Chapter 14
Sadie
“He said what?” Bailey scrunches her nose up.
“Oh, I know, and that’s not the half of it,” I sniff after recapping this morning’s highlights — hanging out with Zane Lawless and his unwitty comebacks.
The man is infuriating. “I think he’s trying to get me to quit before I’ve even proven myself.
He’s more of a pill than you gave him credit for.
” I leave out the part where I cried. It wasn’t his fault, and he did look apologetic.
“Is he really that bad?” Jo-Beth pipes up.
I only just met the pretty redhead, but I committed to Margarita Mondays, so here we are.
“I mean, I’ve heard the rumors about him not being able to keep staff because he’s a big grump, but I thought with ski season fast approaching he’d have pulled his head out of his cute ass. ”
“I feel bad I got you all the way out here and you want to stab him with your stiletto.” Bailey winces. “Though I’m sure he deserves it.”
“It’s not that he’s rude, he’s just… ugh, I don’t know how to describe it. The man actually held my mittens out of reach so I had to jump to get them off him, his maturity level is non-existent.”
“Jerk,” Bailey mumbles. I can see her cooking up a revenge plot as we speak.
“Wait, he made you jump in the air? Like a childish game?” Jo-Beth looks just as confused as I felt at the time.
I nod sagely. “That’s about the gist of it.”
Her eyes bug out of her head. “Hold up. Zane Lawless joked around with you?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess you could call it that, though the joke was on him, because I got them back. I might not be a six-foot heathen, but I can still jump pretty high.” Bailey high-fives me, because we’re so much more mature.
Jo-Beth slowly nods her head. “I see it now.”
I frown. “See what now?”
“I’ve known Zane for a long time, since we were in kindergarten, and he doesn’t joke around. Like ever.”
Bailey, getting in on the act, makes a face. “Yeah, you’re right, JB. Wait, did he actually smile while he was doing it?”
“I wouldn’t call it a smile,” I huff. “More of a smirk.” I’m not a hundred percent certain Zane knows how to smile.
Bailey and Jo-Beth share a look. “It’s official,” Jo-Beth says. “He’s into you.”
My face goes through four different stages: disbelief, confusion, denial, and then hilarity. “Oh, god, that’s good. You really had me going there,” I laugh, almost choking on my extra-large margarita.
“I’m not kidding,” Jo-Beth goes on, her face serious. “Tell her, Bails, Zane doesn’t have a sense of humor. Kidding around is a foreign concept to him.”
“She’s right.” My best friend shrugs. “We all know he’s a pain in the neck for the most part, but this takes workplace romance to a whole new level.”
Jo-Beth giggles.
I gape at them. “W-workplace romance?” I shake my head and wag my finger at the same time. “No, no, no, that isn’t what’s happening here.”
“I don’t know, you are kinda cute together,” Jo-Beth puts in, then whispers behind her hand, loud enough for me to hear. “And if the rumors are true, not that I can attest to such speculation, but he’s apparently very well endowed.” She offers me a wink to go with it.
This time I do choke on my cocktail. It not only goes up my nose, but I projectile liquid all over the table as cough and splutter. “Oh, my god,” I garble.
Bailey is laughing her ass off, clearly not helping the situation, but has the good sense to pat me on the back while she laughs.
This is next level. I don’t want to picture Zane Lawless with a larger than life dick, even though it is probably obvious he has one, I mean, he’s a big guy, why wouldn’t he be well endowed? And that’s when I know I’ve had one too many sips of this extra-large cocktail, because this is absurd.
“Holy shit,” Bailey mutters. “And also, ew. I’m sorry, Zane and I go way back, but now I’m thinking about his dick, and I don’t want to be thinking about any of his appendages, especially that one.”
I grab a handful of napkins and begin to wipe myself and the table. “Thank you for that visual I didn’t need of my new boss,” I insist. “And I’m here to tell you, you’re wrong. In fact, I think he despises me, so there’s no way that is happening.”
Jo-Beth gives me a once over, and then shakes her head and says, “Nah.”
My eyebrows raise. “What do you mean, nah?”
“I mean, you’re exactly his type. You’d no doubt challenge him with your smarts — New Yorker style — and you clearly have a sense of humor, not to mention you’re as cute as a button to boot.” She smiles like we’ve been besties forever, and didn’t just meet today.
“You’re right. He does prefer blondes,” Bailey puts in.
I lean in, keeping my voice low, this is a small town after all, and people talk.
“While I thank you for the compliments, I say this with all sincerity… Will you two cut it out? There is no way Zane Lawless is into me. He compared my dietary habits to a rabbit! And he basically implied all New Yorkers were rude and impatient.”
