“If you pull this off, I swear I’ll owe you fifty favors.”
He tilted his head in my direction. “Fifty, you say?”
“Why do I feel like I just made a deal with the devil?”
Laughing, he lined up his shot. “Better the devil you know.” Following through, he tracked the ball sailing through the air.
“How do you think tomorrow will go?”
“As in, do I think Everest will either not show or absolutely flip his shit?”
“That.”
“Toss up. It’ll depend on whether Madison and the band are there or not. For every one the band shows up to, there are five they don’t. Half the parties are for the road crew who’ve been killing themselves for the past two years they’ve been on tour.”
“What happened? Right after, he lost his mind.”
“When your girlfriend starts fucking one of the biggest bands in the world it’s hard to keep it together.”
Beer spurted past the lip of the bottle. “She’s screwing the whole band?”
He laughed. “No.” A thoughtful look crossed his face as he looked up at the ceiling like he was flipping through his mental rolodex. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll be prepared to tackle him if need be.”
“You’d do that on a Tuesday.”
“True.”
“Don’t worry. You two are past the angry phase. You’ve slid into the hostile phase. Next up is acceptance, and then finally love.”
“Everest can find another group of friends to hang out with instead of mine.”
“What about me? I’m the newest to the crew. Are you going to kick me out next?”
“You’re way too useful, man. Plus, you don’t piss me off like he does.”
“And you piss him off just as much.”
“Good. I don’t know why he hangs around.”
Hunter shook his head. “It beats the alternative.”
“What’s that?”
“Being alone.”
We finished our beers and headed out. The entire meal and three rounds of golf were on the house. He hadn’t needed to spend eighteen years putting his body on the line, and he still got all the celebrity perks.
Back in my apartment, I was tempted to call Zara again and make sure she’d made it home. Instead, I settled for a text in case she was in bed already. Not that the mattress counted. She needed a bed. A soft bed, up off the floor. A comfortable place after a long day.
I ran my hand over the cold side of my bed. We’ve barely made it to friends. Fake fiancée or not, we had one more event, one more week to our truce, and then the gloves came off. But did they have to? Maybe we could figure out a new arrangement entirely.
25
Zara
Flashes of light shot out the sides of the copy machine. Two reams of paper later, the last of the collated copies shot out. Heat from the overworked machine turned the cramped room into a sauna. Being stuck in here wasn’t as terrible as it had been ten minutes ago.
A concert. Leo had invited me to a concert. The wheels were spinning in overdrive. I hadn’t been to a concert in…ever? There had been some free ones when I was at college, but spending money on tickets to music I could listen to for free never won out over Tyler’s tuition and my food, rent, and student loan payments.
But tomorrow, I’d be going to one with Leo. Hunter the Fixer had a spare ticket, and maybe Leo had figured since I didn’t have many friends my evening would be wide open. Instead of being offended, I was flattered that he’d asked. Maybe we were turning a corner. What did that mean for things between us once we won? What did it mean if we lost?
The door banged open behind me.
“Are you printing out the entire Encyclopedia Britannica?” Andi strode into the room balancing four long boxes in her arms.
“If only it were that exciting.”
“Toner’s low and I replaced these three days ago.”
“Sorry.”
“No problem. It gets me out of my desk for more than coffee and snack runs. Plus, I promised the guys I’d buy them Tastykakes all next week if they did the server migration by five pm and guess who came through? Which means I need to stock up on the way home.”
“That’s a work incentive I can get behind.”
The copies finished and I set the last few on the massive stacks I’d run off already.
“You haven’t been around much.” And crunched behind the printer, opening the massive side door and tugging out the toner.
“The Winthorpe account has been a lot.”
“Is that what this is?” She gestured to the huge stacks of paper I’d be lugging out of here.
I stared at the stack of over three hundred proposal packages I’d had to format and copy, which had landed on my desk at 4:58pm. “No.”
The door flew open again. This time there was a much less welcome visitor to the cramped copy room.
Valerie swanned in with her arms crossed over her chest looking like she’d rather be anywhere except here. Take a number. “Are you finished yet?”
“Yet?” I bit my tongue. She was the boss’s daughter. It had been less than an hour. Boss’s daughter won out. “I’m almost finished.”
“Better late than never.”
Was that blood I tasted?
“Winthorpe should be my account.”
I heard it was until they asked that you be removed.
“I’m sure your dad had his reasons for making the decision he made.” Like the fact that you’re an incompetent coattail-rider who wants nothing more than to boss people around and lord her perceived power over them. Only it wasn’t perceived, since I wasn’t shouting all this in her face right now.
“Once I’m finished, I can set them on your desk like always.”
I grabbed a copy off the top.
Valerie gasped behind me.
“Where did you get that?” I lifted the top packet off and held it out to her. “These are the documents you said you needed for tomorrow.”
She snatched the packet and flung it onto the counter. “Not that. That.” Twisting my wrist—ow! —she shoved my hand back in my face.
Oh. That. After my night of puking, I hadn’t taken the ring off like I normally did.
“It’s nothing.” I tried to tug my hand free from her iron grip.
“It’s a three carat Emerald cut VVS1 diamond engagement ring.” Did she have a bionic jeweler’s eye installed in her head? And there was no way this was real. Was there?
I shook her grip off my hand and snatched it back. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re engaged?” Shock and outrage reverberated through her voice. Like the very idea of me being engaged with a ring like this was a sick cosmic prank. Joke’s on her.
“I’m not engaged. Do you want me to drop these copies off in your office?” I gestured to the stack sitting behind me.
“I’d like to leave. I don’t want to be stuck here checking up on you.”
No one said you had to stay. “Everything will be on your desk by 8am.”
“I heard the Winthorpe event was interesting?” Every bit of her entitled, belittling arsenal was on fire tonight.