debate with myself about whether to tell her about my soccer career and decide against it. “I just graduated from UCLA in June. So, you know, marching bravely into my adult life and all that. First day on the job for me today.”
    “And we’re both starting out with hangovers. Sweet.”
    “But at least we’re both wearing underwear.”
    “At least there’s that.” Mia leans her head back against the seat and smiles. There’s nothing flirty about it. Nothing forced or fake. It’s just a really great smile.
    Suddenly we’re trapped in a staring contest. Her gaze is so direct and her green eyes are like prisms. They hold so much light inside them. There are questions and jokes and stories in her eyes. I know right then I want this again. To be looked at by her again.
    “Look, Mia, I know this isn’t how—”
    The cab jerks to a stop.
    “Eighteen dollars,” the cabby says.
    Mia reaches in her purse. “I’m paying for his fare, too. Can you add it?”
    “Sure thing, lady. Still eighteen dollars.”
    Mia and I lock eyes. I can’t believe this. We’ve come to the same place ? There’s no way.
    Someone lays on the horn behind us.
    The cabby curses and pulls closer to the curb. “Twenty-one hundred Avenue of the Stars. That’s what you wanted, right?”
    “Right,” we blurt at the same time.
    “Okay. Wow,” Mia says. She shoves some bills at him, and we get out of the cab.
    The office building rises up in front of us, a smooth wall of smoke-tinted glass that jets to the sky. It blew me away when I came here for my interview. I remember thinking this was the place that would start my future, but I’m not thinking that right now. I’m trying to figure out the present.
    Mia and I walk through the doors and join a cluster of people waiting at the bank of elevators.
    We haven’t said a word to each other since we left the cab.
    We haven’t looked at each other.
    I don’t even know if we’re standing together, or just in the same vicinity.
    I shift my shoulders, telling myself that it’s the suit that feels strange and constricting.
    The elevator arrives and the doors part. I hold the door, letting a dozen people flood past me. Then I step inside and reach for the button for the seventeenth floor, but it’s already lit.
    Mia stands lost behind a wall of dark suits. The urge to shove toward her comes over me. That seems desperate, though it also feels awkward not to stand with her. But then it’s too late. The doors slide closed and I’m trapped in the front, staring at the seam between the steel panels.
    We hit the seventh floor, and four people step out.
    It’s not until the doors close again that I realize I’ve been holding my breath.
    Mia’s still on the elevator.
    Twelfth floor. Two people leave.
    Fourteenth. Three more.
    I glance at the elevator controls. Only one floor is still lit.
    “Well, this is a surprise.” Mia is still a few feet behind me. I can’t tell, but I think she’s smiling. I want to ask her at least one of the questions charging through my brain, but doors slide open to the glass-walled Boomerang lobby, and we both step out.

 Chapter 5 
     
    Mia
     
    Q: Dress like a wreck, or dress for success?
     
    M y brain decides it’s an excellent time to go on strike, leaving me with zero resources to puzzle through the fact that I, a) woke up next to this lovely male-type person after engaging in activities I tragically can’t recall; b) ended up in a cab with him, which; c) took us to the exact same destination; until d) we found ourselves stepping out on the same floor. A floor that houses one business and one business only: Boomerang.
    My new place of employment.
    And apparently his too.
    “So, this job of yours?” I say. A corkscrew of hair drops into my line of vision as if to underscore