Page 46 of Center of Gravity
And that was the most difficult question of all. There were too many underpinning emotions on my part to call him just my employee, but not enough to call him something else. I met in the middle. “A friend, in a way. I’m just trying to help and I don’t want you to cheat yourself.”
He snorted. “I don’t know that you’re in any position to give help. Or advice for that matter.”
“I’m—” I stiffened. “What do you mean?” Damn if we weren’t getting good at pulling each other’s triggers.
“You could’ve had the house done a week ago. Instead, you spread it out. You go back to the city and come back the same night. You fool around with me, then try to take it all back the next day.” He leveled a cool look at me. “Something’s eating at you. And maybe it’s your parents and maybe it’s not, but you’re gun-shy about everything. It’s like you’re wallowing in your own misery because it’s comfortable.”
“It’s hardly comfortable, Alex,” I grated out, and I had more to say, but he wasn’t wrong, either. I sank back in the sand, closed my eyes, and focused on the breeze moving over my stomach.
“So tell me.”
And I did. I told him about my mom’s slow demise, my father’s, and then I told him about Sean. How he’d come into the firm a year and a half ago from another firm, hungry like me to move up the ladder. At first there was just a mutual awareness. He had pretty chocolate curls that had a habit of straying across his temples, liquid brown eyes that always seemed desperately earnest, and thick lashes. Fit as hell and he knew it, but there was a self-deprecating charm to him that softened all the swagger.
We were polite acquaintances, exchanging typical office banter over the proverbial water cooler. Then Richard had shifted him over to my team. We’d gotten a few new clients whose accounts were a mess and had spent long nights after hours cleaning them up. We were professional, but there was a subtle undercurrent of intrigue between us. Discussion of the weather became flirting. Topics took a personal turn. I’d learned he was separated from his wife and moving toward divorce, that he’d always felt he was bi but hadn’t explored it as much as he’d have liked to—though he was adamant it wasn’t the reason he and his wife had split. She’d worked long hours too, was never around and so on. The inevitable happened and three months later we were entrenched. My mom had died, my dad wasn’t doing well. I was lonely, and so I’d jumped into it like a man on fire into a lake, unconcerned that the water might not be deep enough to keep me from breaking my neck.
It was unfortunate timing that I’d chosen to tell Sean I loved him the same day his wife walked in. We hadn’t been in the heat of the moment, nothing like that. There was an ironic ordinariness to the way it had happened. I’d been in his kitchen cooking eggs in bacon grease the way he liked them, when a striking blonde had walked through the door that led into the kitchen from the garage. We regarded each other in silence, puzzling each other out. And then she just said, “Ahhhhh.” As if something had been confirmed.
She’d turned and walked right back out the door she’d just come through and Sean came down into the kitchen to find me leaning against the counter, chewing on my lower lip as the eggs burned.
He’d tried, at first, to maintain the notion that they were separated, but the way she’d walked in was too possessive. We’d spent another few weeks going back and forth, Sean telling me he had plans to leave her, but the timing was never right. I’d grown tired of being the person I’d have to be to continue in that kind of relationship. Then she’d gotten pregnant and just like that, it was all over, something that should never have begun. The problem was, I’d still fucking loved him even after that. My father had died in the middle of all the back and forth and Sean had become a dull ache in my chest, an occasional moment of lost air when I’d reached for a breath. Time moved on, but I wasn’t sure if I really had. I was a mess of conflicting griefs stuck in a vicious cycle.
Alex listened to the saga lying on his side, picking at the tab on his beer can. When I finished, all he said was, “He sounds like a real asshole.”
I smiled up at the dark. “He does.”
His hand stole quiet as a whisper over my wrist. His fingers winnowed between mine, a relaxing coolness in his touch. No doubt he got me hot in other ways, but right then that clear and present innocence of contact was one of the nicest things I’d felt in months.
14
Alex
Ihad zero reason to be nervous, but I was. I’d changed my shirt three times before settling on a cool, pale cerulean that complemented the same tones in my eyes. It wasn’t like Rob was coming to my house for a date and I was cooking for him or something. This was my parents’ house and I was the resident reject basement dweller. As if he needed another reminder of how different our respective playing fields were.
My mom was excited though, enjoying having something else to focus on aside from bills, her job at the diner, and my dad’s medication timetable. She had other friends, but she rarely socialized anymore and hadn’t much since dad had gotten sick. He also had friends, but the visits were more sporadic these days. I think a lot of them just didn’t know what to do with someone who kept on living but wasn’t able to function day-to-day the way he’d been able to before.
Even Dad spiffed up a little, putting on an actual button-down shirt rather than one of the three cotton pajama sets he wore that Mom had gotten him. Like the layers of dust on the windowsills and picture frames, our household had been collecting shitty news and hard times for months, and it was kind of sad that something so mundane as a guy coming over for dinner was the cause for the burst of happy chaos that swept over us.
Mom moved through the house like a tornado of cleaning supplies, dusting and tidying, and lighting scented candles. She even had flowers in a vase on the table—shitty ones from the grocery store with a few dyed, never-found-in-nature colors, like bright blue daisies. I plucked those out when she wasn’t looking.
I helped her with dinner, taking orders as she moved briskly around the kitchen. The menu wasn’t anything special, roast and vegetables, but she did it well and the scent was cozy and inviting.
“Does Rob like white wine or red?”
“I have no idea,” I offered unhelpfully. “I’ve only ever seen him drink beer.”
Mom bit her lip. “Well, I only have white. It was a BOGO.”
“In that case, he loves white.” I grinned as she swatted at me.
“And he’s not married? No kids? No girlfriend?”
“Nope, none of that. And no boyfriend.”
Her eyes narrowed at me.
“It’s not like that.”
“Not like that, he says,” she mimicked, turning back to her potatoes and peeler. She reached back, extending a knife so I could join her. “How old is he? You said his parents passed?”