Chapter 14
Chapter 14
“ W ell, well, well.” Eliza sat at her desk sipping something blue with bubbles. That was how Ribs knew he was getting old, because he had no idea what she was drinking, nor did he want to.
“Why is your drink blue?” he mused, pausing to frown at it.
“Blue pea,” she said.
“Probably, after you drink that,” Logan added. Ribs snorted a laugh as Eliza tossed a paperclip at Logan’s head.
“It’s delicious and nutritious and most of all beautiful, but I wouldn’t expect you goons to appreciate drink art,” Eliza sniffed.
“You’d be right,” Logan muttered, dodging another paperclip. Ribs attempted to slip through their bickering unnoticed, but no such luck.
“Not done with you,” Eliza called, and he paused as she waved her hand expansively in his direction. “I couldn’t help but note that you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday.”
“So am I,” Logan added helpfully.
“That’s because you’re a degenerate who lacks your own washer and dryer. Gaines, though. Gotta be a girl involved.” She sat back, letting the straw of her blue drink rest lazily on the side of her mouth.
“Nah. A friend called in the night with a problem, and I had to go over.” He swiped his hand up and down on his face a few times, his palm making a rasping sound on his beard stubble. Apparently he looked as rough as he felt. When did I get so decrepit that a night of lost sleep made me feel this bad? Back in the day he could stay awake for days, and had. Now he missed out on a few hours and felt like he’d been run through a gristmill head first. If he felt this bad, he couldn’t imagine how much worse off Jordan must be, she who had been missing sleep the last three years.
“A girlfriend,” Eliza said, using a ruler to reach out and poke his bicep.
“A girl who is a friend,” Ribs amended.
“No, you don’t have those,” Eliza declared, making a slurping noise as she reached the end of her drink.
“What? Of course I do,” he argued.
“Nope,” she said. She opened the drink and began tilting the bubbles toward her face.
“Uh, hello,” he said, pointing between them.
She paused and regarded him with what seemed to be a cynical stare. “Where do I live?”
He froze.
“What are my hobbies?
He blinked.
“Do I have a boyfriend?”
His feet shifted.
She set aside her drink with a sigh and rested her hands on her desk. “We are coworkers. Friendly coworkers, yes, but not exactly friends. You don’t have female friends.”
“But I do,” he insisted.
“The wives of all your buddies?” she guessed.
He paused, hating to admit it. “Yes.”
“Anyone who’s not a wife of a friend?”
He paused again. “No. But what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, it’s how it is. You’re not friend guy. Logan, on the other hand.” She motioned toward Logan. “So deep in the Friendzone he bought land and is thinking of building.”
“True story,” Logan said, so unconcerned he didn’t bother to look up at them.
“I don’t understand,” Ribs said, looking uncertainly between Logan and Eliza.
“You’re just that guy,” Eliza said, flicking her fingers at him. “You’re all buff and pretty, used to be a SEAL, now you’re a spy. I bet in high school you were soooo athletic.” She rolled her eyes.
“Yes. What’s wrong with any of that?”
“Nothing. But you’ll never be friend guy. Don’t invade our turf.” She motioned between Logan and herself.
Ribs scratched his temple, more than a little confused. “I don’t understand this whole conversation.”
Eliza leaned forward, resting more of her weight on her forearms. A professor about to begin deep instruction. “It’s like this, Gaines. You’re the hero, we’re the sidekick support team. And that’s okay. But the hero isn’t that guy who has friends ,” here she paused and rolled her eyes. “He’s the one who saves the damsel in distress. Be realistic. This woman, whoever she is, is about to be a conquest. She’s the damsel in distress and you’re the hero. Own it. I bet she’s blond and beautiful, even at three in the morning. She is, isn’t she? I’m right. Tell me I’m right.” She bit her lip, anxiously awaiting his response.
Ribs thought of Jordan, hair splayed around her face, cheeks still a soft shade of pink, even as she slept. She still looked like that wholesome farm girl, all these years later. Somehow, since having kids, she’d grown even more beautiful and he finally understood why: it was the expression on her face, the absolute rapture of love when she looked at them, the pure and unadulterated delight she took in them.
“She…she…she…” he stuttered, staring into space, heart thumping like crazy with the sudden and intense desire to walk out of the building, drive back to Jordan, gather her up, breathe her in, make her understand everything that could be between them.
When he blinked and came back to earth, Eliza and Logan were both staring at him, mouths ajar.
“Uh-oh,” Eliza breathed.
“What?” he said, a weary sigh. Eliza was a lot of work. Most days he didn’t mind, but today he didn’t have the energy for it.
“You flipped the script,” she said softly, wonderingly.
“What?” he said, opening his eyes to squint at her.
“The girl, she’s not your usual variety,” she said.
He shifted again. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I know everything,” she said, which was annoyingly true. Not only was she a computer genius, but she seemed to possess some sort of sixth sense that often alerted her to things before they happened. When they were working a job and Eliza warned him things were about to go south, he listened. So far she had a hundred percent accuracy with her dire predictions.
