The Intern - Full Submission (2 page)

Lexi then returned to Drake’s office to find it empty.  She walked into her office and laid the steno pad on the desk, unlocking her computer and starting a word document for the meeting notes.  She still had not seen Drake by the time she finished up, so she finished up the notes and found his email address in the directory, forwarding them to him.

Lexi
began to look around her office and contemplate what she could do to decorate it.  She had no clue.  Decorating wasn’t exactly her forte and certainly not anything she had experience with.  Lexi had grown up in a poor household.  The truth was, Lexi had grown up in a trailer park in Macon, Georgia.  Her father was an alcoholic and rarely showed up at home and her mother worked two jobs to keep a roof over their heads. 

Lexi had been smart enough to get good grades and a partial scholarship to attend college.  What the scholarship didn’t cover was taken care of by federal grants, student loans and the part time job she had waiting tables after classes each day.  It hadn’t been easy but it had been worth it.  She had made it through despite losing her father in a drunken brawl when she was a freshman and her mother in a car accident when she was a senior.  Lexi had no one.  It was sometimes surreal knowing that you were all alone in the world at such an early age but it was what it was.

Now, here she was in one of the most respected engineering firms in Atlanta and it was important that she do a good job as an intern in order to garner a position as an engineer with them.  It was a lot of pressure and she had already made an ass of herself on day one.  She stared at the large beige wall in front of her trying to visualize what would make an impression there.  She jumped as she heard Drake’s voice from the other office.

“Lexi, come,” he said.  Lexi wondered if he would be calling her like she was a bad dog the entire time she worked for him.  She walked into his office and stood in front of his desk.  “Yes, Sir?” she asked.

He looked up at her with just a hint of bemusement in his eyes.  “Thank you for the notes.  They were very meticulous for your first staff meeting,” he told her.

Lexi smiled.  “Thank you,” she said.

“I think that will be all for today Lexi.  I have a personal appointment this afternoon that I need to get to.  Tomorrow, I will teach you the ways of my people, grasshopper,” he said with a smirk.  “You can stay until five and get whatever you need for the office requisitioned.  Tomorrow, I will get you a company credit card and you can begin to pick out décor for your office.”

“Yes, Sir,” Lexi responded.  He began to tidy up his desk and she took it as her cue to leave.  She turned and headed back towards her office.  She heard his voice behind her as she walked away.

“By the way, Lexi.  You need to make a quick correction to the notes.  There seems to be a typo.  I believe you meant to put the name of Mr. Charles Williams where you had typed Mr. Unibrow.”

Lexi stopped and turned towards him for a moment.  “Oh, yes…I’m sorry.  He must have been away from his desk when Mrs. Silicone took me for my tour,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Drake smiled broadly.  “Indeed.  Nice lady, isn’t she?  Very upfront too,” he said, as he picked up his things and left the office on his way to who knows where.  Lexi scowled at his bad pun and continued to her office.  Once she sat down, she thought about his weird sense of humor and chuckled a little.  This was going to be interesting.

Lexi ordered her desk supplies and surfed the net a bit looking for suitable office décor but came up with nothing.  At five, she clocked out using the online system HR had shown her and left the building.  She walked down to the parking garage and retrieved her banged up Volvo from the garage.  She made her way through the end of day traffic to her tiny little one bedroom apartment on the other side of town. 

She had no more than settled in, when she heard a knock on the door.  She opened it to find Samantha, a nei
ghbor and friend. 
Sam, was the typical blonde bimbo that guys gravitate toward.  What she lacked in intelligence, she made up for in personality and looks.  She worked as a stripper at a nearby club called The Cheetah.

“Well, tell me about your first day,” she said as she bounced down on Lexi’s second hand plaid couch that doubled as her bed when she folded it out.  “I brought some wine to celebrate.  I even chilled it while I waited for you to come home,” she told her.  Lexi looked at the bottle of Strawberry Hill in her hand.  Nothing said classy like Boone’s Farm.  She went to the kitchen and grabbed her only two wine glasses.  They were actually pretty nice.  She had bought them at a thrift store, along with most of her other dishes.

