Chapter 1: Cold Coffee and Assholes

Hello, Mr/Ms/Mrs. whatever the fuck your name is. This is Jasper Whitlock calling with Volturi & Co. and we're calling to find out if you've heard about our new low prices on all of our products?

Yes, fuckers. I'm a fucking telemarketer.

It's a temporary thing though, or at least that's what I've been telling myself for the past year and a half. I hate this job, but with the economy in the tank it was the only one I could find that paid well enough that I could still afford to feed my cat and live independently from my parents.

Every day I call dozens of random fucking strangers and try to sell everything from body glitter to fancy-ass lighters.

Fucking body glitter. And some people actually buy that shit. Crazy ass mother fuckers.

Shit. Edward Masen, my supervisor - he is not my boss, he only thinks he is – is glaring in my direction.

He's sort of like Dwight from The Office. Except not as funny or lovable, he thinks he has power over everyone but in reality he is a glorified Assistant Manager. He's only here so our real boss, Carlisle Cullen, can fuck his secretary in the comfort of his secret apartment.

Not only does he invade my work life with his crazy control-freak ways, but he's also my niehgbor at the apartment complex I live in. It gets worse. He lives with his crazy twin sister Alice who believes that we're some sort of star-crossed lovers or some shit. I didn't stick around too long after she started to say shit about us being together forever.

Crazy chick.

Edward stands behind his few centimeters of glass and plaster that separate him the rest of us drones in this stuffy office with a cup of already cold coffee, squinting his beady little eyes straight at me behind his wire rimmed glasses. I make the mistake of making eye contact.

Fuck.

He's on the move and by the looks of it he's headed straight for me.

Double fuck.

Now leaning against the thin wall of my tiny cubical, annoyingly drawing a breath in through his teeth while looking down at me over the rim of his thick glasses and swirling his half-drunk coffee around in his cup.

"Mr. Whitlock," he sighed out annoyingly. "Is there a problem with your phone?"

"No, Mr. Masen." Yes, as a matter of fact there is; on the other end there is another asshole who is either going to hang up, insult me, my mother or my grandmother, or is actually going to buy some of our overpriced body glitter.

"Your computer?"

"No, Mr. Masen." Another lie, it holds the assholes mentioned above phone numbers and your annoying and fuck hourly emails. Keep it up Jasper, if you believe he believes you, you might actually survive this.

"Then please enlighten me as to why you are just sitting here, doing absolutely nothing, while there are potential customers you could be selling to?" You mean exploiting, right? "Instead you sit here wasting both space and time that this company could be giving to someone more productive," please do, I hate this job. It's killing me slowly.

He slowly takes a sip of his stupid cold ass coffee.

Good God, could this man be any more of a fucking ass? I can't wait until I can leave this fucking place and don't have to put up with this fucker anymore.

"I wasn't doing nothing, sir. I was just simply thinking about which pitch I was going to give the next customer I call. You know, thinking back to past calls and comparing which one works best to sell which products. An opening line for selling body glitter is defiantly different than a line for zippo lighters. It's all about hooking the potential customer with you opening statement, you know?" Nice Jasper, just keep spouting this bullshit until he leaves. Just don't go to crazy. "An experienced man, such as yourself, should know how hard it can be to keep these people on the phone; they're always hanging up, or yelling at you, or sometimes they don't even realize that they've answered the phone, you know. Sometimes when that happens they potential customer and their significant other are," leaning closer to Edward to speak in a loud whisper and twining my fingers to together as if they were tiny legs," really going at it, and when I say going at it, I mean like bed breaking, pillow ripping, bruises all over the body, fu-"

Edward cut me off before I could finish my sentence with a disgusted look on his face. "Alright, that's enough Whitlock. Just pick a pitch and move onto the next customer on your list."

Perfect, just enough dirty to scare away Prudeward.

He walked away quickly after that with tense shoulders, a straight back, and coffee mug gripped in his left fist. I could tell that he was turned on my description of one couple I had the pleasure of listening to. I could even see a little sweat forming on his neck line and under his arms.

Ha.

He needs to get laid.

"Nice, Whitlock," looking to my right at my best friend in this God forsaken company. "Did you just make a reference to the book, what's it called? Rising Sun or something?"

"Shut-up, my sister made me read them. She threatened my guitar man, my guitar." I love my Jamie, she's a Gibson Acoustic with a vintage sunburst finished face. She's my baby.

Emmett, the guy I'm conversing with if you didn't get that, is a nice guy that I've known for the year and a half that I've worked here. We share a wall - his is covered with pictures of his hot wife and their massive amount of children, while mine has a picture of my cat and another picture of my parents and siblings that my mother gave as a congratulations on finding a job where you actually have a wall of your own.

Thanks Mom.

The two of us hang out after work sometimes when Emmett doesn't have to be home right away - which is basically never since he has like between three and ten kids, it's hard to count them all when they're running around like animals escaped from the zoo - and talk about guy shit and what we had planned on doing instead of working at Volturi & Co.

Emmett wants to open mechanic shop but that's hard to do when any money he and his wife make needs to go to raising their kids.

They seriously need to either invest in birth control or get some of their equipment tied up or some shit, but I think they're part that sector of Catholic that doesn't believe in birth control. Oh well, to each their own.

Now don't get me wrong, I love children and wouldn't mind having a couple of my own one day, but damn, Em's kids are crazy. They probably got that from him.

Poor Hot-Wifey.

While Emmett wants to be a mechanic, I want to open my own restaurant.

