CHAPTER THREE
Liz’s place of work wasn’t all that dissimilar from Ellen’s.
It was less fancy, the carpeting not so formally patterned, the furniture not quite so clean and shiny and new. He was admittedly having a bit of trouble getting a read on Liz, but he suspected this was because she herself didn’t have that good a read on herself.
This was uncharted territory.
He was doing his best to study her body language, her expression, her tone, looking for any subtle clue that he had overstepped his bounds. They may be dating, but this had to be odd for her. Admittedly, it was still odd for him.
In a wonderful kind of way.
She felt so different from the others. But not just physically.
There was a quiet...certainty to her. It was a confidence that Holly, Chloe, and certainly Krystal lacked, and made up for in their own ways.
Ellen was the closest, in that she was very confident, but it wasn’t the same.
It was a more rigid, bitter confidence, one born of dismal darkness.
No, he thought he was seeing the gift of quiet confidence that came from a childhood that lacked abuse, neglect, and poverty.
Gabe pushed that thought away, and was mildly surprised by the success with which he managed it. It was probably the fact that he had such a hot, jacked tomboy on his arm. With his hand all up on her ass.
Her big, fit, firm ass.
She guided him past the front desk with a smile to the woman behind it. Gabe had to admit, her expression of shock was very satisfying. Though she looked happy for Liz instead of annoyed.
“Hey, Liz. So is this…”
“Yes. Yes, he is. Allow me to introduce Gabe,” Liz replied with a smile.
“Hello,” Gabe said.
He thought he’d be weirder about all this but he really wasn’t.
He felt pretty calm as he was introduced to the receptionist, and then brought deeper into the building and introduced to a few other people.
Gabe had occasionally entertained the notion of being shown off by his girlfriend.
Even setting aside how unlikely it was to happen, he hadn’t been completely sure how he’d react to it.
He thought he might find it off-putting in some uncertain way.
Thankfully, this was not the case.
For the most part, people seemed genuinely surprised, though he couldn’t tell if it was because of some quality in him, or because it just seemed so unlikely that Liz had actually found a boyfriend in addition to her girlfriend.
In a few minutes, he found himself being brought into a break room.
A woman in pale blue business casual was seated at a table by some vending machines, the remains of a meal in front of her.
She was staring into her phone but looked up as they walked in and got something of a similar look to what Krystal and Liz had given him back at the apartment.
“Hello, Ashley,” Liz said in a surprisingly devious tone.
“...hi, Liz,” she replied.
Oh wow, she looked like she had been caught in the headlights. He wondered suddenly if this was the look he gave, but somehow thought it wasn’t right. Similar, certainly, but not right. This was worried realization, whereas his was just...horniness.
“May I introduce my writer boyfriend, Gabe.”
“Hi,” she said, slowly looking over at him.
“Hello. I was led to believe that you thought I was not real.”
“I, um…” She looked actually totally lost for an answer. “I guess I was wrong,” she managed after a very long pause.
“I guess you were.” Liz paused for just a second longer than felt natural. “Goodbye, Ashley.”
“Goodbye, Liz.”
They walked out of the room and then he was following Liz to her office.
“So, how did that feel?” he asked, looking around and noticing a couple of guys noticing the two of them.
And glaring at him.
Gabe kept his face passive, returning his attention to Liz. It still felt weird to be on the other side of this, and he found that he still didn’t take too much pleasure in making other people feel bad. He would be lying if he claimed he felt no satisfaction, but nobody was perfect.
“Very good,” Liz said. “Probably too good.”
“Worried about getting addicted to being petty?”
They came to her office and she paused as she put her hand on the doorknob. “That is something I really like about you.”
“That I go to the logical end of the thought chain instead of fumbling around elsewhere?”
She looked at him, her eyes almost glowing with emotion. She looked almost...angrily horny. Krystal had mentioned that Liz could be really intense if she got into the right mood, and apparently that was now.
“Yes,” she almost growled.
“You having some trouble there, dear?”
Liz glared at him for a moment, then walked in and marched over to her desk and sat her big ass down in a rolling chair.
She began going through her drawers, clearly distracted.
He looked around her office. It was...well, he wasn’t sure what exactly he’d been imagining, but probably something a little less stark.
The only thing she had on the walls were a couple of framed pictures of her and Krystal, and a poster featuring a beautiful shot of a forest at sunset, the golden light slanting in through the canopies, turning the trees to soft pink gold.
