The Love Study Page 9

  They knuckled up their glasses. “I’m sorry I was a little disturbed, it just brought up some memories. I’ve been in two separate fights about Valentine’s Day with two separate people, both of whom expected me to be into it. Eventually those conversations felt so draining and demoralizing I gave up.”

  I gave them half a second to justify that before saying, “Oh my god. What do you have against Valentine’s Day?”

  “Nothing. I feel nothing about Valentine’s Day. It has no relevance to me at all. It’s part of a pre-formed idea of what a relationship is supposed to look like and it means nothing to me.”

  I couldn’t help it. I goggled. “I think it’s just an excuse to have a romantic dinner with someone you really like, though?”

  “But doesn’t that have more significance to you if you do it because both of you want to, than because it’s a date on a calendar?” They were leaning forward now, getting into it.

  “Maybe? I mean, probably? But I’m not huge into Valentine’s Day as a thing, but I don’t want to reject it just because a lot of people do it, you know? Like, if it doesn’t work for you, that’s fine, but that it does work for me doesn’t make me The Man.”

  Their serious expression morphed into a grin. “You should get a business card. Declan Lastname. THE MAN.”

  “That’d be hot. I could pass them out to all my dates. ‘For a second date, please contact Declan Swick-Smith, THE MAN.’ Uh, that’s my last name, Swick-Smith. Because my folks were into equality.”

  “That must have been fun in school. I’ve been meaning to ask you about your first name. It’s Irish, right?”

  I felt a little glowy that they knew the origin of my name. “Yep. My parents both had legit Irish grandparents, so they’re big into ‘the home country’ and stuff. County Cavan is where my dad’s people are from, and Wicklow is where my mom’s people are from.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland,” they said wistfully.

  “It’s on the ‘made your first million’ bucket list?”

  “Yeah.” They picked up a demure third piece of chocolate when I’d eaten half the box. “You might be right about Valentine’s Day. I think I was fighting about it with the wrong people, who were into it being this big symbolic thing. Maybe it is more about enjoying each other’s company and I missed that a little.”

  “Maybe a little,” I teased. “It probably is a big romantic holiday for a lot of people. But I think it can be enjoyed outside of that. Plus, it’s been six years. I’d really like to have someone to enjoy Valentine’s Day with. Actually, Mia and Ronnie took care of that this year by scheduling their wedding on Valentine’s Day, so that saves all the rest of us the trouble. Wait.” I sat more upright. “Hey, do you want to come to the wedding as my valentine? I know it’s not for weeks, but it might be fun, don’t you think?”

  They paused in the act of taking a bite of chocolate. “Um.”

  God, I was the worst. Way to compound my surprise chocolate sins with romantic holiday atrocities. “Never mind! Forget I said that! Oh my god.” Time to drown my further humiliation in more chocolate. I reached for the box, but Sidney leaned forward to grab my wrist. Just lightly.

  “I can’t come to the wedding. I’ll be working. It was...a nice idea, though. I don’t deeply desire a romantic Valentine’s Day or anything, but all the couple stuff does get old, and it would be nice to have a no pressure arrangement. Do you...want to get together the night before maybe? Maybe for pizza or something?”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to, like, force you into being my no-pressure Valentine’s arrangement.”

  They let go of my wrist but didn’t lean back. “You aren’t. Honestly. Yes, Declan, I will be your pre-Valentine’s valentine.” They licked their lips a little, as if they couldn’t believe they’d just tasted those words. Or maybe like there was residual chocolate on them.

  Regardless of why, the sight of their tongue, their lips, shot a spike of heat through my body, starting at my toes and ending at the place where I could still almost feel their hand on my skin. “Thanks. Um. Really. That’ll be fun.” Now I needed to get the hell out of there before I made a total fool of myself (again).

  “I think so too.”

  “Um, I should go.” I stood up. “Thanks for letting me eat most of the chocolates I brought for you.”