I know, I know. It's kind of stupid, but I love to cook and I love sharing my creations with other people. Every time I see someone's face light up when they taste a dish that I made just for them I feel as though I accomplished something. That, and opening my own restaurant would actually put my degree to use.

Maybe I should try out for Masterchef.

No, Gordon Ramsey is scary enough on TV. I don't need that kind of stress, I already have enough here from Fuckward.

"Thanks Em, I try. I just can't stand him, you know? He thinks he's so much better than everyone else in this office when everyone knows he's only here to cover Carlisle's ass. I just want to punch him so hard in the gut that all of his overly sweetened coffee comes spewing out of him." I bet he would fall like a house made of cards. I won't even have to hit him that hard, just one little tap and he'll go down.

"I know how you feel dude. One time I had to leave early because Julie was sick, Rosie couldn't leave work to pick her up from school, and Edward almost had a shit fit when I told his I had to leave. I swear I would have decked him if Mr. Cullen hadn't come back from his lunch break just then and told me I could go, cause, you know, he's a family man himself," Emmett finished with an impression of the man himself before starting to laugh.

I laughed with him before sighing. "Well, we better get back to work before Fuckward comes back over here again. I can only stand so much coffee breath in one day."

"Yeah, good idea. Want to have drinks on Thursday? Rosie is giving me a night free from the kids!"

That's right, Hot-Wifey's name is Rosalie.

"Can't on Thursday, I going to my sister's for dinner. How about Friday?"

"No can do, Emily and Livy has a ballet recital. We'll talk more tomorrow, I can feel Masen eyeballing us already."

Giving Emmett a quick smile I agreed and we quickly went back to work.

Okay, time to put on my fake-ass telephone voice and click the first number.

*ring*ring*ring*

"Hello?"

"Hello Ms. Walters, this is Jasper with Volturi & Co.-" was all I could get out before she hung up. I really want to call her a bitch for hanging up on me but at the same time I remembered I had done the same thing with many telemarketers before, and after, I became one myself. I really can't blame her.

I bet Edward actually listens to people like us when they call, I wouldn't put it past him. It probably gets him off.

For the next two hours all of my calls were similar to my call to Ms. Walters, people hanging up on me or telling me to go to hell and lose their number.

Aw, the wonderful life of a telemarketer… shoot me now… please.

I guess the body glitter business wasn't as hot as the Volturi brothers thought.

There were a few weirdoes who actually did buy some body glitter though. Mostly guys that sounded like they smoked 3 packs a day and were defiantly "over the hill."

Creepy ass motherfuckers. I bet they used it on themselves.

Ugh.

It wasn't until the clock was closer to quitting time that I called the number that would make this crappy day better.

*ring*ring*ring*

"Charlie's whore house, you got the dough, we got the hoe. This is Marie speaking, who do you want a taste of today?" The woman on the other side of the line answered.

I chuckled a little before starting my pitch. "Hello Ms. Swan, my name is Jasper-"

She quickly cut me off before I could say anymore. "I'm gonna stop you there Jasper, I'm not interested in any of whatever the fuck you were roped into trying to sell. You sound like you may have a nice voice under your layer of having to be polite to a 'potential customer' and I don't want to have to judge you by whatever you're selling. Now, why don't you say hi with your everyday man voice and we'll see if you need an intervention."

I think I'm love. This woman with a feminine whiskey voice didn't hang up right away even when she wasn't interested in any of the shit I'm supposed to be trying to sell to her right now.

"Hello darlin' my name is Jasper and I work for Volturi & Co.-"

"You mean the one that sells body glitter?" She cuts me off again, how the hell did she already know what I was going to try and sell, "One of my friends already got a call from someone at your company trying to sell that shit. Just to let you know up front that I am not buying any, I am not a stripper nor am I a sleazy old man, and I don't have any interest in sparkling in the sun like some lame ass fairy or gay vampire. But I do like sound of your voice so we can talk; now give me your sells pitch so we can move on to better topics."

I did just that, giving her the whole speech while laughing at her comments about the sparkly shit and what one might buy it for; her ideas ranging from strippers using it on stage to creepy old men giving themselves a sparkly penis to someone using it to prank a friend or family member.

This woman is perfect and I don't even know her first name.

"So, Ms. Swan-"

"You can call me Bella, Jasper"

"Okay Bella, it was wonderful talking with you, I don't want to stop but my creepy supervisor is staring at me," he really was, standing behind his window, drinking more cold coffee, staring at me over the rim as if daring me to spend another minute on the phone with this same "customer" without making a sale. "I don't want to, but I really need to hang-up now," I felt sad that my time with Bella was over, I probably wouldn't ever be able speak with her again.

"Well, I wouldn't want to get you in trouble Jasper; it was great speaking with you."

Feeling a surge of courage I ask, "May I save your number Bella? Not as a potential customer but so that I can call you later. So that I may be able to talk to you again, but next time talk more personally and see where this takes us?" I started to get a little nervous, "You know only if you want, I would totally understand if you didn't, I'm a complete stranger and we've only talked on the phone for like an hour…" Jesus Jasper, quit rambling, you're making a case against her allowing you to call her again! Quit making an ass out of yourself!

There was a moment of silence from her that gave me enough time to worry before answering.

"Yes, you save have my number, Jasper," she stated before hanging up with a quick goodbye.

I sat back in my standard issue rolly chair and looked up to the dry and cracking ceiling with a sigh - not sparing one look towards Fuckward's office - and smiled.

I, Jasper Whitlock, am a telemarketer and today I love my job.

So, what do you think? I've been holding onto this story idea for a while and finally had enough inspiration to write it down.

I's love to hear what you think, so please review!

~Mae