“What do you know?” he croaked, because that was how desperate he was. Even Eliza’s cutting sarcasm began to sound appealing, if it offered him hope.
“She’s smart and sweet and…” she paused, squinting at his face. “ Normal .”
“Everyone I date is normal,” he argued, rasping his hand on his stubble again.
Eliza quirked an eyebrow toward Logan. “Logan, tell me about the women Gaines goes out with.”
“Pretty much every one of them could be in my fantasy folder marked, ‘Would Not Put Me Out If I Were On Fire.’”
Now Eliza’s attention swung back to Ribs. “This girl, would she stop and shoot the breeze with Logan?”
Gaines pictured Jordan in the office, pausing to talk to everyone. She would love Eliza and Logan because she loved strange people, the quirkier the better. “She’d probably invite you over for supper,” he rasped. Why did this entire conversation make him so uncomfortable? Maybe because it tread dangerously close to things he’d never talked about or acknowledged before. Jordan was different from other women in his life, in a separate folder, to borrow Logan’s vernacular. Except Gaines’s folders would be marked, “Ideal Woman” and “Everyone Else.” Needless to say Jordan was the only woman in the first folder, the only woman who had ever inhabited it.
Now it was Eliza’s turn to groan and press her hand to her eyes.
“What?” Ribs asked, alarmed.
“It turns out you’re not as shallow as I thought and now maybe I’m attracted to you, too,” she said.
He rolled his eyes at her absurdity, certain she was lying for dramatic effect. “I think Harry Potter’s name and all supporting character’s should be wiped from the earth,” he said.
She dropped her hand and scowled at him. “And we’re back. Also, how dare you.” She leaned forward to adjust the little Harry Potter figurine attached to her computer, whispering, “He didn’t mean it, Potter.”
“Are we done torturing me today? Because I have stuff to do,” he said. He gestured helplessly toward his office but before he could take a step away, Eliza hailed him back.
“Wait, Gaines, for real. I have to tell you something.”
He paused and turned serious eyes on her because she had the tone, the I-don’t-know-how-I-know-but-something-bad-is-about-to-happen tone. He balled his fists and braced, for what he had no idea. “What?”
Her face worked itself into a frown, head tipped as she studied him. “This girl…”
“She’s a woman, a year younger than me,” Ribs interjected.
She gave an approving little nod as if it somehow agreed with what she was about to say. “This woman, she has no idea how you feel.”
“Good because we’re just friends,” he said.
She quirked an eyebrow at him.
He huffed a sigh and shrugged. “Fine, I maybe like her a little.” Liar, big fat liar. “But for a lot of reasons it’s better if we remain only friends right now.”
“But someday…” Eliza prompted.
He sighed again, longsuffering. There was no law stating he had to keep this conversation going, but he couldn’t seem to stop it because Eliza seemed like she was about to bestow secret wisdom on him, information that might one day come in handy. He couldn’t resist. “Someday, maybe…” Someday maybe every secret dream he’d had for the last thirteen years would finally come true. His heart was lub dubbing painfully again, not the same sort of fast staccato it performed when he was in the middle of an adrenaline rush. More like that painful thump it gave when he looked at his parents and realized how much they’d aged between visits. Or when Charlotte presented him with some new milestone she’d achieved in his absence. It was a mix of love and wanting and pain and joy he couldn’t begin to understand, a feeling that went too deep for articulation.
“You have to be clear with her, more clear than you’ve ever been. You have to make her understand. It won’t be enough that you know and think she should also know. You have to spell it out for her, word for word, probably more than once. Hints won’t be enough.”
“Why not?” he asked, and now his heart began to move into the adrenaline phase because, holy geez, actually telling Jordan. Could he ever do that?
“Because guys like you…”
“Trying really hard not to be offended by that intro,” he interjected.
“Because guys like you tend to have a type, and ‘nice girl’ isn’t it. All I’m saying is, if you want things to work, be clear in your intentions,” Eliza said and then, with a dismissive little nod, returned her attention to her work.
Ribs remained staring at her a few beats, processing. His eyes swiveled to Logan. “Anything to add?”
“If she turns you down, can I have her? Because I also have a type, and heartbroken nice girl is at the tippy top of my list.”
“I will literally break all the bones in your hands and make it look like an accident if you ever even think of making anything more than eye contact with her,” Ribs said, tone perfectly even. Logan was the kind of guy Jordan would go for, though. A guy whose face matched his personality—painfully nice, like Shimmer.
“Noted. brB, going to change into some clean underwear,” Logan said and slipped away from his desk.
“Well, I think things are about to get very interesting,” Eliza said, beaming her approval on him. “Come back if you need more help or advice from the love doctor.”
Ribs opened his mouth to protest, realized he couldn’t because he felt rather desperate for help, and turned and walked to his office, closing the door with a sigh of relief.