  “I don’t like white chocolate anyway, so you did me a favor.” They walked me to my pile of stuff, which I managed to variously put on, pack away, or shrug into.

  “Have a good week.” That felt inadequate. “It was really nice talking to you the other day. And watching the shipwreck thing. All those statues and artifacts and stuff, and the old coins! I hope it didn’t keep you up too late, but obviously you control how late you stay up, and know how to do math, so probably it didn’t.” Dear god, what was I talking about. “Right, yeah, anyway, I should go, bye!”

  “See you next week!” they called after me.

  The sugar crash hit on my way home and I banged my head into the steering wheel to express my horror. Except it’s not as easy as people make it look in movies. I had to scoot back the seat in order to get a good angle and by then the red light had changed and it was uncomfortable to drive and I still hadn’t accomplished the level of theatrical mortification I’d been going for.

  Why, oh my god, had I asked them out to a wedding and then ended the already awkward evening by rambling about shipwreck treasure? Who does that?

  Which would be such a good place to bang my head on the steering wheel: bang, bang, bang. Did I have it tilted down too low or something? Were my legs too long?

  I settled for slumping in my seat and feeling sick. And wondering if I had more chocolate in the house. Still, some tiny part of me was thinking, Wouldn’t it be nice if Sidney touched my arm again?

  And yes. Yes, it would be.

  Chapter Nine

  I had assumed that all the offices on the top floor of the company were lush executive suites or something, but the top floor was the same as the other floors: clusters of cubicles, conference rooms, administrative areas. Nicer, yeah. They had clients of some sort, I thought, because everything was slightly more posh. But the same basic idea.

  Deb was leading me through the maze to what she was calling my new “workspace” for the event project, so I followed her black slacks and tried not to get distracted by the twists and turns. She always wore black slacks and tailored button-up shirts in bold colors. Sidney might dig tailored shirts. They’d look wicked hot in a tailored shirt. I wondered if they were into formal wear at all...

  “Welcome to the fish bowl.” With a flourish, Deb opened a glass door into a glass-walled room, bordered on three sides by cubicles and on a fourth by a walkway running between the conference room and a wall of windows.

  Whoa. Was this all mine? It wasn’t huge, but it was...a room. A space. For me. At least whenever I was working on this project. Since no one was using the walkway, I had the illusion of my own windows, looking out on—well, yeah, looking out on the building across the street mostly, but some legit natural light was getting through too.

  I sent Deb a very accusatory look and said in my best accusatory tone, “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson? With your windows?”

  “Yes, Declan. You’ve figured out my master plan. I’m giving you temporary access to a room with windows in the hopes that you’ll never leave me.” She pushed in a stray chair and gestured to the room. “It’s not huge, but I decided you needed a home base and nobody wants to have a meeting in the fish bowl, so it goes mostly unused.”

  “What, people don’t like the feeling that they’re in an aquarium?”

  “I have no idea what the designer was thinking. Every other conference room has at least three solid walls.”

  “Maybe it’s the punishment conference room!” I grinned at her. “You can put the troublemakers in here so th
ey can’t get away with anything.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Hey!”

  She smiled. “The opposite tends to happen. This room is something of a psychological dead zone. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s as if people go out of their way to not-notice it, possibly projecting that they wouldn’t want to be stared at if they were stationed here.”

  “That’s neat.” I looked around with a greater appreciation for the fish bowl. “What I’m hearing is I can get away with anything in here.”

  “Is that what I said?” The smile stayed on her face, so at least we were playing. “I have someone getting you a laptop and since you’ll be responsible for it, I’m also giving you a key to this room. You’ll have to sign for that downstairs in Admin.”

  I blinked. “A key?”

  “It seemed the simplest way to ensure no one would disturb your workspace.” She shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of high value theft around here with all the cameras and security measures, but I’d still rather not leave a laptop sitting in an unlocked room.”

  “Um. Yeah, makes sense.”

