Page 7 of If I See You Again

Malcolm

T he call ended, and I set my phone down on the table.

A dull throb settled at the base of my skull, and I rubbed at it as I stood to pace the kitchen.

I’d told David that I’d skipped out on plans with a friend, and I had been truthful about missing dinner.

My stomach growled as I made my way to the fridge to see what was inside.

I’d been so busy stressing over things the last couple of days that I hadn’t done any shopping.

There wasn’t much to eat outside of some questionable leftover Chinese food that may or may not have been from a week ago.

As I closed the door, I looked at the ceiling and cursed.

It was just my luck that I’d had such a long day only to be dragged into a phone call I didn’t want to have.

It was getting late, but I could still order something to be delivered, and I ended up going back to my phone to pull up a delivery app.

My eyes rolled again to see another text from David.

I opened it to find a picture of him still sitting against his headboard, but his shirt was wide open now.

My gaze followed the toned muscle speckled with tufts of light hair.

Gah, the man was gorgeous, and it wasn’t fair that he was off limits.

And he knew it. He was playing a dangerous game by continuing to dangle things in front of me like that.

I should have deleted the image, but of course, I didn’t. It would probably become jerk-off fodder for a while. The damn thing was better than any porn I could look up.

When my stomach let out another unhappy rumble, I remembered what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Food. I was on a mission. Feed the growly beast.

As I scrolled and scrolled through the app, I let out an irritated groan because nothing looked good. You know how they say you should never go to the grocery store hungry because you’ll buy too much? I always had the opposite problem. When I was starving, I couldn’t decide on anything.

I pulled up my most recent orders and settled for a burger from a place that likely had my order memorized at that point. I ordered from there so often that they probably had an alert set for when I even began looking.

The app said it would take thirty minutes for my food to arrive, so I yanked off my tie and undid the buttons on my button-down. A shower sounded really freaking good, and I started down the hall, but froze when my eyes snagged on a picture hanging in the hallway.

It was a photo of me and Marcus when we were about twelve.

We smiled brightly at the camera, our arms looped around each other’s necks.

We didn’t have a care in the world and didn’t know that in only a few short years, my brother would become too ill to do anything.

Something heavy settled in my chest the longer I stared at the photo.

What would he be like today? Would he be proud of who I’d turned into?

With a sigh, I finally continued to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

As the room filled with steam, I finished undressing.

I stopped to look at the scar on my abdomen, my fingers trailing along the edges.

It was so funny how you could do everything right, try so hard to protect the people you loved, and it didn’t matter in the end.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm my swirling thoughts. There was no reason to feel the way I did about Marcus dying. It wasn’t my fault. Even if he’d gotten a kidney from another donor, there was no guarantee that his body wouldn’t have rejected that one as well.

Before the water could run for too much longer, I climbed into the tub and closed the curtain, letting the warm water wash away more of my worries.

Not only was I still a mess when it came to my brother, but here I was fucking things up by having slept with my new boss. Even if I hadn’t known it at the time.

I quickly washed off and got out, wrapping a towel around my waist, and went to my room to get dressed.

I’d timed things perfectly, so by the time I made it back to the living room, the delivery driver was knocking on my door with my food.

My thoughts had gone so off-kilter that I’d almost forgotten I’d ordered it, not that the angry growl my stomach gave me wouldn’t have reminded me.

“Hey! Are you Malcolm?” the man said when I opened the door.

“That’s me.”

He grinned as he handed me the bag and then disappeared down the hall.

The smell of grease and cheese wafted from the sack, making my mouth water.

In retrospect, the burger had been a good idea.

Instead of sitting at my dining table, I plopped onto my couch, propping my feet on the coffee table as I pulled my sandwich from the paper bag.

I tugged back the wrapping and took a big bite, sighing as the flavors rolled over my taste buds.

What was it about a good, greasy burger that just made everything right with the world?

Not that it fixed all my problems. I still needed to figure out how I was going to handle things with David.

I hadn’t been serious about claiming sexual harassment.

While he was a flirt, it would also mean explaining what had happened in the past. Not that it gave him the okay to keep pursuing things. It just wasn’t anyone else’s business.

The only downside to eating such an enormous meal was that it also made me exhausted, which was fine.

It was time to head to bed, anyway. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to do it, but I checked my phone one more time.

There was one more message from David. I shouldn’t have opened it, but it still made me smile.

David: Maybe this will give you something good to dream about tonight?

Fuck. It was hard to be irritated with him. He was persistent. I’d give him that.

Instead of answering him, I powered down the device and plugged it into the charger before walking back to my room and passing out for the night.