Page 7

Chapter Seven

Andrew

The empty feeling stays with me through the rest of the day.

I don’t get to escape at five p.m. to process it all either because, apparently, Friday night drinks are a tradition at DTL Enterprises.

So I obediently trot after Adam and Xander to The Drunken Duck, a pub that looks like it’s been serving ale since before America was even a twinkle in England’s colonial eye. The ceiling beams are so low they could double as a concussion testing facility.

The first person I see once I’m in the door is Kieran from Marketing.

He swoops toward us with a wide smile.

“Hey, Drew, that fix you did yesterday is working great. We’ve managed to schedule three weeks of content without a single timeout.”

“That’s awesome,” I say.

“Looks like you’ve added a techno-genius to your department,” Kieran says to Adam and Xander.

Xander barely looks up from his phone. It seems Xander engages with Friday night drinks with the same enthusiasm as with other work activities.

However, Adam stiffens like he’s trying to smuggle a ruler down his spine .

“I’ve been mentoring Drew quite extensively,” he says to Kieran, his smile thin.

After Kieran nods and drifts away to the bar, Adam turns to me with narrowed eyes.

“Exactly what did you do to the marketing system?” he asks.

“I just adjusted their access permissions and added a custom integration layer to prevent token overlap.” I keep my voice carefully neutral.

Adam’s face contorts. “Drew, I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your enthusiasm. But you can’t just go poking around in the system like it’s some kind of amateur coding project. Next time, please consult me before attempting anything beyond basic troubleshooting.”

“Okay.” It seems easier to agree with Adam than to argue. Besides, my attention has been distracted by a figure across the room.

Justin’s standing by the dart board, sipping a pint, surrounded by his sales department cronies. The sight of him makes my stomach tighten. I force my eyes away from him.

“I’m just going to get a drink,” I tell Adam and Xander. After today, I really need a drink. “Do you want me to get you something?”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Xander doesn’t take his eyes off his screen.

“I’m going to take some time to consider my options,” Adam says primly.

I nod, then head to the bar.

I stand there trying to get the attention of the bartender, who seems to have perfected the bartender’s art of maintaining eye contact with literally everyone except the people trying to order drinks.

“Hey, Drew.”

It’s Justin’s voice.

I spin around.

Justin has ditched his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The top button of his shirt is undone, his tie loosened.

It appears the Casual Friday Night Justin is even more devastating than Corporate Justin.

“Can I buy you a drink to say thank you for saving my ass this morning?” he asks.

“I was just doing my job.” The words come out flat, and Justin’s eyebrows knit together. He’s obviously not used to people rebuffing his charm.

“Please.” Those blue-green eyes, framed by ridiculous long eyelashes, don’t leave mine.

I should accept a drink from him. It will look suspicious if I don’t.

Besides, maybe getting closer to him is a good idea. It will give me more chances to execute my plans.

But that thought makes me sick to my stomach.

Somehow, in trying to make Justin feel as small as he once made me feel, I’ve managed to make myself feel even smaller.

“Okay, I’ll have a Pale Ale,” I say.

“One Pale Ale coming right up.” Justin’s voice is cheerful as he turns toward the bartender.

Of course the bartender practically teleports to us in response to Justin’s wave and fills our drink order with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen from British hospitality staff in my time so far.

“Cheers,” Justin says once our beers are in our hands.

“Cheers,” I reply.

He clinks his glass against mine nonchalantly like he’s in a beer commercial. Meanwhile, I grip my glass like I’m worried it might try to escape.

“Yeah, so…thanks again for all your help today. That pitch was really important,” Justin says.

“Did it go okay?” The words reluctantly leave my lips, but I’m aiming for Drew the good IT colleague here, and it occurs to me that is something I should ask.

“Yeah, it did, thanks. Though I kept waiting for my laptop to ask why my elbows look like baby potatoes.”

My snort escapes before I can stop it, and I quickly cover it with a cough.

“If your elbows look like baby potatoes, I suggest you get that looked at,” I reply. I intended the words to be slightly caustic, but Justin’s face lights up with a grin.

“I get the feeling that finding a specialist in potato-joint syndrome might be tricky with the NHS wait times,” he says.

And there it is again, the easy charm that radiates from Justin like he’s got his own personal Wi-Fi network of charisma.

Even though it was never directed at me, I witnessed his charm often in high school, watching him work his magic on teachers when his homework was late or sweet talk the cafeteria ladies into giving him extra fries.

Although I’m fairly sure the Justin from my high school memories never had this kind of self-deprecating humor.

It’s my turn to reply, but my mind is too busy wrestling with this new version of Justin.

“So, how long have you been in London?” Justin asks because, like any good salesperson, he knows how to keep a conversation flowing even when the other person is as responsive as a brick wall.

“Only a few months,” I say. It mirrors what I wrote on my résumé, where I stuck as close to the truth as possible so it would be easier to remember.

