Hate to Love You(50)
“Killjoy.”
“No, that part comes when I spill the beans to your next girlfriend, Reverend.”
He looked at my empty glass. “Another drink to quench the urge?”
“Sure. The game starts at three but I don’t want to be there until Ryan’s playing. Y’know, to avoid standing around looking suspicious.”
“Wearing that?”
His expression put me on the defensive. “This is my uninterested bystander outfit.”
“I thought that was your scary stalker kit.”
“No, this one is different, see?” I pulled at my sleeve to show him it was cotton jersey and not lycra.
He pinched his chin. “Ah yes, I see how the addition of a black hoodie lends a wholesome quality to your ensemble.”
I stuck my tongue out and he laughed. “Tonic water with a slice of lemon.”
“My favourite.”
We exchanged a look of complete understanding and Tarzan went off to the bar. He chatted to a man and his small son as he waited patiently to be served. Who would have thought that closing my eyes and pointing at Religious Studies would have led Tarzan to his vocation? He said his past with drug abuse made the addicts he tried to help more receptive. Like me, he still craved a hit sometimes but he said God kept him on the straight and narrow.
I had my own holy trinity to keep me clean: guilt, remorse and regret.
Tarzan set the drinks down. “How were your first few weeks at Flintfire?”
“Peachy.”
On the second day I’d found the picture of Ryan face down on my desk in a new frame. My heart had lifted at the thought that maybe, just maybe, James didn’t hate me after all.#p#分页标题#e#
“Thank you, James,” I’d gushed.
He hadn’t look up from his desk. “It changes nothing, Ms Benítez.”
Remembering his pedantic tone, I gulped down my tonic and banged the glass on the table.
“That bad?” Tarzan asked.
“‘Trash at the Bash’ is circulating on all five floors,” I said grimly. “I heard a lot of laughter on Accounting last week so I went to see what all the fuss was about. Then I heard my own drunken voice announcing that James was my baby’s father and—and all that other stuff. I barely managed to escape without being noticed and spent ten minutes cursing myself in the bathroom.”
Tarzan gave me a sympathetic look. “Yikes.”
“I knew the video was still a hit but I never thought that my sophisticated new colleagues would circulate it as the office joke. Even the tea lady stopped to take a look and she doesn’t offer me pastries anymore.” I sighed heavily. “Will I never be allowed to put what I did behind me?”
I was grateful Tarzan didn’t offer me useless platitudes. “TB” was going to stick to me like crap to a shoe. No matter how much I tried to wash it off, the stench of it would follow me wherever I went.
The office titters were my own fault for foisting myself on James, but I’d had no choice, right? He’d refused to answer my letters so it was his fault if he was the object of derision. It served him right and—
I felt like a callous bitch.
In the single-minded pursuit of my goals I hadn’t considered the impact on James. Again. Hell, he probably thought I’d circulated the video myself because I wanted to humiliate him. Remorse made my throat seize up. All I’d ever done to James was lash out with impulsive acts of anger. If I said I was sorry for his latest humiliation at my hands he would laugh in my face.
Tarzan reached for my hand. “James will get over it. From what you’ve told me he’s too confident in his superiority to care what people think. Are you going to let your colleagues’ pettiness get you down?”
“No... Well, not in front of them anyway. I try to ignore the rumours and sly looks I get.”
I hated them though. And I hated seeing the muscle in James’s jaw twitch whenever he looked at me. I would peep into his eyes, hoping to catch him off guard and maybe be able to see into his thoughts like I used to. Nothing. Asking him outright if he blamed me for office gossip was out of the question.