by Holley Trent
She nodded. “Did you give him a chance to explain?”
“His explanation didn’t meet my standard.”
“Damn,” she murmured, and leaned back into the table. In a quiet voice, she said, “He looked like he was into her.”
“Of course he is. Birds of a feather.”
“I don’t know about that, but I can say that they’re two incredibly attractive people who seem to be simpatico. If they crash and burn, it’s not your business.”
“No, it isn’t my business until that fiery burnout leaches into daily business at Athena. And it will.”
“Listen. I’m going to give you the same advice you gave me after Oren dumped me and I was in a salty, bitter funk.”
Raleigh was certainly in one of those. He hated that feeling that he’d lost control over something, and there wasn’t anything he could do to fix it except wait. Waiting was hard when it stung so much. “I don’t remember saying anything particularly reflective.”
“You told me to go out and buy myself something frivolous, so I bought myself a robo-vacuum. I call him Zippy. Way better than a cat.”
“A...robo-vacuum,” Raleigh confirmed in a flat tone.
Only Stacia could try to treat heartbreak with a trendy gadget. The strategy hadn’t immediately worked, the best he could remember, but her floors were certainly clean.
“Made me a little bit happy,” she said, “and after a while, I realized that you were right. I deserved to have something nice. Go do something nice for yourself and forget about...” She flicked her hand in the general direction of the exit. “That. Mind over matter. You’ve been a master at that forever. Don’t let all that practice go to waste now.”
“You’re right.” He straightened his spine and gave a determined nod that was all lie.
He wasn’t some flimsy naif who crumbled at the slightest hint of trouble, but his life had gotten a bit messier than he could typically ignore. He couldn’t let it stay that way, or he’d become bitter and hostile to the people who really did care about him, and he never wanted to do that.
He wasn’t going to let Everley distract him any more than she already had. Eggshells or not, he was still going to get shit done at Athena because he loved his job.
And he certainly wasn’t going to moon over the tragedy that was Bruce Engle. Everley could have him.
Raleigh would buy himself something frivolous. He wasn’t sure what it’d be yet, but neither books nor concert tickets were anywhere on the list of potentials.
Maybe a nice sweater.
Chapter Thirteen
Bruce shambled into Everley’s apartment and pulled her into his arms. He didn’t know what to say, but she never seemed to mind.
She got him. He didn’t understand it, but she got him.
“You should have told me you were heading back to New York,” she murmured against his chest.
He wasn’t ready to let go of her quite yet, even if it meant hearing her better. It’d been a fucking miserable flight and before that, two days of interactions that had left him confused and reeling. He wanted to go into the dark for a while to decompress, but he couldn’t.
There was too much to be done.
“I didn’t know I was coming. I’m supposed to be in LA, I guess, but it’s just as easy to be here. I’d rather be here.”
“What’s wrong?”
Sighing, he unhanded her and headed to the armchair by the windows. He shooed her cat out of it and rubbed his eyes. “They didn’t like it.”
“They?” Everley sat on the loveseat nearby and gripped his knee.
Oh, hell.
Her makeup was half off. He must have interrupted her midswipe during her pursuit of gray eyeshadow removal. She’d inadvertently gone semi-raccoon.
“Oh, love,” he whispered, swiping the pad of his thumb beneath her eyes. She always dropped everything for him and he hadn’t noticed.
“It’s all right,” she said, studying his stained thumb. “It always looks worse before it looks better. Tell me what happened.”
“I get so caught up with...what I have to say that I don’t stop to think that you might want to say something.”
“It’s all right. I’m used to waiting my turn.”
“You should get to go first sometimes.”
“I’ll tell you when I need to.”
Oh.
He never knew what to say when people surprised him, but he knew that people were supposed to say things. He’d had some of those things memorized once, but he’d stopped using them because they hadn’t felt right.
“Thank you,” he offered instead. He didn’t know if it was right, but he genuinely meant it, at least, and she smiled upon hearing it.
“I sent my parents an early edit of the film. You know, the one about the band.”
“You didn’t tell me about that.”
“Slipped my mind with all the back-and-forth I’ve been doing between here and LA.”
He’d been in so many planes, going in so many directions, that he couldn’t even say for sure what the date was or which time zone his brain thought he was in.
Her eyebrows raised. “And you said they didn’t like it?”
“They don’t.”
“What about it didn’t they like? I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know what you were doing. Was it like...you know...sex stuff?”
“Oh, God, no.” He laughed. If there had been, his parents probably wouldn’t have survived even an insinuation of it. “There was a bit that was filmed just before Nan died. We were talking about what the doctor had said.”
“Your nan’s doctor?”
“No. Mine. Nan always said not to tell anyone because it didn’t change anything but I’m telling you because it’s in the film and my parents are upset. Remember when I told you that they didn’t want anyone to put a diagnosis on me?”
“I do. I didn’t ask then, but what is it?”
