6. Gross Negligence & Mitigation
SIX
GROSS NEGLIGENCE & MITIGATION
Evan
Please be dressed .
Once more jogging back to Building Ten, I decide to skip the gym tomorrow. I’ve had more than enough exercise for the day.
Hopping a curb, I race down the sidewalk.
Please be dressed.
Not the prayer I thought I’d want answered in regard to Kaley, but it’s one that will keep her from being embarrassed—again. Because Lord knows what she’ll do if she gets caught with her coveralls down. Especially after I just got her to stop avoiding me.
Please be dressed.
After tossing kids astronaut ice cream packets like a krewe member throwing beads at Mardi Gras, Andy reminded me that the EVA Tools group was scheduled to use our milling machine to continue working on developing prototype LTV contingency tools and will be opening up the two-story garage door at the front of the building.
I didn’t have a way to warn Kaley of their imminent arrival, having left my phone on my desk. So with another apology to Andy—one which I’m pretty sure the middle finger he covertly threw me means he didn’t accept—I’m once more running across NASA.
Looking both ways, I pass the quad and cross over 4th St., noting the EVA Tools team a block away, already heading in my direction. Luckily Ian isn’t a part of that project.
Fuck.
I throw them a token wave but don’t stop, jogging past the large front doors of Building Ten and toward the back.
Please be ? —
Coming around the corner, I skid to a stop. “Whoa.”
Prayer answered, Kaley is dressed. She’s also wearing the gray coveralls, not the blue. But that isn’t what’s so concerning. It’s that she’s outside, and even more so, the expression on her face—or lack of one.
“Kaley?” I brush back the hair clinging to my sweaty forehead.
Rolled sleeves crossed over her chest, her eyes deadpan into mine. “Alex and Dylan?” Her voice is level— too level—like she’s trying to control her temper.
“Who?”
Nostrils flare. “Alex and Dylan.” She waves my phone in the air.
I’m a smart man. I mean, I may make some poor decisions every once in a while, like wearing a SAFER jet pack in a bouncy house, but I’m usually quick on the uptake and fast to learn from my mistakes.
But right now, with sweat staining my T-shirt, my blue balls aching, and a stitch in my side from my second race across NASA, my brain is not connecting the dots.
Hell, I can’t even see the dots.
She drops her arms to her side on a sigh. “Listen, if you felt I put too much pressure on you too soon, I get it.” Her voice softens. “So it’s better if you just tell me the truth, okay?”
For a second, her impassivity slips, and vulnerability seeps in.
It makes me want to do or say whatever it is she needs to hear.
It’s just too bad I have no idea what that is.
“Kaley, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Spine straightening, her mask falls back into place. “You can’t say I didn’t give you a chance to explain this time.” She shrugs, shaking out the arm holding my phone by her side.
This time?
That’s my only thought before in a quick succession of movements, Kaley winds up, her arm moving in a powerful underhand windmill before releasing the phone and sending it barreling toward me like a bullet.
Reflexes save me from taking the full blow, the phone grazing my thigh before impact.
Even still, an explosion of nausea hits, sending me to my knees, my hands clutching below my waist. My brain, kicking into survival mode, doesn’t register the bite of cement and gravel to my knees but rather focuses on my lungs inhaling their next breath while I wheeze.
And when I finally do manage to take a breath, I kind of wish I’d simply passed out, since, now safe from suffocation, my brain allows the rest of my full body weight to feel all the things—including the intense, blinding pain emanating from my groin.
It takes a few minutes, but by the time the pain reduces to a throb, I find myself alone, lying on my back, blinking into the afternoon sun.
“Mitchell?”
Okay, not alone.
Andy, apparently relieved from festival duty, leans over me, along with the distracted members of the said EVA Tools team on either side of him. “What the hell happened?”
As I’m about to answer, my phone, lying next to me, buzzes. Hoping it’s Kaley, I thumb open the screen only to be bombarded with notifications.
DateConnection notifications.
And like the accordion-style text bubbles stacked neatly on the screen, everything Kaley said falls into place.
Fuck.
“Evan?” Andy nudges me with his toe. “You good?”
“No, Andy.” I drape an arm across my eyes. It serves to block out the sun but doesn’t do anything to ease the ‘oh shit’ feeling overtaking the previous priority of my possibly bruised dick and black and blue balls. “I’m not okay.”
* * *
“Did it break?” Bodie, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, leans back in his bar stool.
“My phone?” I stare at the object in question lying screen up on the high-top between us, dark from Kaley’s lack of replies from my calls and texts but otherwise miraculously unscathed.
Too bad I can’t say the same for my pride.
“Not your phone.” Ian, sitting next to Bodie, continues to chuckle. “Your dick.”
They both lose it again.
I take a large gulp of my True Anomaly Scout beer. “Very funny.”
I’ve kept these two nothing but entertained since they helped me limp into Boondoggle’s Pub when news of me splayed out like roadkill and clutching my balls spread around NASA.
Thank you, Andy.
“Man.” Ian shakes his head. “I may have had some trouble getting Trish to date me, but I was never bodily harmed.”
“I was pushed off a ladder,” Bodie offers, as if trying to make me feel better.
And it does, a bit.
“Question.” Ian signals to me with his index finger.
“If it’s about my dick, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ah, no.” Ian scoffs before getting serious. “It’s about Kaley.”
Wary, I tilt my head back. “What about her?”
Picking up his beer, Ian shrugs. “Is she worth it?”
