Adam laughed. “Nah. Team Blueberries forever,” he said, sounding mostly thawed from whatever mood he’d been in. Mission accomplished, I smiled to myself as I took a bite of my food. “So what did you call Holland for this morning?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
He gave me a look. “Your voice just went up two octaves,” he said dryly. Read: I know what you sound like when you’re lying. I narrowed my eyes
“Fine, I was thanking her for the use of her employee discount, which is what I used to buy my copious amounts of lingerie for Caspar last week,” I said with a breeziness that I was using specifically to hide the tension I now had as I waited for Adam to make me sweat by saying something dirty.
But to my surprise and relief, he didn’t.
I did notice the single tick of his jaw at the mention of lingerie, but rather than saying something sexual, he opted to give me his usual shit.
“You still managed to drop three hundred dollars while using her discount?” he asked, clicking away at his screen.
“Trust me, it’s not that hard.”
“It’s a fifty percent discount.”
“Well, I bought the really good stuff,” I said, my words coming off sultrier than I meant because they prompted Adam to hit me with a look just as I was licking the whipped cream off the tip of a berry.
His stare moved to my tongue then to me. “You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“I didn’t know you were going to look up right then!”
“New rule, you can’t eat in my office anymore.”
“But everyone asks where my food is from when I eat outside!”
“It’s not that hard to lie, AJ, now get out,” Adam said, and though he was laughing, I knew he was serious, so I held my hands up and said “alright, alright,” grabbing my food and leaving.
I was still grinning by the time I got to my desk, but my smile faltered as soon as my eyes landed on the notifications glowing on my phone screen.
Texts.
From Caspar.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, already sensing the trouble as I grabbed my phone off my desk.
CASPAR: Seth told me you’re coming to get your things tonight and I just want to let you know that I plan to be home.
CASPAR: You’re welcome to come back but I’m not going to let you pack your bags until we talk. It’s been over a week AJ. We clearly have things we need to discuss like two adults. You’re my fiancee for Christ’s sake and I’m not going to give up on our union just because you’re not thinking straight.
Our “union”? What a douche.
CASPAR: I don’t want to do this but if you force me to I will tell everyone why this actually ended and I’m pretty sure the absolute last thing you want is for everyone, least of all your friends from college, knowing that you’re fucking your boss.
Unreal.
In a flash, I was seething. I seethed for literally every second of the next several hours of work, and though I hid it fairly well from Adam, I knew he’d detected the shift in my mood by our next conversation. And though I gave a pretty convincing “I’m fine” when he asked what was wrong, it stopped working by the end of the day, and I should’ve known.
Because in the way I could suss out his moods, he could suss out mine.
So the last time he told me to spit it out, I went ahead and showed him Caspar’s texts, which he took five seconds flat to read before handing my phone back, his jaw tight and his voice steely as he said, “I’ll go with you.”
I instinctively shook my head. “It’s fine, Adam. I’m just going to call Emily and—”
“Emily lives in Venice and it’s almost rush hour,” Adam said. “Let’s just do this so you can get rid of this jackass once and for all. I’ll just be there as back-up.”
I chewed my lip, considering the fact that Adam was five times Emily’s size and probably a better choice for this kind of mission. Plus, the whole point was to convince Caspar that I had moved on, and what better way to do that than show up with Adam?