Sweet Surrendering (26 page)

Who knew how much fun you could have at the science museum? I definitely hadn’t had this much fun when I was a kid, but maybe who you were with that determined the fun level. We’d done nearly everything from taking pretend horrified pictures at the foot of the dinosaur models to ruining our hair with the static electricity machines. I’d allowed him to take pictures of us on my phone. I would put them in a secret folder on my computer when I got home. I also didn’t worry about us being seen together because there wasn’t a less likely place for us to run into anyone from the office.

We even went to the gift shop where he bought me a “Pluto: Revolve in Peace” t-shirt and a stuffed animal that was shaped like the common cold virus. He also picked up two stuffed frogs for his nieces. I insisted on buying him a CD that was all songs designed to boost your positive thinking and a baseball cap, which I promptly shoved on head and made him take a duck-faced selfie with me while he was wearing it.

We had lunch at the café surrounded by screaming kids and frazzled parents trying to wrangle them.

One little boy ran by us and tripped, wiping out right next to our table. Lucah was on his feet and picking the little guy up faster than you could say “boo boo” and was checking him for injuries as his mother rushed over and tried to assess the damage.

“I think he’s okay. Just startled. You’re okay, right buddy?” Lucah handed the kid to his mom and held his hand up for a high five, which the little boy gave him, a smile breaking out on his tearstained face as his mother took him away, making promises of ice cream.

“What?” Lucah said, catching me watching him.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“I know what women say.” He sat down and gave me a look as if I was in on some kind of conspiracy.

“What women say about what?”

“What women say about men who are good with children.”

I played dumb. I knew exactly what he was talking about because I’d thought it about him before.

“And what is that?”

He raised one eyebrow and I mirrored him, but he didn’t crack a smile.

“That men with children are very attractive. It’s some sort of primal instinctive thing that’s supposed to help the species continue and all that. Don’t you find men who are good with children more attractive than men who can’t stand them?”

“No, not at all,” I said with as much seriousness as I could muster. Men who were good with kids were fucking attractive and anyone who said otherwise was either a liar, or wasn’t interested in men anyway.

“You’re a terrible liar, Miss Clarke,” he whispered, leaning over the table. I threw a French fry at him and he finally broke out that smile I adored so much.

His phone rang, interrupting us. He looked down at it and the smile instantly vanished.

“I need to take this, excuse me.” He didn’t wait for me to respond before he got up and walked to a quiet corner of the café. He answered the call and I could tell whoever it was, Lucah didn’t want to talk to. I knew him well enough now to recognize when he was agitated and trying to hide it. He was arguing and trying not to make a scene by raising his voice, but he was losing his temper. I tried not to watch, but it was hard not to.

Lucah threw his head back like he had so many times before, like he was looking directly at God and asking for patience, or intervention. Then he said something else and hung up. I looked down at my plate and pretended to be very interested in it as he composed himself and walked back over.

“Bad news?” I said, hoping maybe he would confide in me.

“Nothing. Just . . . nothing.” He put his phone back in his pocket and stared at his plate as if it had been the one to piss him off.

“You can talk to me, Lucah,” I said, trying something different. I reached across the table and tried to take his hand, but he pulled back.

“Okay, fine. Be a clam. See if I care.” I crossed my arms and looked away from him.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as I waited for him to cave. I hadn’t cultivated my bitch persona for nothing. I could wear it all day if I had to, and I often had.

“It’s my brother. He’s gotten himself into trouble, again, and he wants me to bail him out, again, and I won’t. He’s had too many chances and he’s burned all his bridges and he needs to get his shit together, because I’m done. I am completely done.” He lowered his voice when he swore because we were surrounded by children and families and it was probably frowned upon.

“Drugs?”

“Among other things. He just has a tendency to jump into things and then he gets into trouble. He also has a hard time saying no to people, which is another reason that he gets himself screwed over. Anyway, he’s been calling me and calling me and begging for money, for a place to stay, for whatever. I can’t let myself get involved with him again.” He shook his head and for a moment he looked completely exhausted. And older than his twenty-five years.

“Anything I can do to help?” I had no idea what I could possibly do, but that was one of those things you say when you didn’t know what else to say and you feel bad for someone you cared about.

“No. He’s my stupid brother. I’ll probably end up caving in like I usually do. Anyway. Enough about him. I don’t want him crashing our day. You ready to explore some more?” I didn’t want to drop the brother thing, but he did, so I let him.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching a bird expert bring out a few rare birds, and then we took in a 3D show at the Omni theater. Lucah seemed to be having a good time, but I could tell he was thinking about his brother. Sloane had been blowing my phone up all day, and if I didn’t get home tonight and take care of her, she was liable to explode. I also had dinner with my parents to fit in somewhere.

We held hands as we walked toward the T and headed back to my apartment. I knew Sloane was there, so the plan was to leave Lucah in the hallway, grab his stuff, throw it at him and have him leave without being accosted and then interrogated.

Of course, that was not what happened, because as soon as Sloane heard me fumbling with the door, it flew open.

“Hello lovebirds!” She was clearly wired again from being up all night and I had thought maybe she’d have crashed, but no such luck.

