Chapter 2: Friendly Advice Will Put You in Awkward Situations

But Raemon Kentworth’s fame was lost on Octavia. She wasn’t even paying attention to what he was saying. She was still searching the ground around her for her phone.

Finally, she spotted a dash of turquoise blue with yellow polka-dots by the edge of the steps, only a few feet from her.

“There it is!” she exclaimed, diving for her phone. She picked it up and, holding her breath, turned it over. She sighed in relief.

The screen was still intact. Octavia stuffed her phone back into her pocket and turned back to face the stranger.

He was still staring at her, his face even more cold and terrifying than it had been seconds ago.

Octavia frowned. “Look, I think we were both in the wrong here. So let’s just call it a truce and go our separate ways.”

He did not respond to this. The only movement he made was a muscle twitching by his jawline.

He stood a mere foot away from her, looking down at her upturned face with eyes that displayed nothing other than contempt.

“Do you really not know who I am?” he breathed, his voice cold and impersonal.

“Obviously not,” Octavia scoffed. “Do you know who I am?”

“Someone in need of a lesson.”

“There, you see? We don’t know each other.” She slid her hands into her pocket and continued complacently. “And given the current situation, I don’t think we want to.”

The coldness never left his eyes, but he seemed to change his mind about something. He shook his head and stepped away, moving back toward the steps.

“You’re not even worth my time,” he said dismissively. “But I better not see you around here again.”

“I can’t promise that,” Octavia responded. “One never knows where one will end up, you know?”

He stopped and turned back to face her.

She continued. “If we do cross paths in the future for whatever reason, I promise I’ll pretend I don’t know who you are,” Octavia offered.

His scowl deepened. “Very accommodating of you. But I will not give you any reason to be within ten feet of me.”

Octavia seemed to muse over this for a few seconds. “Fine by me.” She adjusted the straps of her book bag, turned on her heel, and started walking away.

Her phone beeped, alerting her to another text. As she read through the message, she instantly forgot about her incident with the stranger. His words, his face, his magnificent form—all faded from her mind.

After all, whoever he was, it was unlikely that they’d ever meet again.

As she started to the nearest train stop, she did not even think to look back at the tall, dark figure of Raemon Kentworth, whose eyes never left her as she walked away from him.

***

Octavia could hear the loud music playing before she got to the door of her apartment an hour later.

She opened the door to the 1500-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment, closed the door behind her, and took a few steps across the tiny living room and adjoining dining area before making a sharp left to the kitchen.

There, her housemate Sierra was standing in front of the stove where a pan of something was bubbling. She held an empty box of a five-minute dinner dish in one hand and a cooking spoon in the other.

She swayed her hips to the music blaring out of the sound system in the living room, flooding the entire house with catchy pop beats.

“Sierra,” Octavia said.

She could barely hear her own voice over the noise. Sierra certainly couldn’t; she kept swaying on beat to the music, singing along with the words and pumping her cooking spoon in the air.

Her long dark-brown hair swayed behind her, trailing the movement of her head.

Octavia sighed and shrugged her book bag off her shoulders, setting it down on the floor.

“SIERRA!” she yelled.

Sierra swiveled around, gave a surprised look at Octavia, then reached for her phone on the nearby counter and tapped a button. The music stopped.

“Damn, girl,” Sierra said, “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Naturally. A burglar could have entered the apartment, and you wouldn’t know it either, thanks to your music.”

Sierra blinked at Octavia, then turned her attention to her phone. “Whatever. Fine, I’ll turn it down, okay? God.”

“Thanks. How’s the nutritional supplement game going?” Octavia said.

Sierra shook her head. “That was ages ago. Now I sell bath salts.”

“Sounds lucrative,” Octavia said.

Sierra’s phone camera clicked, and her face relaxed from the wide-eyed, puckered-lips pose she’d gone into. “I’m testing out my newest product tomorrow, so you better not be in the bathroom.”

“Sierra, you’re an inspiration,” Octavia said with a smile, grabbing a slice of pizza and starting for the kitchen door.

“Of course I am. I have two thousand followers,” Sierra responded, putting on another pouty face for her phone screen.

Octavia stifled her next comment and walked out of the kitchen, through their hallway, and opened the door to her room.

There was barely an empty space to set a foot down on; all of Octavia’s paraphernalia littered the space, making it almost impossible to move.

Somehow, a skinny, long-limbed girl had navigated through all of Octavia’s crap and wedged herself in the chair at the desk.

She had a copy of one of Octavia’s comics opened and was lazily thumbing through it. She barely glanced up when Octavia entered.

Gracie had her long raven-black hair restrained under a baseball cap, showing off the high cheekbones of her pale porcelain face.

She wore an old T-shirt and faded jeans, which she paired with her signature weathered Doc Martens.

Gracie often sought refuge at her friend’s apartment, much to the annoyance of Sierra. But today, she wasn’t just here for fun. She had something to give Octavia.

She tossed a banged-up laptop she was carrying to Octavia, who barely caught it.

“Here you are,” she said.

Octavia whooped and opened the laptop quickly. She had been separated from the device for the past thirty-seven hours. Gracie had been installing the hardware Octavia needed for a new program she was working on.

She had to use Sierra’s laptop to apply for jobs in the meantime, and that had been a pain.

Gracie was always Octavia’s go-to guy for anything computer-related.

“Thank you!” Octavia breathed, flipping open her laptop screen. “I’ve been suffering from serious computer withdrawal. What do I owe you, by the way?”

Gracie waved it away. “Nothing. It’s on the house.”

Octavia looked up. “What? Why?”

“It’s my good deed for the year. You’re welcome.”

“Gracie, you know I can afford to pay for this, right?”

“I’ll bet you can.”

“I’m not broke yet.”

“I didn’t think you were. All the same, this one’s on me. Congratulations, by the way.”

“I really can’t let you—” Octavia stopped. “Wait, what? What am I being congratulated for?”

“You’ve got an interview at Icarus Tech tomorrow morning. Sounded like a pretty big deal.”

“How would you—?”

“I saw it in your email while I was installing the parts.”

“You read my emails?”

“Not all of them. Just that one. It looked important, so I figured you might need to know immediately.”

Octavia sighed. “You’re a true friend, Gracie.”

“I try, you know?” Gracie said as she eased herself into the chair at the other end of the table.

Octavia opened her email and clicked on the one message, reading, “Icarus Tech.” She spent the next few seconds reading it over.

“Well,” she remarked when she was done.

“What?” Gracie asked.

“It says they want to discuss a potential position. I mean, ‘she says.’ It’s from some person named…let’s see…here it is: Adelaide Weston.”

“Do you know an Adelaide?”

“I don’t think so…but…the name kinda sounds familiar.”

“Yikes. Potential acupuncturist or future serial killer?”

“Maybe. But I’m pretty sure her name wasn’t Weston,” Octavia said.

“So, are you going to go?” Gracie asked.

“Have you seen the state of my fridge? I need a job badly. If I do end up getting a job…you’ll let me pay you for this, right?”

Gracie was momentarily silent. “Fine, lose your own money.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Octavia answered with a sense of superiority. She glanced at her laptop screen again and exhaled in frustration.

“Damn it. Now I have to find my interview clothes. Where the hell did I leave them?”

“Dress to impress,” Gracie chirped pleasantly. “Look the part for the job you want. You know, all that vague, crappy career advice.”

Octavia snorted. “Please. As long as I’m dressed, that will be enough.”