She sat on the couch and they opened their bottle of cheap wine.  “Well, I got lucky somehow and go
t assigned directly to the
son of the owner.  His name is Drake Whitson and he is gorgeous, but intimidating.  I felt so awkward around him and made an idiot of myself on the first day.  Good thing that he seems to have a sense of humor,” she told Sam.

“Oh, yeah…Drake.  He’s an odd one,” Sam responded.  Lexi raised an eyebrow at her.

“You know him?” Lexi asked.

“I know about him, not him personally.  He used to date one of the girls at the club.  It was Sandy.  The one that was studying some sort of mechanical design,” she said.

Lexi considered this for a moment.  She knew that many of the strippers at the Cheetah were actually highly intelligent.  They were putting themselves through school using what they had and she saw nothing wrong with that.  It wasn’t something she could ever do but she didn’t judge them for it.  Still, Drake hadn’t struck her as the stripper groupie type.

Sam continued, ‘Yeah, he’s the reason she quit.  She said he had hooked her up or something and she wouldn’t need to strip anymore.  I haven’t seen her since she quit.”

Lexi absorbed all of this.  She wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Sam suddenly changed the subject.  “Let me tell you about my night last night,” she bubbled.  “I made over five thousand dollars off this one guy that kept telling me how much I looked like Denise Richards and trying to grab my tits.  He handed me a roll of bills and told me to hang on to it for a minute while he went to the bathroom.  He never came back.  Poor drunk bastard is probably still trying to figure out where he lost all his money at,” she said.

Lexi laughed, still considering Mr. Drake Whitson’s association with a stripper.  She and Sam finished the atrocious bottle of Strawberry Hill and watched a few episodes of a raunchy dating show she had saved on TiVo before saying their goodbyes.  Lexi went straight to bed and fell asleep.  She slept soundly but woke up in a panic early the next morning. 
Oh my God.  My alarm didn’t go
off.  I’m late on my second day
.  Damn Sam
and her cheap drinking habits!
her thoughts screamed at her.  She rolled over and looked at the clock.  It was only five a.m. 

Lexi lay there in the dark.  She was calmer now that she realized she had merely woken up before the alarm had sounded.  She reached over and turned it off before rolling out of bed.  Her head was pounding.  She got up,  put on some coffee and took a handful of aspirin before dragging herself into the shower.  The hot water felt good as it ran over her pale, smooth skin.  She pulled the shampoo from the shower caddy and washed her hair, letting the suds fall across her firm breasts and slide down her stomach and back.  She rinsed her hair and then slathered on some conditioner, letting it work its magic while she shaved her legs, armpits and crotch.  Lexi wasn’t very experienced in the sex department but she liked to keep her private area smooth in case an opportunity arose, so to speak.

It wasn’t that she was not attractive.  Lexi was no stranger to stares and catcalls.  Her thick auburn hair hung halfway down her back in loose curls.  Her pale skin was virtually flawless, lending a porcelain look to her face.  Her blue eyes drew people into them wherever she went.  Her body was a perfect hourglass with a firm set of C cups and a perfect apple bottom that sat atop two long shapely legs.  She just hadn’t had a great experience with the few partners she had previously been with, so she wasn’t so quick to just hop into bed with anyone.

She felt almost human again by the time she got out of the shower.  She was going to have to ban Sam from the apartment on work nights if she expected to show up at the office with all her wits intact.  She quickly blow dried her hair and pulled it up in a ponytail.  She selected a knee length brown skirt and a pair of Mary Jane wedges, which she topped off with a simple button up white blouse.  She finished up with a little powder and lip-gloss, grabbed a brown sweater and headed out the door to work.

Drake was already in the office when she got there.  He looked her up and down when she arrived and smiled faintly.  “Good morning, Mary Jane,” he teased as she made her way to her office unload the things she had brought from home for her desk.  She placed several pictures on her desk and walked back to Drake’s desk. 