  She stared at me for a long moment. “It’s a temporary assignment. Don’t be scared.”

  “You’re giving me a key, though.” I waved my hands around in a somewhat freaked-out fashion.

  “Declan.”

  I braced for a pep talk about how I could leave at any time after the event, and no pressure, and she was there to support me. I looked at Deb, feeling my heart speed up in anticipation of nodding pleasantly while she mouthed inane inspirational quotes at me.

  “If you don’t return the key by end of business the day after the event, you’re fired. Does that help?”

  Not a pep talk. I exhaled. “Actually, yeah. It kinda does. Temporary key holder exclusively for this project, got it.”

  “Good.” She walked to the far right corner. “I grabbed you a small file cabinet and a garbage can. We can requisition anything else you need. I threw some random office supplies in the file cabinet, but you know where they’re kept if you need more.”

  “Got it,” I said again.

  “Good. You got my email about hours and time codes?”

  I was super tempted to say Got it one more time, but I was a temporary key holder now, and needed to compose myself as such. So I saluted and said, “Aye, captain.”

  “Let me know if you have any questions. Oh, good, here’s Jack.” She went to open the door for the guy walking up.

  Pale pale skin, dark dark hair, barely taller than Deb, and I liked his smile for the split second I saw it, before he spotted me. The smile slid off his face like egg yolk slides down a window. Not that I’ve thrown a lot of eggs at windows. But that’s how I’ve always pictured it: a slick, messy slide.

  Unsmiling, this guy was totally Dire Man on Barstool Who’s Played “Piano Man” on the Jukebox Seven Times in a Row.

  “Jack, this is Declan. Declan, Jack.”

  We eyed each other. I had no idea why I suddenly felt defensive, but I did.

  He turned back to Deb. “Are you pranking me? He’s a kid.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Even though I was smarting from being called a kid, I had enough presence of mind to wince at Deb’s expression. Dire Jack’s only reaction was his face going very still for a second before resuming animation on its way back toward me.

  He sighed as if my very presence was a tremendous disappointment. “Do you know anything about the event we’re planning?”

  “I, um, don’t think we’ve gotten to that yet?”

  “It’s the annual stockholders’ luncheon,” Deb explained to both of us. “Around here we refer to it as ‘The Spring Fling,’ but don’t let anyone important hear you call it that.”

  Eep. “Okay.”

  Deb studied us for a long moment. “Jack will be reporting directly to you, Declan.”

  Boss say what?

  “I expect you to collaborate on this event and divide your tasks according to your skills and strengths. Since you have prior supervisory experience, you are the lead coordinator for the Fling. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions or concerns about this or the rest of your job duties.”

  Jack’s mouth tensed. Which, um...yeah. Because he was at least five years older than me and now I was kind of his boss somehow? Yikes.

  “Got it, captain,” I told Deb, thinking, Oh my god, how am I going to get anything done with this guy hating on me so hard?

  She might have withheld an eye-roll. I couldn’t be sure. “I suggest you start by grabbing a desk calendar and stealing a whiteboard from one of the other conference rooms. Declan needs to be briefed about the event and caught up with where you are in the planning, Jack.”

  Jeez, he’d already started planning and now I was being brought in? This was the worst. Maybe for both of us.

  “Understood.” Jack’s voice was tight like he was clenching his teeth.

  “I’m so pleased. Both of you will have keys to this room, but you will be the only ones with keys to this room. If anything happens, you’re sharing responsibility for it.”

  Jack didn’t look too thrilled about that, and I couldn’t say I was either, but both of us nodded.

  “Good. I’ll check in next week.” She waved and left the room, which was amusing, since we then watched her walk away on the other side of a pane of glass.

  “I have two hours to devote to this today,” Jack said brusquely. “I will find a desk calendar and some notebooks, you go steal a whiteboard.”

  When Deb had said it, it sounded playful. When Jack said it, it sounded criminal. “What, from...anywhere I happen to find one?”

