Offensive Behavior

“I’ve definitely given it.” All eyes to Hank. Overweight, into gaming in a big way, the oldest of them. “You know when you like a woman, but not that much and the sex is good, but she annoys you when you’re not having sex, and so you want to break up with her, but then you don’t, because the sex is good, and it all builds up and one day you have sex and then you break up.”

“Way too much information, dude,” said Greg, while Lorenzo, handsome, the only legitimate player in the group high-fived Hank.

“Swipe, bed and forget, man. It’s always breakup sex,” Lorenzo said.

Dev said, “I hate today.” He sat upright with a red mark on his forehead from where he’d head-desked.

Reid zeroed in on Hank, their least likely Lothario after himself. “What you’re saying is it’s an unspoken thing. You might not know until it never happens again.”

“Yes, but sometimes you do know it’ll be the last time so you make it as good as you can.”

Oh fuck. That’s what Zarley had done. He stood. “Thanks, appreciate it.” He let himself out of the room and went to his office. He was there five minutes and Dev came in.

“Yes, all right. That was a stupid thing to do. I’m sorry I interrupted your meeting.”

“Are you?” Dev sat. Reid hadn’t made it as far as a chair.

“No.”

“What’s going on with you?”

Now he sat. First personal thing Dev had said in the months he’d been back. “Are you asking because you think I’m about to do something worse than what I just did?”

“I’m asking because what you just did was both completely in character and also totally alien.”

“I’m not following.”

“You busting into someone’s meeting for your own purposes, totally an annoying Reid McGrath thing to do. Doing it because you needed personal advice?” Dev’s face darkened. “About sex,” his voice squeaked. “What planet are you on?”

“I’ve screwed up with Zarley.”

“How?”

“You and me are going to have this conversation?”

Dev nodded. “It’s about time we had a conversation that wasn’t about the business.”

“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

“We’ll see.” Dev made a come on gesture with curled fingers. “Out with it.”

“I have a horrible feeling she’s about to leave me.”

“She’s not said anything?”

“Not a word, but then she’s not someone who would complain. She’s not someone who would suffer in silence either so I don’t know what to make of it.”

“What are the clues?”

He sighed. This wasn’t a problem with a typical diagnostic. There was no single point of failure or a range of events with errors logged against them. But this was Dev so that didn’t matter, because Dev believed in sixth sense feelings too.

“It was the way she kissed me this morning. And I woke her up. I normally let her sleep. I don’t know why I woke her. It was unnecessary, but I did it deliberately.”

“Go on.”

“Last night you and I were late getting back and I was a little tense because of the news about Owen and then you and I—”

“Disagreed.”