“Good Morning, Drake,” she said.  In truth, the Mary Jane comment had hurt her feelings.  She suddenly  felt dowdy.  What was she thinking dressing like an Amish secretary?  Oh well, nothing she could do about it now.

“Lexi, sit,” Drake replied.  There it was, dog obedience training again.  Lexi sat in a chair opposite of him and looked at him.  “Lexi, I want to get you started out right.  I know that you are fresh out of college and have a lot to learn.  At the same time, I find that the interns that come into our business can often provide fresh perspectives and ideas that may have become stale with seasoned engineers.  One of the key ingredients to success is appearing confident and well received.  If you are going to be my intern, I cannot have you coming in looking like a frumpy kindergarten teacher.  I ne
ed
you to present yourself in a more professional manner,” he finished.

Lexi flushed a bright shade of crimson.  She felt completely humiliated and couldn’t say anything in response.  While she was still trying to overcome her embarrassment, Drake stood up and walked around his desk to sit in the chair beside her.  He reached over and put his hand on hers.  Her knuckles were white from gripping the chair so hard.  With his other hand, he reached over and put his hand on her chin, pulling her face in his direction.

“Lexi, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to embarrass you.  Please understand that I’m trying to help you grow.  You are my first intern and I want to be able to have you stand in for me at any given occasion.  My father no longer involves himself directly in the business and I have a
lot on my shoulders.  I need
you to learn everything I can teach you and this is no different than if I were teaching you how to engineer a high tech aircraft.  It’s a very small step in where I hope to take you someday,” he finished.

Lexi suddenly realized that her embarrassment had been replaced by heart palpitations resulting from his proximity to her and by his touch.  She finally spoke, “Thank you, Drake.  I will see if I can afford some nicer things to wear to the office.  I will go shopping after work,” she managed.

“No, you most certainly will not, Drake said with a broad smile.  Today, we are going shopping at work.  Consider it a pre-signing bonus.  Go get your handbag and let’s go,” he said enthusiastically.

“What?  No.  I…I…can’t accept that from you,” she said.

“You can and you will.  Don’t think that I don’t know what we pay interns here.  I can much better afford to dress you like I intend for you to be dressed.  Plus, I have a feeling that the people I know can help you with what you should buy a lot better than you standing in the middle of some department store trying to figure out what you think  I will find acceptable.  This way, you will know that you are wearing what I want you to wear,” he said decisively.  “Now, go!”

Lexi wasn’t sure how she felt about this, but she knew he was not going to take no for an answer so she resigned herself to accepting his offer.  She went to her office and grabbed her handbag and walked slowly back to his office.  She was surprised when he met her directly and placed a small kiss on her forehead.   “Good girl,” he said.

Lexi was taken aback by the unprofessional behavior from someone who had just had an entire discussion with her about professionalism.  At the same time, she couldn’t deny the jolt of electricity that ran down her spine.  Secretly, she was excited about their little shopping trip.  They headed out of the office together and got on the elevator.  Drake pushed the button to go to the lobby and began to hum some tune Lexi was unfamiliar with as they descended.

A car picked them up on the curb and Drake told him to head to Saks on Peachtree.  Lexi looked out the window as they rode.  Her thoughts were swirling in so many directions that she couldn’t complete a single thought for them jumping off in different directions.  Drake returned phone calls as they rode and then responded to some emails on his phone.  “Remind me to requisition you a smartphone and a laptop when we get back to the office.  You will need them to keep up with me,” he said with a slow smile.  Lexi nodded, she felt bewildered.

Once they arrived at the store, Drake was a whirlwind of activity.  The store associate addressed him by first name when they walked in and he introduced her to Lexi.  He said something that Lexi could not hear and the associate glanced in her direction, looking her up and down.  Lexi felt awkward again but it was short lived as the associate headed in her direction.  “Well, love…let’s get started,” she said brightly.