Chapter 14
Lacey
“I’m surprised it still works after all that,” Adrianna frowns, handing my phone back to me while touching it as little as possible.
Even in the dim fluorescent light of her basement office, it’s clear my phone has been through a lot.
The screen protector and glass underneath are cracked in a couple places they weren’t before, but letting it sit in a bowl of dry rice has let it live another day.
The case, however, is gross, no matter the amount of damp paper towels I rub on it.
Adrianna’s face while examining it became slowly more disgusted as I relayed the events of last night’s chase to her. I stuff it back inside my coat pocket. Despite being indoors, I’m still wrapped up in my winter coat, hat, gloves—the works.
“Sooooooo,” Adrianna croons, and then wiggles her eyebrows cartoonishly. “You left off at the part where hench-guy flew you back to your apartment. And theeen, you were late to work today.”
My cheeks scald, and I glance away. “I do want to tell you about that, but there was another reason—”
“Did he have six nipples?” she interrupts, pulling a weak smile from me.
I shake my head. “Two.”
“Oh, that is disappointing,” Adrianna sighs, sounding genuinely let down. “Are you sure you counted right?”
“I suppose I was distracted by everything else.” I sigh. I wish I could enthusiastically gush about last night to her, that there was nothing more important in the world than telling my best friend about the weird and yet really satisfying dicking I’d received.
Some naive, girlish part of me had hoped Ellis would stick around the morning after, thread his fingers through my hair, hold me in his arms, kiss my forehead, all that meaningless nonsense that I’ve been aching for.
Ugh, I’m probably just feeling clingy because I’m about to get my period or something.
I’m getting too attached, just because the gentle way he carried me to bed, curled up with me and rubbed his hands up and down my thigh until I fell asleep felt like a dream, made me feel incandescent—it feels impossibly selfish to want that for every night. It couldn’t be like that.
It’s probably better that he wasn’t there when I woke up.
“Everything else?” Adrianna repeats, and I’m trying to think of what I could even begin to tell her, when a text from Ellis pops up on the screen: Meet you on the corner in ten?
Adrianna’s eyes catch it before I lock the screen, and her expression just barely contains her interest.
“Is that hench-guy? With the—” She mimes wings for me like she can’t contain her excitement. “Are you going to meet him? Now?”
“Oh, no, Adri, I love you, but you are not coming with me,” I warn as soon as she catches it, and she shakes her head quickly in response. “It’s a lunch date.”
“No, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
There’s a strange look in her eyes, pleading and cautious and hopeful.
“You’re scaring me, a little,” I say, only partially joking. I don’t really know how to react to this kind of enthusiasm for a guy I’m kind of seeing. It’s honestly a little weird to experience.
“No, no, I just . . . you seem happier lately. I just wanted to give some positive reinforcement.”
Something tightens in my throat. What am I, some kind of experiment? I slide the phone back into the plastic bag and zip it shut.
She takes my silence as permission to keep going, offering gently, “I want you to be happy, but . . . I don’t know, Lace. You stopped talking to a lot of our old friends when they were critical of your relationships. I didn’t want you to stop talking to me.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
We stand there for a moment, just staring at each other before she shrugs and says, “I’ll walk you out, I have to go upstairs anyway.”
I nod and she gets up from her desk, plucking up her company lanyard with about a dozen keys and things attached. I stuff my plastic-baggie phone back in my pocket, reminded of what I originally came here for.
“But, like, what are the odds of randomly unlocking a security panel I’ve never seen before? It’s gotta be astronomical,” I ask her again as we head toward the elevator. It’s mostly to change the subject, so we’re not leaving on the weirdest vibe possible.
She waves her employee ID at the badge panel, eventually slapping it against the thing to get the light to turn green and the doors open.
“I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t have an answer,” she says as we step inside. So much for getting help from IT.
I sigh and settle for taking my frustrations out on my iced coffee, giving it a vigorous and borderline unnecessary shake. I’m beyond tired of dead ends that make me feel like I’m right back where I started. I’m going in fucking circles.
She hits one of the buttons for the executive level by accident, but the panel buzzes red, denying access. She rolls her eyes and punches the correct button after and turns her attention back to me.
“Hey, I’m sorry I—” Adrianna starts to say, and I shake my head.
