“Good, thank you.” I turned to the other guy and shook his too. It was big but not as large as the other one’s had been. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
Then I turned to the older man, Trevor, and held out my hand to him as well because I highly doubted he’d remember meeting me years ago.
He glanced down at my outstretched palm, and then so did I. Was there something wrong with it?
And that was when Zac reached over, grabbed his manager’s hand from where it had been hanging loosely at his side, and held it out toward me.
It took everything inside of my soul to keep a straight face when I slipped my hand into his mostly limp one, only held up because of Zac who was still supporting it and who moved it up and down jerkily as he shook mine back. I looked at him and could see how thin his mouth was… because he was trying to keep from laughing too. I’d seen him make the same expression a million times back in the day.
We shook some more, way longer than what was necessary or normal, until the other man finally gave my hand a gentle squeeze, and I tore mine away from his with a glance at a Zac with laughing eyes.
And he thought I was a pest.
I guess I’d been right about Trevor not being pleasant from the memories I had.
“Hi,” I told him, fighting for my damn life to not smile. “So nice to meet you.” Except not really.
“Do you need me to move your mouth too or…?” My friend trailed off, and I didn’t know until then just how much harder it was going to be to not crack up at how rude this man was being and how it wasn’t unheard of from the way Zac was acting. That was the only reason why it didn’t hurt my feelings.
Something told me this was normal for him. That and Zac had already told me about this man being capable of not being very nice. Why the hell was he still with him? Maybe I could sneak the question into a conversation with Boogie one day. He would probably know.
The older man slid Zac a disgusted look that would have insulted me if I didn’t sense that he was like this with everyone. “Hello,” Trevor said with all the enthusiasm of someone about to get a colonoscopy without the use of drugs. “We’ve met. You’re the one who saved his life.”
He remembered that?
Zac turned back to face me then, blue eyes bright and that freaking mouth twisted to the side like he was surprised Trevor remembered me too. Maybe he didn’t remember we’d met? I wasn’t sure and didn’t get a chance to think about it much because the funny face he was shooting his manager wiped my memory.
“Zac, this is my friend Deepa,” I said, gesturing behind me.
She squeaked and waved.
Zac did that polite smile of his and greeted her briefly before turning back to me. “What time you get off, Peewee?”
“Four.” I almost asked him what time he would be done but decided against it. I didn’t want him to assume I was asking because I wanted to hang out.
Before either one of us could get another word out though, the side door leading outside opened. My heart skipped a beat because I didn’t want to get caught and bitched at. Fortunately, a face I didn’t recognize appeared. The woman stopped at the sight of the four men standing there and said, “Oh. You’re here. Great, come on. We’ll get started.”
I smiled up at Zac and took a step away from him as Trevor said something to the woman that I couldn’t totally hear. “Well, have fun. It was nice meeting everyone.”
Zac smirked, and I freaking failed to keep from smiling. “I’ll text you later, kiddo,” he told me.
I shrugged, not wanting him to feel forced to if he forgot or had other plans. There was no way in hell he’d think I assumed we’d see each other regularly. I was already surprised we’d seen each other as much as we had. Three times in less than two months? I didn’t even get to see my own family members that often.
Plus, I had no idea what was going on with him and football.
But that must have been the wrong way to respond because I didn’t miss the way his eyes narrowed, just a little, but enough. I got saved from whatever thoughts were in his head when his manager called out, “Zac!”
Those blue eyes settled on me, still thoughtful, as he took a step back. “I’ll text you later.”
Sure he would, but I still gave him a smile that time. “If you have time and want to. Have a good day.”
The pensive face he was making went nowhere as he turned around and headed toward his friends and manager, slapping Trevor on the back. They all followed the woman through the door and into the building adjacent to the one I worked at. I thought Zac might have glanced over his shoulder one last time, but I wasn’t positive since he ended up in the middle of his friends, or whoever the hell they were.
Turning around, telling myself not to expect shit, I found Deepa standing in the same spot she’d been in at the juice bar, her lips parted.
And in front of her, there was a regular member I recognized doing the same thing.
It was him who asked, “You know Zac Travis?”
And it was Deepa who asked, “How do you know Zac Travis?”
Well, I’d walked right into that shit. I headed back over to the front desk before my luck ran out and Gunner reappeared. “We grew up together.” Or at least as together as two people with a seven-year age gap could grow up together.
Luckily—kind of—the same door that Zac had walked through opened, and we both instantly tried to look busy. I picked up the work phone and glanced down at the list Gunner had given me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Deepa drop to her haunches and make it seem like she was looking through a shelf. For what, I had no idea, but she looked busy, and it took everything inside of me not to make a face.
I knew she was going to load me up with questions later.
“I understand,” I started saying into the receiver even though there was no one on the other end. “Thank you so much for your time. I hope you keep Maio House in mind if you ever move back.”
Man, I was good.
And lucky, because just as I finished my bullshit spiel, I spotted Gunner in my peripheral vision, stopping just in front of the desk the second I set the phone back down into the cradle.
The jerk knocked on the counter, and it took a lot of patience not to roll my eyes and instead look at him blankly. “How are the calls going?”
“Fine.” I kept my face even. “Do you need something?”
“Can you stay late today?”
“No, I can’t.”
His jaw moved to the side a little. “There’s no way?”
“No.” He’d offered me a full-time position right after people had started quitting, and I had told him it was a hard no for me. Because it was.
His jaw moved a little more. “You know, it’s really unfortunate that you can never seem to stay late when you’re needed,” the jerkface tried to say, picking at my mood, and blatantly ignoring the fact that I had stayed late recently.
Just not on days he asked.
“I stayed an hour late yesterday and three days ago….” I trailed off, calling him an asshole with my eyeballs.
“What good does that do me today?”
And folks wondered what drove nice, normal people to first degree murder.
I had always been a team player, but he was such a pain in the ass, I just couldn’t find it in me to do him a solid. The two days I stayed late had been after he’d already been gone, otherwise I would have said no to that too. The new assistant manager, who had been hired after everyone else quit, was an all right guy, but none of us had any confidence in him protecting us from Gunner’s wrath.