Chapter 4 #3
“How can I help? What can I take over for you? Or do you need to talk about feelings? Because… we can,” I offered with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “If you want.”
“No. Fuck no. You’ve done too much already,” he said shortly.
“Giving the orchard the cash, working on the books, being here when I know you’d rather be…
Shit.” He pushed his chair back and stood up to pace.
“Look, I’ll figure it out. I have lots of help.
Jack’s been great. Drew and Marco, too. Take care of yourself, Knox. I’ve got this handled.”
I ran my hands through my hair, feeling helpless and hating it.
“There has to be more I can do, Webb, to help fix this permanently. I have the eight thousand if you want to contact a lawyer, and I can’t think of a better use for the money than keeping Aiden safe.
So can I call around and find you an attorney? ”
“No, I… No. I told you, I’ve got it handled.
Nothing’s changed as far as the lawyer is concerned, and it’s still a waste of money, whether it’s your money I’m wasting or my own.
” He snorted. “But if you know a good ex-wife filter for my email… Surely such a thing exists by now. The damned woman won’t stop cursing me out electronically. ”
“Are you taking screenshots of this?” I demanded. “Because I think—”
“Yes, Knox,” he said with strained patience. “Not my first rodeo, dealing with her shit. She talks a lot, but she’s not a danger.”
“Right, no, I didn’t mean to imply—”
I broke off when Goodman hesitantly made his way back into the room.
“Aiden’s all set and out on the porch, Webb. I’m gonna go out for a run. Unless… Do you want me to take him to school for you?”
“Nah. Thank you for offering, though, Gage.” Webb stood up and gave him a tilted smile. “I need to talk to him. Maybe middle-name myself for biting his head off.”
“Meh. Seeing his dad act like a fallible human’s probably good for him.” Goodman grinned back. “But maybe the promise of a Sunday Sundae wouldn’t go amiss? Just saying.”
Webb slapped Goodman on the bicep. “Good idea.”
“Hey, Webb, I’ll take Goodman to Boston today if it’s all the same to you,” I called fake-casually before I gave myself time to think about how taking Goodman to Boston meant being alone with Goodman.
Breathing his scent, hearing his voice, stopping every twelve seconds to buy him provisions and pretending I wasn’t more attracted to him than I’d been to anyone in years.
Gah. “I have a couple things I’ve been meaning to do down there, and I can get them done in person tomorrow. ”
“Yeah?” Webb looked over at me, his attention caught. “What kind of things?”
“Oh, this and that. Friends to visit. A condo to check on. Colleagues to catch up with.” HR documents to sign, I mentally added.
Webb nodded slowly.
“I’m gonna need to stay overnight since I’ll probably have an appointment tomorrow,” I said, thinking about how early I could set up a meeting with HR the next day.
“But we’ll be back tomorrow afternoon in plenty of time to help with the afternoon crowds in the U-pick orchard. Does that work for you, Goodman?”
“Sick! Heck, yeah, it works.” Goodman’s eyes widened. “I’ve never been to Boston. Can we do a duck boat tour? No, no.” He waved a hand. “That’s probably lame. Is it lame? Or maybe we could just walk around. Although I’m sure you’ve seen it all a million times—”
He bit his lip like he was waiting for me to say something cutting, and… okay, maybe his chirpy personality was growing on me, because I really regretted being an asshole to him for the past two weeks.
I also deeply regretted letting myself see that the guy wasn’t just sexy but likable, too, because it made it that much harder to keep my thoughts platonic, which they absolutely needed to be.
The man’s goddamn enthusiasm was contagious, though, and made me think dangerous things… like maybe this road trip wouldn’t end badly.
“Yeah, fine, we can walk around,” I agreed gruffly.
“How many more questions are on this BuzzFeed quiz?” I demanded.
I had not expected my regrets over this trip to be so swift or all-encompassing.
Goodman, who was sitting pretzel-legged on the passenger’s seat of my truck and should not have looked so damn comfortable, glanced up from the phone in his lap. “Like… six. Why? You have somewhere else to be?”
“No. But I’m sitting here fondly remembering the days when you pretended to ignore me.”
He snorted. “Who said I was pretending?”
“You did. Your eyebrow twitches when you’re lying.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I bit back a grin. It really did. “We’re half an hour into this drive, and we’ve only gotten through four questions because you’ve questioned me about every answer, including this one,” I shot back. “I’ve never met anyone who needed to talk so much.”