“Hi, Sloane,” I said, trying to give her The Signal with my eyes.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she said, completely missing The Signal. So much for that.

“Okay, well Lucah has to go home, so I’m just going to get him his stuff and then he’s going to go. I’ll be
right back
.” I poked Sloane as I passed her.

“Ow!”

“Be nice!” I said as I hurried to my bedroom for his stuff.

“So, you’re banging my best friend, huh?” Ugh! Did she not hear what I just said?

“Sloane!” I yelled.

“What? It’s a legitimate question. And we’re all adults here. Oh, and how did you like the steak? I wasn’t sure if it was going to turn out because the asparagus hasn’t been very good this year, but it turned out okay, right?”

I hung back for just a second, listening.

“It was wonderful, thank you so much for doing that. You’re a great friend to Rory, and any friend of hers is a friend of mine.”

“Uh huh,” she said and I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was still evaluating him. It was time to dash in and rescue Lucah.

“Here you go,” I said, coming out and shoving his bag at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the place?”

“See you tomorrow, Sunshine.” He didn’t kiss me good-bye, because we’d agreed no kisses good-bye after our nights now. He walked down the hall and waved before taking his hat out of the bag and putting it on his head.

I smiled and closed the door.

“Oh my God, you have got the fever, Rory.” Sloane fanned herself.

“I do not.”

“You are so totally and completely in love with him.”

“I am not,” I said, walking into the living room and avoiding eye contact with her. She just followed me, grabbed my shoulders and sat me down on the couch facing her.

“You love him, Rory.” This was a statement, not a question.

“No. Not yet. But . . .”

“Yeah, you do. Admit it. You wanna marry him and make little ginger babies and continue the ginger species. They’re dying out you know, which means you’re probably going to have to have at least ten. Come on. You can admit it to me. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. Scout’s honor.” Sloane hadn’t been a scout either, so she just gave me a peace sign with her fingers.

“Sloane,” I said. “Just don’t push, okay? I’ve got a lot to figure out right now and I really don’t want to talk about it.” She searched my face, and she knew me well enough to know when I shouldn’t be pushed. This was another quality that made her such good friend material.

“Okay, Rory. You got it. But I still want details about what you did.” So I talked about the night and the sticky notes and going to the museum and before I could stop myself I told her about the phone call and the brother.

“A brother? A bad boy brother? I wonder if he’s got red hair as well . . .” She stared off into space as if she was trying to conjure the brother with her mind.

“Sloane.” I snapped my fingers in front of her face.

“What? I was just thinking. Anyway, so it was good? You’re happy? You seem happy. I catch you smiling all the time. You didn’t smile that much with King Douchebag. And at least this guy hasn’t made you cry.”

Yet.

I rolled my eyes and went to take a shower before I headed over to my parents’.

“You have to stop doing that in the office, Mr. Blaine,” I said as his arms came around me as I stood at the counter of the break room. I stepped away from him and moved toward the Keurig, popping in one of the cups.

“Okay, okay. I’ll give you five feet.” He slid down the counter so there was space between us.

“Are you drinking coffee tonight?”

“Yes. At the usual time.”

“Sounds good.” He was undressing me with his eyes, which was against the rules, but I let him get away with it anyway.

“You’re being bad, Mr. Blaine,” I said with my voice low. Mr. Craig walked in, interrupting the sexytimes. Cock blocker. What was the girl equivalent of that? There should be one.

“Hello, Rory. How are you?” All of the older men in the company had watched me grow up here, so they all got to call me by my first name. I’d tried to put a stop to it a while ago, but it had been useless. These guys didn’t change their habits.

“I’m fabulous, how are you?” I smiled as the coffee brewed into the cups and Lucah started washing his hands in the sink so he would have some reason for being in the break room. He dried them quickly and without saying a word to Mr. Craig, he left, not looking at me. Well, that was suspicious.

“How’s your new assistant working out?” Mr. Craig said.

I made some generic compliments about Lucah and then told him that my dad was waiting for his coffee, so I had a reason to escape when he started talking about his new car and what a crime it was that they had redone his favorite golf course.

I actually decided to visit Dad, since it had been a while since we had talked about work-related items. I’d also been watching the expense reports, and I had noticed another spike in ordering. Subtle, but it was still there. Dad was busy and didn’t have a chance to talk, so I just wrote him a note that it could wait. The spikes could be completely normal. I was probably just being paranoid.

I went back to my desk and found a dirty text from Lucah. He’d been sending me a lot of those lately. I typed an equally dirty response and sent it to him. I drew the line at naked pictures, but imagined the look on his face if I closed my office door and took one and sent it to him. A seductive thought, but I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass.

This was going to be a long week.

Something was up with Lucah the next morning when I got out of the shower. He made me breakfast, but he almost seemed grumpy, and I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he didn’t say anything.

We hadn’t discussed what he’d told me about wanting to be with me all the time since Sunday. I was going to put it off as long as possible. I’d also been subtly searching out to see if we had any positions in other departments that I could put him up for. I had no doubt that it would be easy to get him in somewhere else with my recommendation and the support of the board. I still hadn’t figured out what that was about.