“He’s a good cook, believe it or not,” Jo-Beth goes on as if I haven’t spoken.
“Plus, you’d be warm all winter, his favorite thing to do is chop wood, and I don’t mind saying it because we’re amongst friends, but he’s mighty fine to watch when he swings that ax.
” She fans herself with both hands. “Good lord, he raises the temperature to epic proportions when it’s gray sweatpant season. ”
And now I’m envisioning his long schlong in gray sweatpants. Kill me now.
My eyes widen. I’m in the twilight zone, I’m sure of it. I’m about to put my hands over my ears and sing so I can’t hear anymore, but Bailey has some words of wisdom.
“I mean, we’re overlooking the obvious potential here, aside from you’d be super cute together; you’d have the best Christmas tree in all of Alpine Falls.” They both fall about cackling like witches.
I lob a balled up paper napkin at my best friend. “Thanks for your input.”
She dodges the smooshy ball, still laughing. “Anytime. But seriously, babe, you’re only here for the holidays, maybe you could bone him and leave him in a better mood than you found him for the rest of us. Take one for the team?”
“I know you did not just say that!” I chastise as Jo-Beth falls about laughing again. I narrow my eyes at Bailey and mouth, ‘seriously?’
She waves me off. “We’re kidding. Sort of.”
Jo-Beth dabs her eyes with a napkin. “Let’s not forget the reason Zane is the way he is.”
The table goes somber all of a sudden.
Bailey slaps her head. “Shit, I totally forgot about that.”
My interest piques. “Totally forgot about what?”
JB leans in. “I shouldn’t really be talking out of turn, but the whole town knows. The holidays are the worst time for him.”
Now I need to know too, and I’ll be giving Bailey the third degree about why she didn’t present this well needed information to me earlier.
“That bitch,” Bailey mutters as I chew on my straw, ravenous for this hot gossip. “And Stanley… that snake! Ugh, I should’ve cut his balls off when I had the chance.”
“Who’s balls?” I look between the two of them. “What happened?”
JB leans in again, her voice dropping low. “A few years ago, Zane caught one of his best friends, and college roommate I might add, in a rather compromising position with his fiancee. On Christmas Eve!”
“His bestie was boning his girl,” Bailey adds, in case I didn’t get the picture. “They truly deserve one another.”
I screw my nose up, appalled. “You’re kidding?”
They both shake their heads. “Zane was head over heels,” Jo-Beth goes on. “Never quite got over the betrayal, apparently it had been going on for a while.”
“T-that’s, truly awful.” My mind flicks back to Duncan and finding all of those dating apps and hook up messages on Messenger.
It was truly sickening. If he’d fallen out of love with me, or wanted to move on, why didn’t he just do that?
I just don’t get cheaters. I’ve never been able to understand the point.
I wasn’t holding a gun to his head, but clearly he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too.
His excuses were bullshit, and he’s tried getting me back for months.
Which reminds me, his message earlier had me reeling, not that I should’ve been surprised.
I miss you.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean it.
I’m nothing without you
To which I replied promptly, to go fuck himself.
I stare into my drink and I can feel Bailey’s eyes on me. I should tell her about Duncan and the texts.
“Yeah, that rat and Hilary took off to Cheyenne together. But I heard they broke up a few months later,” Bailey sniffs. “That’s when Zane really went mountain man on us. We were worried for a while there. Over the years, he just became more and more of a recluse.”
I know what it feels like to be rejected like that. To love someone and be devoted to them and have them turn around and do that to you. But your best friend? That really is low.
Maybe there are layers to Zane I didn’t understand before. It doesn’t excuse his hostility, or his comments about the city I love, but he’s been hurt. And I know exactly how that feels. People have the ability to make or break you, that I know for sure.
“Yeah, it really screwed with his head. Fuckface Stanley got run out of town, the one thing that you don’t do around here is fuck with anybody like that, pardon my French,” Jo-Beth says.
“George, he’s the local law enforcement and Zane’s other best friend, made sure Stanley was escorted outside the city limits.
He ran the outfitters before Doris and Jasper took over, but nobody shopped there after what the two of them did to Zane, so he had no choice but to leave, albeit with a black eye courtesy of the big guy. ”
I feel sick to my stomach.
“The saddest part?” Bailey goes on, as if this isn’t hard enough to hear. “Zane really loved her. Treated her like a queen. He worshipped the ground she walked on. Sad when you think about what could’ve been.”
I nod, sipping more of my drink. So my calculations were right, not that I wanted to be right.
Zane is a grizzly on the outside, but inside he feels deeply. He was hurt by the two people he trusted. Now I get why he keeps to himself and grunts all the time. People suck, that much I know.
Maybe there’s more to my boss than I once thought?