Working Stiff(22)
He shouldn’t say things like this to her, to his business associate and a supposedly married woman. “And then you would have lost the best damn paralegal in the office when you ghosted on me.”
He raised an eyebrow, still staring up. “Ghosted?”
“When you blow someone off by not returning their emails or texts, like turning into a ghost.”
“How metaphorical.”
“You know that you do it to all the women you date.” She was pushing at him, she knew. She was pushing him away so that these vibrations would leave her. She needed to have no chance with him.
He shrugged. “They don’t care. I’m nothing to them.”
“It’s like you think they don’t really like you or something.”
He shrugged.
Rox looked over at him, watching the nonchalance in his shoulders and body. “At least some of them do. There are too many broken hearts lying around the office for all of them to be pulling the drama llama.”
“So why do you have three ugly cats?” he asked.
Ah, so he was redirecting the witness. Typical arrogant lawyer move. Yet, she had to defend her cats. “They’re not ugly!”
“Sure they are. It’s what’s inside that counts, right? So why did you adopt three such abominable creatures?”
“Well,” she looked at her hands, still fidgeting with the rings, “because they were at the shelter for a long time.”
“And why was that?” His sideways glance was sly.
“Because no one adopted them.”
“Any why did no one adopt them?” he pressed.
“Fine,” she said. “Because they’re hideous. But they’re the best cats, and I love them.”
Cash closed his eyes but kept scratching Pirate along his shoulders. Pirate was a limp heap of drooling love. “Because no one else would look beyond their ugliness. You’re a special person, Rox, but no one else is.”
AGAIN
Casimir took the curve in the highway with a solid twist of the steering wheel. The car’s stereo was blasting “Alwaysland,” a demo copy of a new song from one of his music clients, Alexandre Grimaldi. Alexandre was the lead singer for the “emerging” band Killer Valentine, a polite word that meant no one had ever heard of them. Alexandre’s cousin Maxence was one of Casimir’s closest friends, and thus Casimir provided pro bono legal advice on contracts for Alexandre. It also meant that Casimir got demo copies of new music, an excellent perk.
The themes of lost love and lost chances were killing him, but Casimir didn’t forward to the next song.
He scratched a spot just below his cheekbone, the rough bristles of his beard poking under his blunt fingernails. The spot that itched was adjacent to one of the numb areas on his cheek, and his skin vibrated where he couldn’t feel himself scratching.
The red sedan beside him edged closer. Rust was bubbling under the paint on the hood.
Casimir had had a night with Rox in his house, and he’d dithered all night between the fact that she was married and the fact that her husband hadn’t been there when she had needed someone to take care of her and never told her that she was beautiful.
But he was sure that she was loyal to her husband, and Casimir respected that.
He shouldn’t have taken her hand, and he shouldn’t have rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. Her whole arm had started shaking.
She must hate him for doing that.
She should.
That idealistic part of his brain had been talking again, the stupid part that wouldn’t shut up about Rox, how he believed her, how she was different.
Lust had buzzed in his blood the whole evening, and then after she had gone to bed, taking those mashed-up cats with her, he had stolen down the hall to his gym to burn off the adrenaline for a few hours so that he could finally sleep.
As he drove that morning, he was tired. He needed coffee.
Before they had driven separately to work, he and Rox had met in the living room, fully dressed, ready to go, and walked out to the garage. He had joked and so had she, but her eyes had darted away as soon as he managed any eye contact.
Her black sports car drove in the lane to his left and two cars back. He watched it the whole time he drove his commute, wanting to call her to talk. He often called her while he drove in to talk about work or any old excuse.
Traffic surged around his car, and he leaned on the accelerator to stay with it. The car thrummed around him as the finely tuned engine sang under the hood.
He wanted to touch her again, even her hand, even just her forehead against his suit jacket.
The last few days, they had begun to push at their boundaries. Every flirt was taking on a new dimension in his mind, moving from the pathos of futility and reaching for something shimmering.