Thirty-Five Arya
thirty-five
Arya
Mitchell,” Arya said into the phone. “We can’t sell the building.”
“It would solve all our problems.” Mitchell’s voice was… not slurred, exactly, but less sharp than usual. Arya sighed. Drunks at the office, drunks here, too.
Maybe he needed a different line of work.
No, fuck that. He loved what he did. Except for days like this.
He needed to get back in there, take care of Ben, but Mitchell almost never called him. He’d been worried it was something bad.
Instead, Mitchell just had a ridiculous idea to save the company by selling the building out from under it.
“It makes sense,” Mitchell kept going. “Real estate prices are high right now; it’s a seller’s market. That could float us for the next couple months—”
“A couple months where we, what? How are we going to run a production company without a warehouse?”
“We can work from home.”
“Where would all the gear go?”
“We could store it; we could subrent it out to other companies. Think big picture, Arya.”
Arya was thinking big picture. They’d finally paid off that building last year, which had done amazing things for their profit margins.
And it wasn’t only Mitchell who owned the building; Arya owned a large chunk, larger than his stake in the company itself, in fact, and some of their employees, like Carley and Val, had even bought in for smaller amounts.
“No, Mitchell. Selling the building without having anywhere else to go is not a big-picture solution. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Mitchell huffed. The other end of the line went silent. For a second, Arya thought Mitchell had hung up. But finally he said, “Fine. Fine. But if we don’t get a big influx of revenue soon—”
“I know.”
Their cushion was running out. Would be out by the end of September.
Then they’d have to make some hard decisions, or Arya was going to find himself unemployed, possibly bankrupt, and forty fucking years old.
He might as well disintegrate on the spot.
“Listen, I’m still with clients. I’d better let you go.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
Please don’t, Arya wanted to say.
He slid his phone into his pocket and stepped back into the meeting room, just in time to hear Ben’s drunken suggestion.
“We could do a three-way sometime. You and me. And Arya.”
Arya froze. What had given Ben the idea that Arya was up for anything approaching a three-way?
And with Ben’s ex? Seriously?
Was everyone in his life drunk?
“What the fuck?” he spat.
Shit. He’d never sworn at a client. Never.
But he wasn’t swearing at Ben the client. He was swearing at Ben his drunken boyfriend.
For his part, Justin’s cheeks were going pink. He looked from Ben to Arya, back to Ben, back to Arya, then to the door, like he wished someone would come rescue them.
“Maybe next time don’t get your clients sloshed,” Arya said, letting the venom he’d managed to keep at bay all afternoon creep into his voice. Either Justin was bad at his job, or he’d deliberately gotten the Philharmonic folks hammered to make his job easier.
Arya’s phone buzzed. For a second he was convinced it was Mitchell, calling back with another wild scheme, but thankfully it was Carley.
Carley
Your chariot awaits
Or your party bus
Depending on how you want to play this
Normally Arya would’ve laughed at Carley’s jokes, but he was too pissed.
A fucking three-way?
Arya wanted to ask Ben what the 208-volt fuck he’d been thinking. But he was even more pissed at Justin, who’d gotten Ben drunk. On purpose, probably.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pierced Justin with his most disdainful look.
“You worked at a winery for how many years?” Arya asked, voice icy as the polar vortex that had hit them last winter.
Justin held up his hands. “I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t care what you meant. You should know better than to get your clients drunk.
You don’t know their medical histories, you don’t know their mental health, you don’t know shit except that they have money to pay and a contract to sign, and you sure as hell should know better than to mix your personal life with your professional one. ”
Justin crossed his arms. Did he shave them? His forearms were weirdly hairless as the cords in them flexed.
“You have a lot of nerve. You’re the one dating him.”
“I have been nothing but professional when we’re on the job, as you well fucking know,” Arya spat.
“And if you hadn’t gotten Ben drunk, he’d be able to say the same.
Seriously, what is wrong with you? You’re in the service industry.
Don’t you know when to cut someone off? You’re responsible for these people! ”
Arya was shouting now, and he wasn’t even sure if he was shouting at Justin, who was in front of him, or Mitchell, who was out of reach.
“You’re responsible for them and you haven’t acted with their health or safety or best interest at heart; you’ve acted with your bottom line at heart. Or I guess with your sad-sack-of-crap sex life.”