“Better to ask what it isn’t, probably. I’ve got disorders stacked on top of each other. At least three, but the doctor can’t be really sure what’s what because they blur together. Overlap. Not all one thing, but bits and pieces of several. My parents said it’d ruin my career if people found out. My brain’s not wired right. They said for me to have them edit that stuff out, but I can’t, can I?”
“Do you want to?”
“No. For what?”
Bruce didn’t care, and maybe it was wrong of him not to care, but he didn’t see how it could possibly make things worse.
Except with Everley. He couldn’t predict how she’d react, and if she’d be like his parents. “Is that...off-putting to you?”
She flinched away at the question. “I have scoliosis and had to have my spine fused when I was a child. Does that disturb you?”
“You couldn’t help that.”
“All right, then.” She stood and clapped her hands as though she was done with the topic and was ready to put it behind her.
“You telling me you don’t care, Ev?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I don’t find you all that unusual.”
A surge of long-absent contentment pulsed through Bruce’s chest, warming him from the inside out. It was that doesn’t-matter sensation his nan had squeezed into him with every tight hug, every laugh with him, every odd gift she gave him.
He’d forgotten what it felt like—having all his foibles forgiven without ever having to ask.
Being liked for them.
“Most people do,” he murmured, rubbing the warm place over his heart.
She didn’t immediately respond. Bad things rarely came of her silence. She wasn’t like others he’d tried to know.
“Most folks don’t go to college with a bunch of guys who insisted
that numbers made far more sense than people.” Her brow creased and she stared at the dark red polish on her nails. “Most of the time, I agreed with them.”
He must have done something right to have stumbled into her acquaintance, though for the life of him he couldn’t guess what.
He edged closer to her, because she was too far away, and anyone in the doesn’t-matter class wouldn’t mind so much if he crowded them. He hoped.
“What would you do if you were me?”
There was no one whose opinion he valued more than hers. Since the day they’d met, she’d only given him patience and honesty. Those were qualities that rarely existed together in one person. Raleigh had been incredibly forthright, but he hadn’t been patient.
Bruce hated that he still thought about him, and knew that he probably always would for as long as he had some attachment to Athena. Raleigh had been his idea of the gold standard, and even with what had transpired, his opinion hadn’t changed.
Maybe it still can.
“I’m really not the best person to ask,” she said quietly. “I can talk about ideal circumstances, but who am I to speak on them? I’ve got a job that I hate and that I’m afraid to leave because of what I fear my parents would say and do.”
“I wish you’d tell me anyway.”
“Okay. But remember, it means nothing coming from me.” She wagged a finger at him and sidled back over at his gesturing. “If I were you, I’d say to hell with it and let the world know, because why not? Stigmas thrive because of ignorance and isolation, and I think some of them are long overdue to be starved. You could help that.”
“I’m not going to be anyone’s role model, love,” Bruce said with a chuckle, pulling her into the vee of his open legs.
“You don’t have to be a role model. You just have to be Bruce. I happen to adore Bruce.”
“Why?”
She laughed and pushed his mop of hair behind both ears. “Give me some time to chew on that one. I happen to like chocolate, too, but I don’t know if I’d be able to explain why. I just know that when I see it, it makes me happy. Chocolate has never disappointed me.”
“I think I would like to be chocolate, then. The kind with some sort of sticky filling.”
Everley snorted and gave him a kiss on the top of the head as she pulled away. “Smart. I always have to take my time with the filled kind. You’ve got to savor all the layers of flavor.”
He liked that idea. He wanted to last with her.
Heading toward her bedroom, she called over her shoulder, “I hurried home from work to do a six o’clock conference call. I didn’t want to be in the office at eight o’clock and have to worry about getting home in the dark.”
“You’re busy, then?” He sprang to his feet automatically because even if he knew she hadn’t intended them that way, those sorts of words were used to dismiss.
“No, no, it’s okay. It’s not a terribly critical call, just that people take note of who’s putting in the effort and who’s not. I try not to be conspicuously absent whenever I can help it. I don’t want anyone to think I’m getting special treatment, beyond the obvious sort. Can’t do anything about that, though.” Her voice was solemn and he was sad because he didn’t know what to say. His response to his parents’ meddling had been avoidance in recent years, and she couldn’t very well do that. At least, he didn’t think she could. She had her head screwed on right. He was counting on her to figure something out eventually, and for his own selfish reasons. He liked her when she wasn’t stressed, because she helped him bounce all of his own pressure away.
She probably didn’t even know.
“If you can occupy yourself for a bit,” she called out, “we can do something later. I mean...if you want to? I don’t know if you want to. Don’t feel obligated to—”
“Corduroy is doing a gig uptown,” he blurted before she could change her mind. Of course he wanted to spend every doesn’t-matter moment he could with her. He had years of them to make up. “Sold out, but I could probably get us backstage. Don’t know if that’s your thing.”
