Chapter 4
Lucky
“So. Bode Hayashi. What’s it like living with him?” Sachi’s administrative assistant, Emily, had zero filter. Even so, her question threw me, almost made me blush.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be a tour?” I shot her a pointed stare.
Emily laughed, gesturing to the space around us. “We’re in the factory. How much more tour could you get?”
“You spent the last fifteen minutes giving me a detailed description of the forearms of the guy who drives the fabric delivery truck.”
Emily beamed. “Like I said, it’s a tour! And don’t lie to me, Lucky. Everyone looks at forearms.”
Emily was five-two with blonde hair streaked pink, a Hello Kitty charm bracelet, and the kind of energy that suggested she was extremely well-caffeinated.
Sachi had planned to give me the tour herself, but she’d been called away for a meeting, so I got Emily’s questionable tour guide skills instead.
At least I now had comprehensive biographical data on every attractive man within a thirty-mile radius. Not that I’d asked for it.
I’d learned more about the barista at Butte & Bean’s workout routine than I had about Moriko’s cut-and-sew workflow.
“Anyway. Bode. Spill the tea.” Her phrasing shifted on his name, went breathless, reverent, the way people’s tones did when they were talking about someone they’d constructed an entire fantasy around.
“He’s…”
“I’m pretty sure the word you’re searching for is hot.”
I wasn’t going to engage with that train of thought, even if she was right. He was a professional snowboarder, and one of the best. He was everything that I found both intimidating and insanely cool. In theory.
In practice, he was more of a lump.
Not one to be deterred by silence, Emily pulled out her phone and turned the screen toward me. On it, frozen mid-air above a halfpipe, was a figure in Moriko outerwear executing a very challenging trick. “His gold medal run. Last Olympics. I’ve watched this two hundred times.”
I’d seen Bode ride. Hell, I’d seen the footage she was trying to show me. The man in the video was explosive, precise, and devastating. But it was difficult to make the connection to the man I lived with.
“He’s so hot,” Emily said.
“Is he?”
“Lucky. Come on. You live with him.”
I lived with a man-shaped presence on a couch. I lived with a hoodie with a hole in the cuff and pajama pants featuring cartoon cats.
Bode Hayashi might be objectively hot. The face was there. I had eyes. But in his current state, he was some kind of weird cross between a sloth and an asshole: the lethargy of one combined with the interpersonal warmth of the other.
“He’s —” I searched for the diplomatic version. Failed. “He’s furniture right now, Emily. Attractive furniture. He’s a sloth’s asshole.”
Emily blinked.
Yeah, I’d called my boss’s son a sloth’s asshole. Whatever that even meant. “Wait. No, I mean… Forget I said that. But I think he might be depressed?”
Emily’s eyes went wide. Then wider. Then she grabbed my arm with both hands, a level of physical intimacy I had not authorized.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Okay, that makes me deeply sad, actually.”
The shift happened faster than I expected from someone I’d mentally filed as uncomplicated.
Emily’s face rearranged itself from dreamy fangirl to genuinely concerned.
She lowered her voice even though the nearest factory worker was twenty feet away and operating a machine loud enough to cover a confession.
“Sachi is so worried about him,” she said. “She doesn’t say it directly, at least not to me. She implies things, and I figure the rest out out from context clues.”
“You understand context clues? Because I was pretty sure I was giving you loads of those as you gave me a tour of the manly forearms of Moriko.”
“What can I say? Life in this small town is hard. I’m making sure you’re aware of the positive qualities.”
“Like forearms?”
“Obviously. And don’t get me started on thick thighs, because I will not stop.”
“Focus, Em.”
She beamed. “You called me Em! We will be besties.”
“Bode?”
“Oh, right. No one understands what’s going on with him. My theory? He has an injury he doesn’t want to tell his sponsors about.”
“An injury?” I supposed that could explain all of the reclining on the couch and the grumpiness.
“Yeah, I mean, what if he’s in denial that he had a career ending crash? It explains why he’s not in Chile with his crew, who I definitely don’t stalk.”
“Of course not.” I smirked at her.
“Anyway,” Emily said. “We should get you home! I’ll drive you.”
“I rode my bike to work. Could you drop me at the office?”
“I’ll give you a ride home!”
“Emily, it’s fine, the ride is only —”
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning, too. We can grab coffee at Butte & Bean on the way in. It’ll be our thing. Carpool besties.”
I opened my mouth.
Emily regarded me with an expression that was somehow both puppy-dog hopeful and immovable, like a small, pink bulldozer that had decided where it was going and couldn’t be steered any other way.
“Sure. But I am well aware that you’re doing this to try and get a glimpse of Bode’s forearms and not to be a good friend.”
“Can’t it be both?” Emily linked her arm through mine and steered me toward the factory exit.
Emily’s car was a tiny gold hatchback plastered with bumper stickers that included “I brAKE FOR POWDER DAYS” and a Hello Kitty giving a peace sign. She drove it with the same enthusiasm she applied to discussing men, which left me holding onto the armrest for dear life.
When we rounded the curve onto Ridgeline Court, I saw Wade before my brain had time to prepare for seeing Wade.
