“Shit. Well, sorry about that,” grunts Stefan.
“I’m not,” Dana sings with a lilt in her voice. I glare at her.
“So should I call back later?” he asks. “I want to hear what you’re stressed out about.”
I go to grab my phone, but Dana is quicker, picking it right up and helping herself to the corner of my desk for a seat. “Actually, Ryan and I were talking about you. We were really interested in setting up a little dinner.”
“Dana …” I groan, to which she only winks at me.
“Dinner?” asks Stefan.
“Yep,” she chirps back. “You, Ryan, me … and a girlfriend of mine. Like a double-date, except totally not.”
I cut in. “Dana, seriously …”
“Sounds great to me,” Stefan cuts in. “Where and when?”
“How about tomorrow night? I know the perfect place with a Friday ‘date night special’ we can all take advantage of. Not that it’s a date. Because it’s not.”
“Totally not,” Stefan agrees with amusement in his voice.
The fact that he’s amused and not royally annoyed like I am makes my blood pressure shoot through the ceiling tiles. I finally snatch the phone out of Dana’s talons, switch it off speaker phone, and bring it to my own ear. “We could also not do dinner Friday, since I know you’re busy as shit at Parker’s house with those renovations all day, which you whine about whenever you come back to my place, so if you don’t—”
“Nah, we’re not working on his house tomorrow. He’s got a thing,” he points out.
“So are we still on for Friday, then?” calls out Dana.
I sigh. Fuck. “Alright, Stefan. We’ll go out then. See you later.”
“See you later, bro!”
Then: click.
Dana descends on me the next instant, practically crawling over my desk with her excitement. “Oh my God. Stefan Baker is actually staying with you?”
I was hoping that tiny detail flew over her head; apparently, it didn’t. “We were childhood friends,” I answer defensively. “He just wanted a place to stay for a while before … moving on to his next thing.”
“There’s a reason you’re not telling me,” she decides, crossing her arms and staring at me suspiciously. “He went and got trashed and nearly beaten to death at Beebee’s. He’s not playing baseball anymore. He’s staying at your house and doing handyman work. Something is going on with him. I just know it.”
I frown at her. “What are you? A reporter for Channel 2?”
“Just tell me. Please. I gotta know. You totally owe me after that Friday when I picked up the bill.”
“I’ll buy you a couple of drinks then, for you and your friend. And there’s nothing to tell.”
“There is something to tell.”
“Dana, I don’t know why he was drunk and aggressive that Friday. All I know is, it wasn’t like him. He had one bad night, he’s staying with me for a short time, and that’s it.”
“Hmm. Alright.” She puts a hand suddenly on my arm. I look up at her with quizzical eyes. “Sorry for snatching your phone away from you like a teenage girl. Though, we are in a high school, after all.” She shrugs, winks at me, then hops off the desk and saunters out of my office.
I sink against the wall and stare down at the blank screen of my phone. The reflection of my face stares back up at me, looking too much like the lost kid who would stare longingly at Stefan’s door, wondering if Stefan would be as excited to see him as he was to see Stefan.
It’s not “spice” from a soup I’m tasting on my lips. It’s him.
24
RYAN
I’m calling it: this dinner is going to be a nightmare.
Just strap in and get ready for the humiliation of my coworker falling on her face to get into Stefan Baker’s pants tonight—and me having to endure every second of it over a basket of spicy onion rings.
“Ready?” I ask him when we reach the door to the wonderful diner Dana chose for tonight’s festivities. Note my enthusiasm.
Stefan nods at the door. “Sure thing.”
“You alright? You seemed kinda stiff during the ride over.”
For a second, Stefan looks like he wants to say something. He holds back instead, gives his head a shake, then gets that familiar cocky look on his face. “It’s ‘cause I went to that old gym you said was still open. My muscles are literally stiff as fuck. Unlike you, who got to sit your butt in a desk chair all day.”
I roll my eyes. “I do get up and pace my office worriedly now and then, to be fair. Plus, the staff lounge is on the opposite end of the whole damned school, so I get some cardio in whenever I want to have lunch and not starve myself for the day.”
“Oh, your life is so hard,” he teases me, then pulls open the door. “Bros first.”