Her text was, I have to change my shirt because I just threw up all over myself.
I decided not to share its cost. Gal’s business did okay, but Katie was far from rolling in it. They knew my situation, but they’d be seriously ticked Blake spent fourteen hundred of my dollars.
Wednesday morning, I did not get a coffee text, which, stupid me, made me kick myself for telling Rix we were good, we were great, and he didn’t have to buy me coffee.
Until I was elbow deep in reviewing the applications for the joint assistant we were all going to share before it was decided who she or he would work for directly. But for the now, Judge didn’t need to be on the phone about logos, and Rix didn’t need to be testing Wi-Fi when we’d been tasked to present Hale with the menu of the first programs we were going to roll out under the new masthead.
And Hale was expecting that presentation in a week, and we were still all feeling we needed to carry on Kids and Trails as well as Hale’s Camp Trail Blazer (because Hale told us that was non-negotiable, CTB was there to stay) and add more to that (well, that’s what we’d all been discussing, I didn’t personally feel that way, and from the vibe I was sensing from everyone else, they were feeling the same way, but no one had pinpointed it).
So we needed someone to deal with furniture orders and buying letterhead and things like that so we could actually get down to the business of deciding what services we were going to provide.
I figured this person would eventually be Judge’s assistant, and even though I was never that, I’d worked side by side with him for a long time, so I suspected I knew maybe better than Judge what he’d need, therefore my concentration was deep on the applications.
Until, that was, a pink box thudded on my desk.
I looked from the box to Rix, who had wheeled into my office.
He’d been on his prosthetics yesterday, helping with the move, and I was kinda surprised (and definitely impressed), regardless of how active I knew he was, how much he’d contributed.
I also wondered what went into the decision-making every morning between chair and prosthetics.
My guess?
After yesterday’s activities, his legs needed a break.
“You get first pick before the boys land on those,” he stated.
I shifted my attention to the box, which, upon opening it, I found was unsurprisingly, since it was a bakery box, filled with donuts.
I turned my attention back to him. “Are you going to buy treats every day?”
A slash of a belly-flutter-inducing smile. “Maybe.”
I did not want to pick a donut in front of Rix. It was a thing. A stupid thing. A ludicrous thing. But I had an expensive bridesmaid gown that was size sixteen that mostly fit, and he had, as far as I could tell, not an ounce of fat on him, then there was the fact that he dated tall, slender blondes.
To delay, I asked, “Which one do you want?”
“I already had mine.”
Unhelpful.
I studied my choices.
There was no healthy donut.
There was also no dainty donut.
Though, there were some that were fat and calorie bombs, like the chocolate-covered, custard-filled one that I wanted.
I picked a glazed.
The second I did, he asked, “Seriously?”
“What?” I asked back.
“Glazed?” he returned, sounding disappointed.
“There’s nothing wrong with glazed.”
“I asked your favorite coffee, and you gave me three answers, none of which was, ‘black with a sugar.’ A glazed is the donut version of black with a sugar.”
“There are other donuts I like, I’m just feeling glazed right now,” I retorted.
He stared at me, then he shouted, “Men, donuts!”
And as he predicted, Judge and Kevin came in and landed on that box.
Kevin nabbed the chocolate-covered, custard-filled one, which was a bummer, since I was hoping I could go to the box later and devour it when Rix wasn’t around.
I barely had that thought before Rix’s rich, rough laughter exploded in the room.
Everyone looked at him.
But he was staring at me.
“Glazed, my ass,” he muttered, then he wheeled out.
He’d seen me staring longingly at Kevin biting into my preferred donut.
Fabulous.
Fortunately, the day was filled with interviews and frustrating meetings with the interior designer to select wall décor and brainstorm break areas and storage solutions and layout plans, now that we’d picked the furniture (and none of us were invested much in this, so I knew I wasn’t the only one who found this a sadly necessary evil).
I came home that day to another box.
This one contained a pair of ballet pink, patent leather, pointed toe, four-inch heeled Jimmy Choo slide style pumps with a rhinestone strap spanning the vamp.
They cost a thousand dollars, and it was unlikely I’d wear them twice, but it was highly likely my feet would be in agony before even the ceremony was over.
For reasons that were not a mystery—considering my mother as well as my father—my sister did and said hateful things, she’d done this all her life.
But I did not hate her.
She was my sister.
Though, I was going to hate her wedding day.
I knew it already.
But there was nothing for it.
I was also going to have to wear those shoes, repeatedly, and for long periods of time, to break them in and get used to them before the wedding.
I hated being a hater.
But I knew I was going to hate that process too.
Incidentally, Katie’s take on the shoes was, I wish we shared the same size and Gal’s was, Is this a wedding or the torture portion of an inquisition?
An important aside: my friends were the greatest.
This all brought me to now, Thursday morning, no texts, no coffee, no donuts from Rix, but we were heading into a ten o’clock meeting at the folding table that was now in the center of the vast open space, and it had some chairs around it.
There, we were all going to pitch what we thought should be the focal programs of the abundantly funded Trail Blazer mutual aid organization.
And I was determined to speak my piece.
Hale Wheeler, the Hale Wheeler, son and heir of the sadly deceased brilliant tech maestro, Corey Szabo, and simply Hale Wheeler, tall, slim, broad, movie-star gorgeous, jet-setting billionaire was going to be sitting at that folding table with us next Thursday, and we had to have ourselves together, not shoving leaves and rocks down every kid on the planet’s throat while shouting at them, “You need to behave at the same time care about the earth!”
And I had to speak that piece in front of Rix.
I’d spent the first two hours of that morning polishing the presentation I was going to give about how I felt we should refine our mission, specifically, concentrate on camps for all kinds of kids, not just ones who needed a few humans to demonstrate they gave a crap (but those kids too). At the same time, I’d silently pep-talked myself that I’d spoken with Rix, I’d flirted with Rix, I’d texted with Rix, and I’d selected a donut with Rix watching. Therefore, I could talk about something I knew, and it meant a lot to me, in front of Rix.
I fancied myself in the zone when I finally sat down at the table with the team, only to have my zone obliterated when Rix declared, “I think you all missed my unwritten memo about someone picking up coffee and/or donuts every day. And by someone, I mean, that someone is not always gonna be me.”