Offensive Behavior

It felt mean to be angry with him, but she was. Not for waking her, and not for anything he’d done or said. He’d made it easy for her and Cara to take over his home, set it up the way they were most comfortable, stock his cupboards with food and throw out the chipped plates and cracked cups for new ones. It was almost as if this apartment was theirs and Reid was the other roommate.

And that’s not how she’d thought it would go. Not that there’d been much time to think, the accident had cut their stay in Paris short, and Reid had gone from the airport to the hospital where he’d spent the next two days and then started back at Plus in his old job as CEO.

She’d expected him to work hard, but not like this. He worked like he was purpose-built to handle complex problems at the speed of light. He worked like obsession was for beginners and full-scale commitment was the new black. He didn’t seem to tire abnormally or get overly grumpy, and he didn’t lose interest in her, he simply transformed into a man whose most intense relationship was with his work.

And she pined for him.

He worked like he was in love with the work and that was the most disturbing thing of all. Because she should’ve known that. He’d hacked his life around work. And he’d taken it to the extreme when he’d lost Plus. It’s what his drunken nights at Lucky’s were about. It’s what the empty apartment and the fridge full of pre-prepared food meant. It’s why he had cracked unmatched tableware, and homemade vintage t-shirts alongside his fully equipped office and gym.

Everything around him existed to facilitate the ease with which he worked. Anything that didn’t was peripheral. Who needed nice dinnerware or a dining table when you were never around to use them? Who needed a fancy car when you wanted the quickest ride to work or a second stool when you barely used one?

All of which left her scrambling, because m

aybe she was peripheral too.

Like she’d once thought Reid would be for her.

And that’s what made her angry. Maybe what they had together was the equivalent of a holiday romance. Extraordinary but unreal, and hard to keep hold of when the day to day took over.

Or maybe it was because he was getting on with his life and hers had stalled.

Zarley watched Reid dream, his eyeballs moving under his closed lids, and knew she was done with sleep. In her dream she had a job and a lock on what she’d do with her degree. She’d been unlucky so far looking for work. Lizabeth, who was waitressing and hated it, tried to set up her up with a job but it fell through. She’d applied at the other bars in town that had dancers, only to be told there was a waiting list because no girl liked student debt. Her Madame Amour experience had earned her nothing except curiosity.

That was the difference between her and Reid now. When they’d met, he’d been waiting to work out his next move, and now it was her turn. There was no reason to feel panicky about that. The famous Madame Amour didn’t always know what she wanted to do either.

But waiting wasn’t something Zarley was good at. Waiting with no particular purpose set against it was worse. It made her feel dependent on Reid in a way she knew wasn’t healthy. He refused money for rent and used a fancy app to pay utilities so she never saw a bill. Cara insisted on buying their food and Reid had always had a cleaner. Zarley hadn’t felt so redundant since leaving gymnastics. And that thought scared her. That’s when she’d filled her life with distractions to avoid dealing with the future.

The upside was it made school easy. Without work it was a breeze to get through her course load.

In another ten minutes the alarm would sound. Surely Reid could have a little longer. She’d wake him at 6.30. She sat to reach across him to turn it off and his eyes opened.

“Oh, baby, go back to sleep.”

He blinked and yawned. “Nah, whole team is coming back in early. Need to be there. If I get moving now I have time for breakfast with you.” He yawned again. “Be my date?”

She wasn’t angry with Reid; she was annoyed with herself. “Love to have breakfast with you. Is that when you’ll tell me you’re not killing yourself and it won’t always be like this?”

He yawned again. “Want me to lie?”

Her face must’ve have shown no, not ever. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her to his chest. “I’m not killing myself. We have another month or two of deadline crunches to fix the problems and then it will ease off. But Owen is going to be out for at least another few months.”

“You don’t have to make excuses.”

“I’m not. This is how it is, how it has to be, and how I like it.”

And wasn’t that a pinprick to her balloon.

Being right wasn’t as much fun as it was cracked up to be.

“This time around I have a better handle on my temper. I haven’t called anyone an idiot yet or implied they bought their quals from a Russian dating website. I’ve only yelled once and I apologized straight off. Back in the day if I yelled at someone, I’d sulk for a week afterward. Meant I was often sulking. Apologizing is better, even if I was right about the work, it’s never okay to take it out on the person.”

Yeah, see previous thought.

“Are you happy, Flygirl?”

The question caught her off guard and her hesitation made him frown. The alarm went off and he rolled to shut it off. She wasn’t living above a Korean restaurant. She wasn’t shutting herself off from life outside college. She lived with a man she loved and being jobless was a temporary thing and so was Reid’s current fanaticism.

He’d been terrified of going back to Plus, not because of the work he’d need to do, or facing people he’d humiliated himself in front of, but because he didn’t trust he wouldn’t make the same mistakes of judgment he’d always made. Knowing he was doing better made her happy.