“I grew up on hamburger helper, boxed mac and cheese and wiener dogs. I made my eighty-six-year-old grandmother teach me to cook Indian food via Skype because you liked it, and so you wouldn’t freak me out.”
Reid’d had an upset gut since last night. Dev’s words were making him feel like puking. “You never told me that. You—”
“Close your fat trap. I never told you because you’re one in a million and I’m the million and I got lucky to meet you. Look at my life because of you,” he shoved the door against the wall with a bang and gestured to the apartment. “I have money, security. My family is cared for. My ninety-six-year-old grandmother went on her first world cruise. All that was never happening to me no matter how hard I worked. I’m the million, I’m the every other person who’s not the infinitely small number of people who are like you.”
He pushed a breath out. If Dev would punch him, break his nose, this would be easier to take. Broken noses, cheekbones, they healed. This was ripping the connective tissue that attached his brain and his heart to his body.
“And you know your problem?”
He needed to sit down. He put his hand out and braced on the wall. “I—”
“That was rhetorical, dickhead. You suck at being a friend.”
“Then why did you stick around? We were mostly nothing, working on dreams and living on vapor. Years of that. Failure was the most likely option. Why did you stick by me? All of you.” Knees gone the way of Dev’s Masala noodles, Reid backed up against the wall and slid down it till he was sitting on cold tiles. “Sarina could’ve had any job in the city. Owen never needed to work. You could’ve cleaned up in the Valley. None of you needed me.” He looked up at Dev. “But you kept cooking for an asshole, filling my fridge, so what’s your problem?”
“Once you get off my doorstep, I don’t have one.”
“That’s how you want it?” His cell rang. He fished it out of his pocket. Sarina.
“Did you take Sarina flowers?
He nodded.
“Yeah, like you don’t remember she has wicked bad allergies.”
Oh shit. He knew that. Only hadn’t recalled it. Too busy thinking about grand gestures. “Fuck.” He answered Sarina’s call
“If you could arrange to have the flowers collected, maybe delivered to a hospital, that would be great.” Sarina in his ear, calm and clear, no trace of emotion in her voice.
“I remembered.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m at Dev’s.” Cell got snatched from his hand and Dev disappeared with it inside the apartment and shut the door.
Bile in his mouth. He swallowed it back. He sucked at being a friend and he knew it. He’d always known it, he’d tattooed it on his chest, but it was too big to deal with. How could you consistently fail at such a basic thing as friendship? Same way you could avoid sex till you scored it almost accidentally. He was the weird, loner guy and he was missing the gene that most people had to rub along well with others.
His whole life was a hack to avoid the hard personal stuff. Once maybe not having his personal shit together might’ve been excusable, but since running Plus stopped b
eing a life or death experience, what reason did he have for not building a proper adult life, with furniture and friends and people he loved in it?
Because there was worse. He couldn’t do basic friendship and yet he wanted Zarley in his life as more than a friend, more than a lover. How was that ever going to work out? How had he even entertained the notion?
She’d fuck near turned him inside out last night, being there for him, knowing exactly what to say, using her body to make him forget, to believe in himself again and asking nothing for herself.
His road, but she’s stood in his path to make him think.
He was still sitting on the tiles when Dev opened the door and held his hand out. He’d reached for it before he realized it was Dev’s hand, without his cell in it. They clasped and Dev pulled him upright.
“I can’t be doing this with you right now, Reid. Last night was one step too far. Owen is trying to decide if he should resign today to stop the share price crash that’ll happen Monday. You’ll get Plus back, but I won’t be there, none of us will, but that’s okay, we all get it, it’s business. You don’t suck at business.”
But he did. Dev was wrong. And Reid was right—again. Because as much as Plus needed him, it needed Owen’s financial smarts, Sarina’s pulse on the company’s culture and Dev’s precision as an engineer. It needed Kuch and the employees he’d badmouthed in a backhand way last night.
“I fucked up royally and I’ll make it so it’s clear I was in the wrong last night.”
Dev held out the phone. “If that’s even possible, Reid, only you could find a way to pull it off.” He turned away to go back inside.
Reid called after him. “But the other, the sucking at friendship. I don’t know how to fix that.”