Besides that, she simply had her desk, three chairs, a lamp, and nothing else. When he looked back at her, he frowned slightly.
She still seemed annoyed, but it was harder to read if she was actually annoyed or not.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She raised her eyes without moving her head. “I mean seriously. I can’t tell if you’re pissed or not.”
She laughed softly and shook her head. “I’m not pissed.
I’m just feeling...a little aggressive. It’s this part of me that I tried to push down for a long time, but it would never be pushed down completely.
It’s what gives me my confidence, I think.
I suppose I crafted it into confidence. But Krystal brought it back out, she likes it when I’m...
rebellious, she would say. I’m still not sure what I call it.
But you bring it out in me, too...is that okay? ” She looked suddenly vulnerable.
“That’s okay, Liz,” he replied, and she relaxed. “I…” He laughed suddenly. “I guess I kind of see what you mean about cockiness? I mean, what you’re displaying isn’t quite cockiness, but that’s absolutely a part of it.”
She thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give on that. And I’m glad it contextualized it for you.”
“Same. I do actually feel less annoyed by the concept now. I guess...just let me know if I’m actually pissing you off.”
“Will do.”
She went back to searching her desk, began to let out an exasperated sigh, but cut it off as she abruptly found what she was looking for.
“Thank God,” she whispered, holding up a USB stick before slipping it into her pocket and standing up. “Almost done.”
“What’s on it?” he asked.
She grinned. “Dirty novels. Helps keep me sane. All of your shit is on here.”
“Wow...that’s so cool.”
“Yep. Now, come along, boyfriend,” she replied lightly, taking his hand and leading him back out into the hallways.
They passed more offices, more confused and frustrated faces, then she was knocking on a door. He heard a woman say ‘come in’ and then Liz opened the door.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
“Oh no,” the woman said with a soft laugh, “you aren’t getting away with that. Bring him in.”
She sighed softly. “Okay. Come on, babe.”
Gabe couldn’t help but grin, just a little, as he stepped inside the office with her.
Liz closed the door behind them. The office was similarly stark, a bit bigger, with a larger window.
Liz’s boss turned out to be a woman around Sadie’s age with dark hair that had started going gray at the front.
Something about her reminded him of Liz.
Maybe it was the look on her face, the plain curiosity, the shark of aggressiveness, its shadow glimpsed just below the surface of relatively calm waters.
“Hello,” she said, “my name is Martha and it’s nice to finally meet you.”
“I’m Gabe and it’s nice to meet you, too,” he replied, just a little awkwardly.
She definitely had a presence to her.
“She was the first one I told,” Liz said. “Like right after we got back. I had to bullshit about you with someone who wasn’t Krystal. And she’s cool. I’m actually really sad that you aren’t going to be my boss anymore.”
“And I am equally sad that you aren’t going to be my employee anymore.
You’ve never had a single HR problem, on or off the record, you’ve never screwed anything major up...
honestly, hardly anything minor, either.
And you have a ridiculous work ethic. But more than that, I am just going to miss that you made the day go by faster.
After doing this for so long, that’s the thing that seems to have survived the sifting of time.
This is mostly just bullshit,” she said, raising her hands for a moment, “we’re just passing time, trying to make the world better for people, but we aren’t even doing that anymore, for the most part… ”
She paused, looked at Gabe, then looked at Liz. “What the fuck? How does-I can’t believe you were that right.”
“I told you!” Liz cried delightedly.
“I’m going to need some assistance,” Gabe said.
Martha sighed, looking at once both annoyed and amused.
“Liz told me that you had the uncanny ability to loosen lips–” her eyes bulged briefly “–not like that! I mean that she said you could make a girl talk without even trying. And I thought she was kind of bullshitting or talking you up, but no. Apparently she was dead on.”
“Do you have any idea why that might be?” Gabe asked.
“You and Ellen must have discussed this at some point,” Liz murmured.
“Probably. I’m still curious to hear what a new person says.”
“I guess...I feel about you immediately how I feel about Liz now, in that I can relax around you. I don’t have to put up a front and pretend to be extra cheerful or brave or in a good mood if I’m not. I can let my guard down around you. Interesting.”
“Definitely interesting,” he agreed.
“Well, thank you for indulging. It was nice to meet you. Now you can go. We need to talk confidential business about a few clients. So…” She raised her eyebrows.
He laughed. She was definitely very straightforward, just like...all the women in his life now. “On it.”
“I’ll be out in like five minutes,” Liz said.
“I’ll be waiting.”