“And how are you finding it?” he asks.

“Better than Oklahoma,” I say.

Which is technically true since I’ve never been to Oklahoma.

“What made you decide to move here?”

“I needed a change.” I take a sip of my beer to avoid elaborating.

“Yeah.” He scratches his neck. “I know all about that.”

Something in his tone makes me look at him sharply, but he’s suddenly very interested in studying the bar’s collection of beer mats.

I know from my online stalking that Justin has been in London for three and a half years, which means he left Texas soon after college. Justin had gone to UT Austin on a football scholarship. He was the second-string quarterback.

Why had he been so eager to escape Texas? Surely he had everything he wanted there? In all my research into Justin’s life, I never contemplated that simple question.

I’m puzzling this over as the silence grows between us again. Shit. My small talk skills have never been great, but they are at a particularly low ebb right now.

“Is this your first job in London?” Justin asks.

Why is he making conversation with me? I guess it’s normal etiquette when you buy someone a drink, right? That you make conversation with them for the duration they take to drink it.

With that in mind, I take a few large gulps of my drink before I reply.

“I did some temp jobs until this one came up,” I say. Okay, so that’s not quite the truth. But “I sat in my ridiculously expensive hotel room on the top floor of the Ritz and conducted extensive research into how many clotted cream scones one could eat before the hotel staff start giving concerned looks” is slightly harder to explain.

“So, you’re still getting used to people asking ‘All right?’ but not actually expecting an answer?” Justin asks.

“Oh, totally. That, and getting used to how excited everyone gets when the sun appears.”

Justin grins. “They treat it like a celebrity making a surprise appearance, right?”

I can’t help but chuckle.

“The first time I saw everyone strip off their shirts and rush to the nearest patch of grass, I thought I’d stumbled onto some kind of flash mob,” Justin continues.

My chuckle morphs into a proper laugh without my permission.

Justin looks proud of himself, and something twists in my stomach at the familiar sight of that golden-boy satisfaction.

But it doesn’t stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. “The thing I’m finding hardest to understand is the food names,” I say. “The first time someone offered me bubble and squeak, I thought it was a children’s TV show.”

Why am I doing this? Do I want to prove to Justin that I can be witty too? As if somehow making him laugh now will make up for all the times he laughed at me?

But I can’t help my flush of satisfaction when Justin does laugh.

His laugh is different from what I remember, lacking the sharp edge that used to slice through me.

“Bangers and mash are what tripped me up,” he says. “It sounds like a punk rock band.”

“What about toad in the hole?” I ask. “Like, who looked at sausages in batter and thought, ‘Ah, yes, this reminds me of an amphibian?’”

Justin laughs again, and I fight against the warmth building in my chest.

Because this is Justin Morris, my high school tormentor, not some cute guy in a pub who happens to share my confusion about British food names.

He’s the guy who used to lean against his locker with his football buddies, making exaggerated hand gestures every time I walked past, their laughter following me down the hallway like a twisted echo.

I can’t ever forget that fact.

I quickly drain the last of my beer. “Anyway, I better head back to Xander and Adam. Thanks for the drink.”

Justin looks momentarily startled by the abrupt shift, his golden-boy confidence faltering.

“Thanks for your computer-fixing superpowers,” he replies finally.

We stare at each other for a moment that stretches longer than any moment should in a noisy pub on a Friday night.

I go to push my glasses back up my nose, which is a nervous habit of mine. Only it works a whole lot better when you’re wearing actual glasses, not contact lenses. I morph it into an awkward scratching like I suddenly had an uncontainable itch between my eyebrows.

After that smooth parting move, I turn on my heel and head back to join Xander sitting at a table eating a plate of fries while simultaneously typing on his phone.

From the noises emitting from his phone, he’s deep into a game of Dragon’s Sphere. The portal activation sounds are mixed with the distinctive roar of an Elder Dragon, which means he’s up to Level Nine.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm my breathing.

Okay. Let’s look at the positives. I survived another interaction with Justin without raising his suspicions. He now thinks of me as just Drew, the mildly competent IT guy who saved his presentation and makes awkward small talk about British food.

And okay, he was all nice and charming toward me, but I already knew Justin had a charming side. I was just never the recipient of his charm. That’s why it’s left me so flustered.

My phone buzzes, and I fall on it like it’s my savior because I want distraction right now.

It’s a message from Leo.

My flight lands on Thursday at 11 a.m. at Heathrow. Do you want me to just catch a cab to your place?

That’s probably best. I can’t take any time off work. I’ll leave a key out for you.

Oh, that’s right, you’re “working.” How’s Operation Revenge going?

I stare at his message.

How do I explain the complex mix of feelings that seeing Justin’s reaction to my revenge prank caused? How do I explain how every interaction with him leaves me more confused?

It’s going okay. I’ll tell you more about it when you get here.