“Give me a second to process this, buddy,” Judge requested.
“While you do, you should know, it’s not that.”
“It’s not what?”
“She’s pretty, great hair, but she’s not just a fuck. That’s not what I’m talking about. She’s letting me in, I like what I hear, what I see, who she is, and we gotta work closely together day to day. That means I need to get this under control, put it behind me.”
“Rix—”
Rix spoke over him. “Making my case, she digs Wheeler. Maybe she just admires him. Maybe she wants to jump him. But I spent six hours today fighting the need to ask him to pull out his dick so we could compare, and as you know, it’s likely I’d win.”
Judge laughed, which Rix thought was whacked.
So he shared that.
“This shit is whacked, brother.”
“Okay, man, as awesome as we both are, deeply professional and committed to the cause, it was always gonna come to this eventually now that we work together in a way where we’re actually working together. So we gotta understand what zone we’re in when some shit goes down. So I’m asking you, not as the Executive Director of Trail Blazer, as your friend, why do you feel you need to get this under control?”
This was the exact opposite response to what he was expecting.
Which made it no surprise Rix’s reply was, “Say what?”
“Alex is great.”
This time, Rix didn’t say anything.
So Judge kept going.
“As your ED, I’m not going to encourage you to enter into a relationship with a colleague, but one thing we have managed to accomplish, we’ve set our policies and procedures and there’s not a no-fraternization rule. You’re not a dick, and you know what we’re doing is important. Alex is not stupid, and she knows the same thing. But you’re both adults. I trust you to be smart and have professional boundaries when those are expected. So if you dig her, and she digs you, why wouldn’t you go there?”
“I didn’t say I wanted a relationship, Judge. I said I want to fuck her.”
“Those are mutually exclusive?”
“It’s not time for a relationship, especially not a complicated one. I just started a new job, and Peri’s up in my shit to get back together again.”
From Judge, there was a loaded beat then an equally loaded, “Sorry?”
“I told you she ambushed me at Scooter’s.”
“Yes, but you didn’t tell me that was about being up in your shit to get back together again.”
“She’s been texting ever since, including today,” Rix shared. “Telling me she thinks we can be happy again, and she’ll always love me.”
No loaded beat before a very heavy, “That fucking bitch.”
Shit, but he loved this guy.
Best friend you could have.
Loyal to the bone.
“It’s not gonna happen,” Rix assured. “But we had a history, and I gotta think on that, give it some time. But still, I already know I’m gonna sit down with her and put a line under it in a way I don’t leave a dozen and a half texts from her hanging.”
“She doesn’t deserve that, Rix.”
“Mom taught me, the thing that makes a good person is not that they treat people like they deserve. It’s that, no matter how hard it might be, you treat people right.”
“Your mom’s wisdom can be inconvenient,” Judge muttered.
Rix chuckled.
Judge spoke.
“Though, the part I still don’t get is why all this can’t go down while you see what being with Alex might mean.”
“I sense your approval of her, and I get that, she’s great. But I’m not ready to go there again with another woman.”
Hesitantly, Judge said, “Sometimes, it’s not about being ready, Rix.”
“I don’t have the luxury of flying by the seat of my pants with this kinda shit, Judge.”
Carefully, Judge said, “Okay. How’s that?”
“What if it doesn’t work out, and we’re starting things up at Trail Blazer, and right now, there’s four of us who work together. Alex and me don’t need to drag you and Kevin along for that ride.”
“You’re talking sense, but let’s go back to the other thing you said.”
They weren’t going to go back to it, because he should never have said it.
Judge didn’t need to know where Rix had no choice but to be.
He’d be in a chair or on prosthetics his whole life.
Raising kids with no legs.
Hopefully growing old, but with no legs.
His life and his future looked different than other people’s.
And the woman in it would have to get that in a way Rix wasn’t certain that woman existed.
He’d wanted a wife, he’d wanted a family.
But the idea that he could wake up with his house on fire, his family under that roof, and it’d be a struggle to save himself, no way could he look after them, was the kind of snag he had trouble seeing past.
And that was just one example of maybe a thousand of them.
“I gotta go. Get settled,” he changed the subject. “Your dad left us a message that he’s picking up the tab for restaurant and room service, and to make sure we knew he was serious about that and he wanted us to take him up on it, he made a reservation for us tonight.” Rix looked at his watch. “I gotta get cleaned up. Me and Alex are meeting up in ten.”
“Rix…”
When Judge said no more, Rix asked, “What?”
“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”
Here was the shit.
He loved this guy, but it was still shit.
If Judge wanted to know, he needed to ask.
And for the man Judge was in Rix’s life, maybe he even needed to push.
A little.
Sometimes.
When it mattered.
“I just told you I wanted to fuck our Director of Outreach, I think I know that,” he hedged.
Judge laughed and said, “Right.”
“Tell Chloe I said hey.”
“Will do. Keep up the good work.”
Rix shook his head, unzipped his bag, and replied, “Piss off.”
Another laugh and then, “Later, man.”
“Later, bud.”
They disconnected. Rix pulled out a white shirt, a clean pair of jeans and his dop kit. He went to the bathroom, tugged off his tee, washed under his pits, reapplied antiperspirant, examined his stubble, which was getting out of control, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it.
He wet his hands, ran them through his hair, then changed his jeans, shrugged on his shirt, slid a brown belt through the loops of his jeans, and blanked himself through the process of switching the running shoes off his fake feet to a pair of brown leather oxfords.
He then texted Alex to ask if she was ready before he pulled some other shit out of his bag and kit to put it where he’d need it later, primarily the book he was reading, his sleep shorts and his shampoo.
He got Alex’s reply of Coming over about half a second before her knock sounded at the door.
He knew it was her, but looked through the peephole anyway, which turned out to be a good call.
Because she’d pulled the pigtails out, her hair was down, she’d done something to it so it didn’t have braid kinks, but instead was a tumble of curls floating over her shoulders and down her chest.