“Hey, I said what I meant and meant what I said,” he shoots at me. “I don’t play where I work.”
“But why not play outside of work?” I suggest, scooting up next to him by his cramped bathroom mirror to check my own hair, our shoulders touching. “There’s no rules keeping you and Ashlee apart. You could easily stay professional at work and still date outside of office hours.”
“Dude. Sorry, but staying professional while diddling someone in the office just isn’t possible.”
My body tenses, instantly turning defensive. “I think it is,” I assert. “You just need to practice discipline, separate work needs from social needs, and—”
“And what do I do when things get complicated, or she bites my head off at work, or we break up and I have to deal with the cold shoulder for the rest of the summer?”
“Then it’s just for the rest of the summer.” I’m being really stubborn about this. I think the guilt of what’s going on between Ben and I—and what’s not going on between Ashlee and Elijah—is starting to get to me. I really need Elijah to be dating who he wants. I need Elijah to let go of this rule of his, like it will in some way permit the wrong thing I’m doing. Maybe I could even confide in Elijah. We could be sidekicks in inappropriate intraoffice dating. “There’s no harm in trying. I think you’re just being difficult.”
He turns on me suddenly, his features hardened. “For the guy I knew growing up who was so adamant about following rules and doing the right thing and keeping focused on the goal, you sure are exercising a sudden change of heart.”
“Listen, all I’m saying is you could be having—”
“You’ve been fucking weird these past few weeks,” Elijah lets out in half a bark. “Are you wanting me to date Ashlee because you’re secretly dating Brady? Is that it?”
I choke on my tongue for a solid second. “Like hell I’d ever date that gorgeous hunk of hetero ham. Besides, he’s straight!”
Elijah’s seriousness breaks for a second as he chuckles and mutters, “Hetero ham,” under his breath. “Fuck, I gotta remember that one.” Then his face hardens right back up. “Trevor, if you’re just wanting it to be okay for you to screw around, and you think having me screw around with Ashlee—”
He’s so annoyingly perceptive. This is what I get for having such a close best friend as Elijah. “No, no,” I blurt out, despite the fact that he might’ve just thrown me the very rope I was waiting all this time to grab hold of. Naturally, I’m too stubborn to notice. “It’s not that. I just want you to be happy. I’ve spent so much of my college life denying myself basic … collegiate pleasures … and—”
“Oh, like getting gangbanged in the back of a frat house every Saturday night? I don’t think you missed out on much other than a sore jaw and a vastly decreased ability to keep in your farts.”
I snort and shove Elijah for that one, which earns me a cackle of laughter from him, breaking any tension our little discussion about diddling fellow interns built up.
After a final (and totally unnecessary) adjustment to his hair, he comes up behind me and grips both of my shoulders, giving them a near painful pinching. “I appreciate your little push of faith, but I’m keeping my eye on the prize here, Trev. We’re already almost halfway through the summer, and I still have yet to score a perfect moment to impress the big man. No Ashlee for me, and damn it, no bathroom bump-buddy for you, either!”
My face flushes as I shake my head, laughing it off. Despite Ben saying I don’t need anything for the weekend, I swing a backpack onto my shoulder that I’d packed last night—which only carries my passport, laptop, charger, and a change of clothes for after work, since I plan to go straight from there to Ben’s—and then the pair of us are out the door and on our way to work amidst a cloudy morning sky that threatens to rain over our heads, but mercifully doesn’t just yet.
It’s on my lunch break—after a grueling three hours of tedious client research—that I’ve dismissed myself to the front reception area, which is unoccupied, the desk lady Dana having gone off to get herself a bite with a few of the other employees down the road. I stare out the front window onto the street as I hold the phone to my ear, waiting for my mom to respond.
I sigh, frustrated with the silence she’s given me since I went and dropped the news on her. “It’s just that Elijah and some of my friends here would be so disappointed if I didn’t go with them,” I further explain. “It’s not that I don’t want to see the family, Mom.”