Grumpy Best Friend

And if he thought that, he was right. It killed me to admit it, but this was more important to me than it was to him. At least if this failed, he could fall back on his already very successful constructive business, while I’d be left with absolutely nothing. Lady Fluke dropped this chance in my lap, and I was desperate to make it succeed, despite not being even remotely qualified, and only chosen because Fluke thought she could push me around from out in London and micromanage me. So far, I’d already gotten ten emails from her since my visit to the factory floor, and that was more email from her than I’d gotten in the past year.

But screw Fluke and especially screw Bret. I was ready for this, even if I didn’t have the technical qualifications. I spent all night researching company structures and combing through the Fluke Company’s internal data, getting a sense of who I’d need to hire and what the bare minimum to get things running would cost. I put it all into a presentation and planned on showing it to Lady Fluke, and maybe Bret, if he could stop being such an asshole.

I drifted after him and stood in the doorway of the corner office. It was a beautiful space: enormous windows overlooking the water, lots of room for a desk and filing cabinets. He stood about where I’d put my desk and turned to me, grinning from ear to ear.

“I think we found our home,” he said, stamping his boot. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s good, if we can afford it,” I said, a little wary. I didn’t want to dive right into this. “I’ll look for alternatives though, of course.”

“Of course.” He turned toward the window. “I’ll enjoy this office space.”

I snorted. “I don’t think so. This is going to be mine.”

He looked at me, eyebrow arched. “You’re already going to give me trouble about who gets what office?”

I walked over and stood next to him, arms crossed, looking out at the water. I liked the way the light sparkled and broke into thousands of tiny pieces, like diamonds on the waves. A boat rolled slowly along, pulling a white foamy wake behind it. “I’m not giving you trouble,” I said, not looking at him. “I’m only saying, this is my main job, and this is just some investment for you. I should get the better office.”

He grunted softly, and I glanced at him out the corner of my eye. “Remember that old moped we bought together?” he asked. “You said it should be mostly yours, since it was mostly your money, even though I was the one that put all that time and energy into fixing the damn thing.”

“I can’t even believe you’d mention the moped right now,” I said, smiling a little despite myself. We bought it off some older kid Bret knew, a rundown, rusted-up piece of crap that barely started up. Bret spent weeks on it, and I’d sit there out back behind his house, blocked by a tree and a ton of bushes and weeds while he tinkered and I read magazines, Q-102 on the radio playing pop music. We used to ride it around for hours, him up front, and me on the back, clutching his chest as he rode through the woods, along paths that definitely weren’t meant for a moped, but we made it work, despite a couple low-speed crashes and lots of bumps and bruises.

“Just saying, you have a tendency to take and not give,” he said.

I ground my teeth and tried to let that comment go, but I couldn’t help myself. “If I remember correctly, the moped was destroyed one afternoon when you decided to take it off those bike jumps and crashed it into a tree.”

He ran a hand through his hair and messed it up, which somehow made him even more handsome, and of course, that pissed me off. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about that. You have no clue how close I came to dying.”

“You told me it was no big deal,” I said, frowning.

“Oh, god, it was terrible. I had his huge gash on my head and it was bleeding everywhere.”

“You told me that was from volleyball practice,” I said, glaring at him.

“And you believed me?” He chuckled softly and turned away from the windows, heading back toward the door. “All right, Judey, if you want this office, you can have it. I’ll take next door.”

“How about you don’t take any?” I said, following him into the main room. “What’s your title even going to be, anyway?”

“Chief consultant,” he said, shrugging. “Does it really matter? Titles are made up.”

“It matters to me. Corporate hierarchy—”

He rolled his eyes. “Corporate hierarchy is bullshit.”

I crossed my arms and tried not to throw my hands up in frustration. “So I guess you let your employees do whatever the fuck they want then?”