Water trickled in the bathroom. Floorboards creaked. He heard a murmured “Corduroy?”
He cringed.
Maybe not Corduroy, then. Stupid. So fucking stupid.
They weren’t most people’s thing, but he hadn’t been raised like most people. The band had been good at reminding him of that as often as they could when they were still together. Bruce’s nan had controlled the stereo in his earliest years, so he couldn’t help who his influences were. Sometimes he channeled Billy Joel, Mick Jagger, or Springsteen. Other times, he channeled a group of geezers with harmonicas and accordions and the occasional bagpipe. Those windbags could really jam when they got enough whiskey in them.
“Where the hell are they playing?” Everley asked with a laugh. She emerged from the bathroom fresh faced and in sweats. He liked her sweats. They didn’t match, but they had that lived-in look about them and proved that she didn’t just pretend at relaxing. He envied her ability to do it. He’d never really learned how, in spite of his nan’s best efforts. There always seemed to be too much to do, too much to learn, too many conversations to have.
“I can’t imagine what venue uptown would draw a crowd for them,” Everley continued.
“They’re at Minnow’s. It’s an old dinner theater.”
“Shit. I just undressed,” she groaned. “I can’t wear this at a place like that.”
“You mean, you want to go?”
“Of course! I think it’d be fun.”
Huh. He dragged hand down his face and stared at her with awe. The best he could tell, she’d meant it.
She was probably the only person he knew who’d think that.
Certainly, she can’t be that perfect. Could she be?
He kept waiting to be disappointed. Everyone disappointed him eventually.
She poured herself a glass of water and settled in front of her computer. “I’m going to have to put this call on speaker. I think the cat dragged my headphones into some sort of unreachable nether region. I haven’t seen them in two weeks.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You’re lovely, you know that?”
“Well, that’s a new one. I’ll take it.”
She arched a wry brow and joined the call.
Bruce drifted around her apartment. Having crashed at her place several times in recent weeks, he’d already seen everything in it, the exception being the underside of her sheets. That was unusual for him, not feeling compelled to skip straight to the bedroom athletics, because there were so many other things he wanted to do with her and not enough hours to do them in.
He wasn’t entirely certain what to make of the situation, but was content with letting things stand as they were. His relationship with Ev was the single most functional connection he’d forged in recent memory. Maybe she wouldn’t agree, but he thought he was a better person for having had it.
“Why don’t we just dismantle the program if no one ever wants to take it on each year?” came a strident voice from Ev’s call. Bruce didn’t recognize the speaker, but whomever he was, he was certainly impassioned.
“We can’t dismantle it.” Bruce knew that voice. It was that guy Joey. He’d been reaching out to Bruce’s manager about book shit, saying something about promotional deadlines. Bruce hadn’t gotten around to calling back. Or maybe he didn’t want to.
Probably, he didn’t want to.
“Charities count on our yearly donations,” Joey continued. “The program has been in place for so long that it’s practically become a line item in their yearly budgets.”
“It’s a lot of work,” a woman said with a groan. “At the risk of sounding childish in the presence of the two human resources officers on this call, I gotta say that we’ve got enough to do during the holiday season without doing extra work for fr
ee.”
“Especially here in the publicity hallway.”
Ah.
Bruce’s back teeth snapped together and ground upon registering the voice.
He turned away from the precariously tilting potted pineapple plant he’d been poking at right as Everley began to drum the end of her pencil against her notepad with agitation.
Apparently, that particular bitter baritone had a similar effect on both of them. He was all ears, though, hungrily lusting after every word because that dangerous obsession hadn’t yet waned. He needed more, even if he didn’t particularly want to have it.
“Cora’s right, though,” Raleigh continued. “If charity is important to Athena, Athena needs to incorporate the annual campaigns into someone’s job and pay them for it. Athena is a for-profit business and shouldn’t expect staff to do extra work for free.”
“It’s always so funny that you sound exactly like your father and yet say things that would never come out of his mouth,” Joey said.
Some other man chuckled. “He’d be appalled at the insinuation that unpaid overtime isn’t an honor, wouldn’t he, Raleigh?”
Raleigh didn’t respond, and Bruce squashed his compulsion to shout, “Well, say something, then.” He’d behave.
Everley had stopped drumming her pencil, though, and was leaning toward the screen, massaging the bridge of her nose. “Let’s try to stay on track,” she said in a voice that gave away not even the smallest hint of the nervousness her red cheeks hinted at. “It’s Friday night, and I’m sure we all have things we want to do.”
“I just can’t do it this year, guys,” a woman said. “The daycare is already giving me flak about picking my kid up five minutes late every day. I can’t take on one more thing.”
Silence.
Bruce bit down hard on his tongue. He wanted Raleigh to volunteer for whatever it was, because at least that would prove he was kind sometimes, even if not to Bruce.
And then, from Ev, “So, what are our options? I can’t see where this is a job we can pass on to junior staff. They don’t have the clout.”