He was standing by his truck in the driveway, scrubs still on, reaching into the cab for his bag.
The scrubs were that shade of hospital blue that perfectly complemented his complexion, stretched across his shoulders, accentuating the unreasonable width and musculature of them.
The late afternoon light cast him in a flattering glow, making his hair glisten like spun gold.
“Lucky. Who is that?”
“Oh. That’s Wade. He lives here too.”
“What?” Emily turned to me with an expression of genuine astonishment, like I’d told her I’d been concealing a winning lottery ticket. “He is hot as fuck.”
“Emily.”
“I’m pointing out the obvious! You live in a house with two hot guys? What did you do in a past life to deserve this? Save a kingdom?”
“That’s not how reincarnation works.”
Emily parked behind Wade’s truck and cut the engine but made no move to get out. Instead, she turned to me, waggling her eyebrows. “So…”
“He followed me here.”
Emily’s mouth fell open, and the dam broke, and everything I’d been holding in since Wade had dropped his bomb on me just came spilling out.
“Wade’s been my best friend since my sophomore year.
Nine years. We met in college, and he’s been—” I made a gesture that was supposed to encompass the entire scope of Wade Kowalski, as if that was possible.
“I don’t know. My person. And he was supposed to help me move and drive back to Nebraska.
That was the plan. But when we got here, walked into the house, and I was upstairs picking my bedroom.
And when I came down, he was asking Bode if he needed another roommate.
I confronted him about it, and it turns out he already has a job here.
He applied to Elkhead General weeks ago and never thought to mention it to me. Not even when they hired him!”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m furious at him.”
“Because he followed you?”
“Because he didn’t tell me. Because he organized his whole life around mine without saying anything, and now he’s here, in the room next to mine, and I have to—” I stopped.
Recalibrated. Took a breath that tasted like Emily’s vanilla car air freshener.
“He’s my best friend. He’s the best person I know.
And I’m glad he’s here, which makes me even angrier because I didn’t get to choose it on my own terms. I would have been happy to have him here, but I wanted the choice, you know? I wanted to be asked.”
Emily was staring at me with the rapt attention of someone watching the season finale of her favorite show.
“And he’s hot as fuck,” she said.
“That’s not — yes. Fine. That’s not the point.”
“It’s a little bit the point.”
“It’s not the point, Emily.” I leaned my head against the passenger window. “And somehow, he’s become friends with Bode. We’ve only been here a week and a half, and they already have a routine. They eat breakfast together. I’m the one who snowboards, Emily. I’ve been snowboarding since I was nine.”
“Oh my god, you do have a crush on Bode.”
“How did you get that from what I said?”
Emily reached over and put her hand on my knee. “Lucky. We are going to be such good friends.”
I studied her hand on my knee. I regarded her face, which was radiating a sincerity so pure it was almost aggressive.
Wade chose that moment to turn around.
His whole face changed: the immediate, full-body brightening that was how Wade always greeted me, the grin that started in his eyes and worked its way down. He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked toward Emily’s car.
Emily was out of the car before I could stop her.
She extended her hand with the enthusiasm of a game show host. “Hi! I’m Emily. I work with Lucky at Moriko. You’re hot.”
Wade took her hand, shook it once, and grinned. “I’m aware. It’s the scrubs. Doctor vibes add like twenty-five percent hotness instantly. Without these I’m a solid six, six-point-five in good lighting.”
Emily laughed and Wade laughed with her, and they were standing there in the driveway being two absurdly friendly people who had found each other, and I was still sitting in the passenger seat of a Hello Kitty hatchback processing the fact that I had told a woman I barely knew all of my drama.
I watched them, wondering what Emily saw as she flirted with him.
What would I think of Wade if I hadn’t known him since I was 19?
My cheeks heated as I watched the broad muscles of his back flex, let my eyes trace over his body, from his forearms (okay, fine, Emily, they’re impressive) to his square jaw.
No. This was Wade. Sure, he was one of the best people I’d ever met, but he was still so… Wade. But I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Emily flirting with him.
I got out of the car and bypassed Emily and Wade as I walked toward the front door, with a renewed determination not to get horny for my best friend.
“See you tomorrow morning!” Emily called. “Seven-thirty! Oat milk lattes!”
“Sure, whatever.” I slipped through the door without turning around.
Inside the house, everything was as magnificent as ever.
The light was coming through the massive windows at a low, warm angle that turned every surface golden and made the whole space appear like it was holding its breath.
Bode was on the couch as usual, wearing a different hoodie than this morning.
He had a pair of massive noise-canceling headphones over his ears, eyes closed, one foot tapping to whatever he was listening to. He didn’t look my way.
I turned and went upstairs.
My room had a window that faced the mountain, and I closed the door, kicked off my shoes, and sat cross-legged on the bed with my tablet and stylus, staring out at the view.
This was the part of my day that was mine.
The part where I didn’t have to be the new engineer at Moriko or the best friend or the woman who’d moved across three states for a fresh start that had gotten complicated.
Here, in my room, I was DeviDraws, and DeviDraws didn’t have to explain herself to anyone.
DeviDraws could admit that the men in her life were attractive.
I opened the file I’d been working on: issue fourteen of my most popular series, and I started to draw.