Shopping for a Billionaire 4 by Julia Kent Page B

shops?” I shout. Using my diaphragm makes the muscles between my ribs hurt. Now it hurts to talk? I need combat pay for this job, I swear.
    Josh drops the door handle and runs down the stairs.
    “Hey!” I protest.
    “ Please ,” he calls back. “I could drive to Starbucks and get us all lattes and return and you’ll still be on the eighth stair. I can help Amanda.”
    He’s got a point. I feel like a turtle with fibromyalgia. 
    Josh comes whizzing up the staircase with the box in his hands like he’s Superman. Balancing Amanda’s stuff on one arm, he uses the other to hold the door for me.
    “Show-off,” Amanda and I say in unison. I look at her and gasp.
    “What are you wearing?”
    She looks like the human embodiment of the coffee bean/piece of excrement on the top of my car.
    “Car wash uniform. I have to go and pretend to be a counter employee for the rest of the day.”
    “With non-functioning arms?”
    “That’s what I said! Greg’s being unreasonable.”
    “And that’s the uniform?” Josh squeaks, laughing. “I haven’t seen that much polyester since I watched the movie Boogie Nights with my boyfriend.”
    Amanda and I pause, which isn’t hard. “Boyfriend?” We’re in stereo.
    Josh blushes. “Well, you know—YES! I have a boyfriend!” he squeals.
    We all squeal.
    Greg opens a window and sticks his head out. “You guys sound like you’re replaying that scene from Deliverance . You okay?”
    “We’re just talking about our cars and how much we love driving in tin cans of humiliation,” Amanda shouts back.
    Thwack . The window snaps shut.
    Josh starts to tell us all about Cameron while I make it to the seventh step and realize that Josh—geeky, smart, goofy, socially deficited Josh—has a boyfriend.
    And I don’t.
    Tears prickle at the edges of the soft skin around my eyeballs, taking the immediacy of my aching muscles away from my attention. I inhale slowly through my nose and grasp my leg, pulling it up. Eight. One more stair to go. Just don’t cry until—
    Too late.
    “You look great!” Josh says as I pull my leg up to reach the top. “All these gym shops are toning you.”
    “It’s all neutral. I’m eating more ice cream to compensate.”
    “For what?” Amanda snorts. “You’d have to work out thirty-seven hours a day doing CrossFit to make up for the amount of ice cream you’re eating.”
    I’m about to answer but she makes it up the stairs and is right behind me, nudging me with her shoulder. I’m forced to stumble forward and take three steps in a row.
    “You look like you could star in The Walking Dead .” 
    “You sound like you could star in Honey Boo Boo .”
    “What does that even mean?”
    “I was aiming for ‘offensive.’”
    “You sailed right past it and hit the ‘lame’ target.”
    We get to the stairs. No elevator. Josh and Amanda slip past me and I am grateful for the peace. It takes me seventeen minutes to get to the office. I’m late for the staff meeting.
    Just as I walk in, I hear Greg say two different sentences:
    “Shannon and you can go to the Catch My Vibe store with her mother.”
    and
    “The Fort shop goes to Shannon per James McCormick’s instructions, no matter how much you threaten me, Amanda.” Greg flinches just enough to show he’s worried. 
    Both freak me out, though not enough to drown out the screaming pain in my legs.
    “Wait—what?” I ask. Three faces turn toward me, Amanda’s hostile.
    “She can barely move!” Amanda argues, gesturing wildly with her head, her arms immobile.
    “Pick up your pen and write your name,” I say in a quiet voice.
    She’s been taking glare lessons from Chuckles, I see.
    “It’s done,” Greg announces. “You get your shot later in the summer,” he explains to her. She leans down to drink out of a straw someone shoved in her can of diet soda.
    As I bend to sit in my chair, I hear my hamstrings snap like a high-tension cord on a crane. Ping!  
    Greg eyes us warily. Josh