“If you counteract whatever stories Trey tells about last night, I’ll owe you.” She inched back into my space just enough for her knee to touch my elbow. “And think about how much fun it would be!”

I rubbed my eyes with my palms.

“Think about it: if we can put a chink in that Trey-is-perfect armor of his, maybe KQ will finally stop tea-bagging him long enough for the rest of us to get some recognition. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I would. I would like that very much. But at least I knew what to expect from Trey. Cal was a wild card.

“Fine,” I said eventually.

Cal clapped her hands and grabbed my face, kissing both cheeks.

“We’re going to be great friends,” she said. “For real this time.”

She tugged her sweater down over her hips, a lifeless sack from her shoulders to her thighs. She was going for nondescript, and she was nailing it. She mimed clapping again, her eyes bright, and disappeared behind my cubicle wall.

—

“HOW DID OUR LITTLE learning experiment go yesterday, fucknuts?” KQ asked when she sat down. She leaned back in her chair, legs splayed. She was wearing a skirt. I kept my eyes on my granola bar, the only thing that didn’t get stuck in the vending machine.

“Turns out we have ourselves a real firecracker over here, everyone!” Trey said, throwing his arm around Cal and shaking her. She stayed limp under his attention. “This crazy bitch tore up the strip club last night.”

Everyone looked skeptical.

Cal blushed, red flooding her neck and cheeks. Even her blood knew how to lie.

“What does a night at the strip club have to do with sales?” KQ asked. “Not that I can’t appreciate a good time,” she added, smiling at Trey. Her knees were strangers at a party.

“I thought to myself, Trey, where would be the hardest place to sell something? How about somewhere where other people are selling things? And then I thought, let’s make it even harder. Let’s sell the thing that they are selling back to them.” He paused after this emphasis, letting the brilliance sink in. “Do you follow?”

“I’m following,” KQ said, her voice the polyester cousin of intrigue.

“So I asked my little grasshoppers here to get the strippers to buy us a round of drinks.”

When I walked in the door, I had been fifty-fifty about whether to help Cal. But Trey could go fuck himself. I was nobody’s grasshopper.

“How creative!” KQ exclaimed. “How did you all do?”

“Like I was saying, we might need to keep this one locked up, boss. I volunteer for the first watch!” Trey grabbed Cal’s wrists and pinned them to the table with one hand. With the other, he did an elaborate mime of locking her down, swallowing the key, and rubbing his belly.