“We’re getting to know each other better, since we’re being friendly.” Goodman crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t care so much about what shape you want your sandwich cut into, I care about why.”
“And you keep correcting me.”
“Only when you’re wrong,” he shot back. “I want you to lead a fulfilling life, Knox. I’m a giver that way.
And to hear you say that you’ve been eating your sandwiches in rectangles all these years and decades and you can’t even tell me why…
” He sighed, then bent down and rustled in the backpack at his feet, pulled out the largest bag of Twizzlers I’d ever seen, and shoved them in his mouth four at a time.
“Vuh unezzamined wife iv noh worf wivving.”
“Thank you, Socrates. How do you eat that junk?”
Goodman swallowed and glanced over at me. “Happily.” He grinned. “You know, Knox, I feel like I’m saving you in a way. Because weawwy—” He paused to ingest more strawberry plastic and swallow. “—really, this is how evil geniuses are born.”
I blinked. “Watching you eating Twizzlers? I concur.”
“No, by failing to consider the tiny changes you could make to become happier, like the triangular sandwich. Because if you live your life long enough wondering why other people seem so much happier than you, then eventually you snap. You build a freeze ray on top of an abandoned paint factory and start filling a vat with stingrays you’ve armed with throwing knives. ”
I shook my head sadly. “You make it sound so easy, but sourcing an army of trained stingrays is harder than you think.”
He threw back his head and laughed in delight, which made my stomach clench pleasantly.
“You know, it’s funny to me that a man can get so pissed off when I suggest empirically proven methods for efficient dishwashing—”
“Efficient,” he snorted.
“—yet can have such nonsensical opinions about sandwich shapes.”
“They’re not nonsensical. It’s about the ratio of bread to filling to crust, combined with the shapely aesthetic magnificence of the right triangle.
” He sketched a triangle in the air with a Twizzler, like maybe I’d forgotten what triangles looked like.
“The secret to happiness has been sitting right in front of you all this time.”
I shook my head. “It’s clear that our parents named the wrong one of us after philosophers, Goodman.”
“Maybe so.” Goodman grinned. “But I’m still way cooler than you,” he said in an Aiden-voice. “So, what time’s your appointment tomorrow?”
I blinked at this topic change. “Uh… I dunno. Probably early, but we haven’t set a time yet.”
He nodded. “Oh, so not like a doctor, then.”
“No.” My occasional calls with Dr. Travers were plenty, thank you. “An appointment with a… colleague. Why do you want to know?”
I worked hard not to sound guilty.
Apparently, I failed.
Goodman laughed. “Oh my God, why are you so squirrelly? Are you and your colleague robbing a bank? Murdering someone? Soliciting a prostitute?”
“Please,” I scoffed. “I’m stopping by my office, and we’re going to grab coffee whenever he can squeeze me in, okay, Nancy Drew?”
“Yeah, I have no idea who that is,” he said with a happy grin, and I couldn’t tell whether he was lying. “You mean your former office, right? The investment place?”
“Obviously. Yes. My former office.” The lie tasted like sawdust. “Bormon Klein Jacovic.”
Goodman nodded. “Do you miss it?”
“Can we go back to talking about sandwiches?”
“Nope. We’re getting to know each other. It’s this or the BuzzFeed quiz.”
I rubbed my neck. “That’s… a big question,” I deflected, but when he stayed silent—because of course, that was the one moment Goodman didn’t have a million thoughts and opinions to share—I found myself saying, “There are parts about it that I miss. Lots of parts. I started working there fifteen years ago, and I’m really good at what I do.
I turned my position into what it is today,” I said proudly.
“I literally wrote the training manual the company uses. I supervise a whole team of auditors, and I’m responsible for some really crucial, high-level decisions. So.”
“Sounds boring, but okay.”
“Boring?” I snorted. “No way. I love working in finance. I like risk analysis.”
“But you just said you weren’t really doing that,” he pointed out. “You were watching other people do it.”
I floundered for half a second. “Well, yes, but that’s how corporate hierarchy works. If you want to make good money, you have to stretch and supervise. Maybe it’s not thrilling, and maybe it’s a little more demanding—” Or a lot more demanding, I mentally revised. “—but that’s how careers work.”
“Yeah, I dunno.” He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think it’s supposed to work like that. And hey! You wipe that ‘because you’re a naive child, Goodman,’ look right off your face, Edwin Knox.”
I shut my mouth because I had been thinking exactly that.