  “I assumed you would know where they were kept since I’m but a lowly temporary worker and you are a supervisor.”

  “Um.” Right. Supervisor. “I guess that makes me a lowly temporary supervisor, then. But okay, I’ll go...find us a whiteboard.”

  He flapped his fingers at me. Not even his whole hands. Like I wasn’t worth the effort of flapping his entire hands. All I got was a finger-flap in dismissal.

  Ugh. I left the room with some relief.

  So far I wasn’t impressed with Deb’s seduction. Sure, she gave me windows (sorta), but she also gave me a “staff” who finger-flapped and appeared to want my job. And what had I ever done to this guy to make him such an asshole?

  It wasn’t the greatest of life’s mysteries (which is clearly, What are Tootsie Rolls really made of and how can they be simultaneously so disgusting and so addictive?), but any hope that I’d figure Jack out in our first two hours together was dashed by his lousy attitude. He threw a lot of information at me, took every opportunity to frown in disapproval, but never stepped over the line to outright insubordination.

  Sweet horny hippos, though, he knew exactly where that line was. It was almost an art form the way Jack managed to insult my intelligence, work ethic, and wardrobe without ever saying anything I could write him up for. Not that I planned to write him up. Though he made it tempting.

  I almost asked what his problem was. Maybe he’d thought he was going to have a staff? Maybe he just didn’t like new people? I briefly entertained the idea that he might have the same sort of anxiety Oscar had (which did give strangers the impression he disliked them when really he was just so hideously anxious that he couldn’t look them in the eye or respond to conversational gambits with more than one or two words). But Jack had no problem making eye contact, and he had a lot more words for me than two.

  Past a certain point I wished he’d shut the hell up for a second and let me finish a sentence. I’d scrawled a tangled mess of notes across the back and front of two pieces out of the legal pad he’d slid across the table at me before he even seemed to pause for breath.

  The one time I seemed to achieve some status above unidentified slimy thing on the inside of a boot which had now squis
hed between his first and second toes was when I said I’d draw up a spreadsheet with our various projects, sub projects, tasks, and sub tasks, with who’d been assigned to do them, and deadlines.

  Spreadsheets were apparently Jack’s mean-guy Achilles’ heel. The frosty glare let up just long enough for him to say, “Actually, that might be helpful.”

  Uh, yeah, that was the point. “Good” was all I said.

  The brief, shining moment in which I was not slime between his toes was gone practically before I’d been able to bask in its glow. He went right back to acting as if my lack of knowledge about a bunch of stuff that hadn’t been part of my job until today was a personal failure.

  I’ve never been happier to leave work. The key to the fish bowl sat like a lump of lead in my pocket. Was it too late to opt out?

  Chapter Ten

  The following few days didn’t go much better. I whined about my new supervisee at drinks (and received limited sympathy from my friends, the bastards), and was grateful that for the most part I only saw Jack if our mutual event working time happened to overlap. Mostly we kept in touch via email and I, like a good supervisor, monitored the spreadsheet to make sure Jack was doing things. He, like a good supervisee—gross—was accomplishing a lot. Way more than I expected. (And more than I was doing, so I had to step up my game.)

  If we did happen to see each other in the fish bowl we interacted with cold civility over the surface of mutual antipathy. I kept telling myself I should be going out of my way to be mature since I was kind of his boss, but then I’d see him in person and hear the echo of him calling me “kid” and I’d be annoyed all over again.

  I’d mostly stopped moping about the whole thing by the time I met up with Date #3 at a tiny espresso cart on the La Vista Pier.

  Mara was genuinely intriguing. Sidney had sent me two photos: one of Mara in a business suit (in which she looked hot and not at all boring or conventional), and another of her hanging off a rock, one foot dangling in mid-air (in which she looked determined, and again, hot). She self-described as “fat, queer, an extrovert on the outside, and an introvert on the inside.”