Reminding myself Ian’s a friend, I allow him the courtesy to explain before getting pissed about him questioning what Kaley’s worth. “What do you mean?”
The hand not holding his beer goes palm up. “I just mean that while you’ve both worked at NASA for years, you only just met a few months ago. And by your own admission, you two have only been on a couple of dates.”
I straighten, my back bristling. “So?”
Ian shares a glance with Bodie.
Taking over, Bodie rests his beer glass on the table. “I think what Ian means is is it worth going through all this”—he gestures to my lap—“for her?”
Ian pauses mid-sip. “She did just try and emasculate you. Are you that sure about her?”
It’s a fair point. From their point of view, I dated, then was kind of ghosted and junk-punched with a cellular device. To them, I’m sure I seem crazy for being so adamant about Kaley being the one.
But then again, they weren’t there when Kaley and I met.
They didn’t feel their chests shift at the sight of Kaley’s blue eyes sparkling as she lectured about regulatory standards and hazard recognitions.
How, when I manage to make the normally serious safety engineer throw her head back and laugh, I feel more victorious than when I discovered the source of the anomalous friction in the Spidernaut2 lunar prototype.
They didn’t see the way Kaley rested her hand on mine as she listened while I shared about my mother or felt the world right itself on its axis when she trusted me enough to share about her own.
Taking a beat to lock eyes with each of them, I answer, “Absofuckinglutely.”
“All right, then.” Ian claps me on the back. “Welcome to the club.”
Bodie nods, tapping a knuckle by my phone. “Still no reply?”
“Nope.” I glare at my phone’s dark screen.
Kaley’s ghosting me again. And because— this time —I know why, I did more than just call and text.
After Andy, looking extremely satisfied that I’d received some payback for having left him to deal with the kiddos solo—twice—offered me a hand up, I ran after Kaley.
Okay, I hobbled after Kaley.
Except she wasn’t in her office. Nor could I find her at the festival. It was on my second loop around that Bodie and Ian found and took pity on me.
“You could always go to her house,” Ian offers.
I shake my head. “I don’t know where she lives.”
Bodie’s head pulls back. “Seriously?”
“Well, I know where, as in which neighborhood.” I think through Kaley and my many topics of conversation. “She mentioned it in passing, but it’s not like I have the house number.”
Ian frowns, looking as incredulous as Bodie. “You never picked her up?”
I shake my head. “We always met each other out.”
We pause to mull over this additional road bump.
“Maybe you could knock on one of the doors in her neighborhood and ask,” Ian offers.
“Maybe you could bail me out of jail when I get arrested for being a creepy stalker.”
Bodie, finding my flat expression and monotone amusing, smiles.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I had to bail someone out,” Ian mutters over his beer.
We sit in silence for the next few minutes—them absent-mindedly watching the different TVs broadcasting news and sports channels, me stewing over the ridiculous drama I’ve gotten myself into.
Finishing his beer, Ian raises both hands in surrender. “You’re just gonna have to explain in a voicemail.”
I hunch my shoulders over my own empty glass, feeling defeated at the thought.
“Listen.” He leans forward, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I know you said you wanted to explain face to face, but unless you make a scene at work, which will probably end up with Human Resources getting involved, leaving a voicemail is your only option.”
I prop my elbow on the table, dropping my head in my hand. “It took me telling you guys three times for you to believe me.”
All the calls and texts I made to Kaley, while full of ‘I’m sorries’ and ‘Please let me explains,’ didn’t actually explain anything. Because, as Ian and Bodie both proved, my explanation is too far-fetched for a sane person to believe.
I glance between the two of them. “You think reading it or hearing it over the phone is going to do me any good?”
Ian nods, thinking that over. “Fair point."
“I believed you the first time.”
I straighten, Bodie’s words giving me the first ray of hope since I felt firsthand how intense the game of softball could get. “Yeah?”
He shrugs. “When you’re married to someone like Rose West, you stop questioning the unbelievable situations people get themselves into.”
Ian salutes him, probably thinking of the many times his wife was involved in said situations. “Amen.”
Bodie frowns, staring off to the side. “Speaking of my wife...”
“Oh no.” Ian shakes his head. “This can’t be good.”
“I’m just thinking?—”
Ian closes his eyes. “Stop thinking.”
“Why can’t you and I”—Bodie, undeterred, gestures between himself and Ian—“do what Rose does all the time?”
“Set off glitter bombs and start brawls at strip clubs?” Ian deadpans, apparently unimpressed with his suggestion.
Bodie waves Ian’s question away before I can ask if those are real examples or exaggerations. “No. I mean play Cupid.”
Ian and I stare, probably both thinking that his wife has been a bad influence on the normally level-headed astronaut.
I recover first. “Wow. Bodie.” Pressing one hand to my chest in gratitude, I use the other to signal a passing waitress for a second round. “I’m both touched and worried that the women in your life may be getting you a little too in touch with your feminine side.”
Ian smirks.
Bodie, less impressed with my joke, quirks an eyebrow. “You’re quite snarky for a guy who just got nut-shot by his crush.”
Ian’s loud guffaw draws the attention of nearby patrons.
Avoiding their curious eyes, I raise my empty glass. “Touché.”
“What were you thinking?” Still amused, but also more interested than I expected, Ian leans forward, elbows on the table.
“Nothing much.” Bodie grabs his phone from his pocket and starts tapping. “Just a little well-meaning subterfuge.”