Arya was dimly aware of Ben standing there, swaying slightly, face turning redder, eyes getting glassy, but one crisis at a fucking time.
“If this is the kind of business you do here, then I’ll be recommending my clients sign a contract elsewhere.” Arya took Ben’s arm and tugged him toward the door.
Justin’s shoulders had slumped. He looked like he wanted to cry.
Arya summoned as much venom as he could. “See you at practice!” he called over his shoulder as he guided Ben through the door.
Arya kept Ben upright as he staggered down the hall.
“Arya, I—”
“I’m not going to discuss this at work,” he said.
Flirting, sure. Little smiles? Definitely okay. Mild PDA? That was pushing it, honestly.
Talking about sex? About fucking three-ways? Absolutely not.
Ben bit his lip, making his chin jut out in the way Arya always liked, but he was too busy being mad to appreciate that. Or how Ben’s slutty little glasses had fallen down the long bridge of his nose just a bit.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Arya shook his head. “Can we not do this in public?”
Ben clammed up, so Arya heard nothing except the pounding of his own blood in his ears, the muffled footsteps of his dress shoes on the carpet.
They found Brenda and Maurizio laughing about something in the lobby. The other committee members had started tottering down the hill on their own. Arya managed to shuffle everyone outside and poured them into Carley’s car.
As soon as Brenda sat down, it was like she ran out of steam; she went quiet and sat with her head against the window. Maurizio tried checking their phone, but they kept dropping it.
Ben shot Arya a look, but Arya meant what he said. They weren’t talking about this right now.
He stewed as Carley drove them back down the hill to the Philharmonic offices. Seriously, what the hell had Ben been thinking?
In vino veritas, as the saying went. In wine, truth.
Was that really what Ben wanted? For Arya to… what? Fuck Justin as some sort of… of surrogate bottom? Did Ben think that sex was all that mattered to Arya?
He wanted to curl into a ball and cry. He thought Ben knew him better than that.
“Here we are!” Carley said brightly. Like Arya, she’d moderated herself, only taking a few tasting sips and leaving each glass mostly full, though she refused to spit.
“Once it’s in me, it’s in me,” she’d said when Arya offered her an extra thermos. “I’ll leave it in the glass, but I don’t spit. Spitters are quitters.”
Arya generally agreed, but he’d seen more than a few tastings get out of control, even with folks who said they’d take it easy. Like Mitchell. He didn’t take chances.
Brenda and Maurizio staggered into the office. Ben swayed a bit, blinking in the sunlight.
“I’ll get him home,” Arya said softly to Carley.
“Have fun,” she said, winking, but this would not be fun. Not at all.
Ben was quiet on the ride back to his house.
Arya wanted to say something, wanted to hash it out, but now that they were alone, he didn’t know what to say.
There was a fist clenched around his heart, another one lodged in his stomach, and a third shoved up his butthole, grasping his insides and twisting them like ph? noodles.
He swallowed and swallowed and tried to make the feeling go away.
Ben let them into the house. He seemed to be sobering up a little. At least, he didn’t fall over when he knelt to greet Simon, petting her and kissing her on top of her head before she escaped him and came to circle Arya.
“Simon, Simon, how was your day?” Arya asked, scratching her chest while her tail wagged and wagged. “Did you have a good day? Did you?”
Simon couldn’t decide if she wanted to jump and lick Arya’s face or roll over so he could rub her belly, so she ended up sort of half-flopped over, hind legs kicking, spinning on her back while her front half wiggled and her tongue reached for Arya.
He snorted at the sight, gave her belly a rub, then helped Ben over to the couch.
He filled a water glass in the kitchen and rummaged in his messenger bag until he found one of his hydration packets.
He always kept a few on hand because you never knew when you’d have to load out somewhere without air-conditioning—more than one crew member had dehydrated themselves doing that—but he’d found they worked wonders for sobering up or preventing hangovers, too.
This one was “Concord grape” flavor, which tasted nothing like real grapes—or wine—but did taste a lot like the purple Dimetapp syrup his parents used to give him when he got sick as a kid.
“Drink this,” he said, passing it over to Ben. He didn’t know whether to sit or not. He had lightning in his limbs. He was so mad, so… hurt?
Yeah. His fucking feelings were hurt, which was his first fucking mistake, having them in the first place, obviously. But here they were.