“No, don’t be. It’s . . .” I hedge against just saying “fine.” It’s clearly not.
The elevator slows after a couple floors, reaching the building lobby, so she nods. “Ok. Good.”
As much as I love her, I’m a little relieved to exit our conversation.
Everything feels like a lot right now. I just don’t have a lot of emotional bandwidth to spare for this wonderful new information about how literally everyone I know thinks they know better than me about how to handle my love life.
The doors open to let us out, and my stomach clenches when I see Clayton standing there. He looks mildly surprised to see me too.
“Lacey! I was just on my way up to your desk. I had an interview earlier.”
“Oh, um, you should have let me know, I would have made some room in my schedule,” I pretend to offer, hoping the implication that I have somewhere to be is enough to sidestep him. I step out into the building lobby, my boots clipping briskly against the glossy tile floors.
He nods understandingly.
I can feel Adrianna’s stare on the side of my face as Clayton gives us both a quick nod and answers a call on his phone, stepping away from the elevator. I have to talk to Clayton. I know, I know, she’s right. I have to talk to him.
“Actually, one second,” I say to her, and duck out after him.
I catch up to where Clayton is pacing one end of the lobby. “Once this lawsuit is settled, I want his—”
“It’s been five months,” I call out to Clayton, the words almost leaping out of me.
He stops several feet away from me, and after a beat, exits the call on his phone and turns around.
“Since we broke up,” I clarify, like he had an equal interest in splitting up. I don’t know, maybe if I keep saying “we” he’ll think it was also his idea.
Clayton’s eyes flick around the busy lobby, before he crosses to me and puts a hand on my back, steering me toward a secluded corner. “Lacey, what on earth—”
“You’ve been putting it off,” I tell him, swallowing. I stop in my tracks, not letting him lead me a step further. It ends here, now. No more waiting.
Clayton’s brows knit together, his mouth a hard line. There’s a tension in the hand he has on my arm. “If you insist on doing this now—I was just making a call to the mayor about putting together a task force to investigate the ooze. I was telling him about your findings.”
I wince. I didn’t know that. Instantly, I feel like an idiot for ambushing him with this. “ . . . You were?”
His hand on my upper arm travels down, finding my hand to squeeze it, looking deep into my eyes. “Yes. Your work is so incredibly important. We need to know where the ooze is coming from, and you’ve put so much into this. I am relying on you.”
I blink at him, confused. I didn’t know he valued my investigation so much. “And you were talking to the mayor about this?”
“Of course. We’re taking this all the way to the top,” he says, nudging my chin with his knuckle. I attempt a weak smile because that’s the response to our little joke, but I feel a little queasy trying.
I swallow, my eyes falling to the floor.
Suddenly, the defiance that had propped me up feels terribly flimsy.
I can’t just assume he was being malicious.
If I didn’t realize it had been that long, he likely didn’t either.
The last several months have been full of fraught, hectic moments.
He’s been so focused on protecting the city and helping my investigation, how heartless could I be to expect more from him?
“I suppose I overlooked the distance we should have been putting between us,” he continues, squeezing my hand. His eyes drift away from me with a far-off look, and he shakes his head with a self-deprecating smile. “We just work together so well.”
Slowly, I nod, not sure if I agree.
“We’ll make the announcement soon. I promise,” Clayton says seriously.
I feel bad that it doesn’t seem like enough, I want an actual date to hold him to, but I know I just sprang this on him.
When I don’t reply, he puts a hand on the back of my head to hold me still as he presses a kiss to my forehead.
I’m torn between reminding him that this isn’t distance and just waiting it out to avoid making this a bigger issue.
When he releases me he asks, “But you’ll still come to my award ceremony?”
“I . . . yeah, I guess.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I don’t know how I can say no after all that.
Adrianna is still waiting for me over by the elevators, and my throat tightens a little when I look at her. I can’t. I know I’m already disappointing her, so I make a beeline for the large glass-panel doors.
“I gotta go, I’ll text you later,” I call over my shoulder to her and wince at myself as I step out into the cold.
Is it just me, or is she being real judgy today?
It’s not like I let it go on this long on purpose; I’m working with what I can.
Ugh, I’m mad that I’m annoyed with her. I know she cares about me, but it really does not feel like it today; it feels like shame that I’m struggling to keep up with everything.