Page 63 of Close Quarters

Leon sighed, rolling his eyes toward the sky. “You’re not in trouble.”

“I mean, getting the third degree because I was talking to someone without my assigned babysitter glued to my hip certainly feels like trouble,” I said, cocking my head.

It was probably a little cheap to try putting Leon on the backfoot when the real issue was that we didn’t want him to start puzzling out the truth about what was really going on between Elliot and me. That knock to my conscience was small, though, so I could stand it. Wasn’t like we were trying to get him into serious trouble or hiding something morally wrong. We just needed him distracted from the fact that we might be breaking the rules by having…I guess, a relationship.

Leon put up his hands with another heavy sigh. “Alright, alright! Your point has been made. Fine. You guys have been at this for long enough without killing each other or breaking the more important rules.”

“Hey! We haven’t broken any rules,” Elliot protested and I had to admit, he’d managed to lie with a believable face. Apparently, I needed to add that to the list of things I was surprised he was good at.

“Please, everyone is breaking rules around here,” Leon said, dropping his hands. “You guys do remember there’s a whole book filled with them, right?”

“No,” Elliot said blankly while I sighed and said, “Yes.”

Elliot glanced at me. “When the fuck did that happen?”

“Huh?” Leon asked, squinting. “It was written a while ago, and it’s been revised several?—”

“No, he means when did I see the book to remember it,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “And it gets mentioned on your first day. Mona even made a point of showing it to me. The thing is thick.”

“Jesus, how many rules do we need?” Elliot asked, wrinkling his nose.

“It’s not just rules for guys like you or me. It’s also for people like Max and Mona, who are employees. There used to be different books, but they all kinda got slammed into one at some point,” Leon explained, casting me a strange look. “Nice translation…when did that start?”

“Look, you live and work with someone long enough, you start to understand their, uh…what’s the word? Weirdness?”

“Idiosyncrasies?”

“That’s a lot nicer word than I should use. I’m sticking with weirdness.”

“Yes, God forbid you let anyone see that you might enjoy being around him.”

“Don’t you start getting weird on me, Leon. I don’t have enough room for Elliot as it is.”

“You know,” Elliot said with a sigh, looking over at Dom. “And here I was hoping I might get a compliment out of him this time.”

“Pretty sure him not insulting or threatening you is Reno’s version of a compliment,” Dom told him.

“That…actually tracks,” Leon said, frowning as if he didn’t like the idea but couldn’t argue.

“Fuck all of you?” I offered with a scowl.

“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m a fan of that idea,” Elliot said, turning so he could smirk at me without Leon seeing.

“Plus, someone’s already got their eyes on someone else,” Dom said with a smirk. I would have just taken it as a joke, but I watched Leon’s eyes widen and the color drain from his cheeks.

“Woah! What?” Elliot asked, suddenly elated.

“Absolutely not,” Leon said quickly, shaking his head. “Get back to work and stop screwing around or I’m siccing Mona on you!”

“Huh,” I grunted as Leon walked off, glancing over his shoulder to give us dirty looks as he went. “That wasn’t obvious or anything.”

“Who?” Elliot asked with wide eyes. “Someone in town or something? God, I heard from someone that the one store owner’s daughter is kinda cute. And I mean Leon is?—”

No, no, I was absolutely not going to take even the slightest offense to what had almost just spilled out of Elliot’s mouth before he caught himself. I still needed to process the fact that I…found him cute, of all things, I wasn’t going to add unnecessary jealousy into the mix and make things even harder on me than they needed to be. Especially because jealousy meant something else was going on inside my head, and there was no way I was going anywhere near that.

Dom grinned, taking the glass Elliot put down and draining it. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not telling.”

“That’s a goddamn lie,” Elliot growled, taking the cup and wiggling it at him. “You stole my lemonade! Now tell me the gossip like I know your gossipy ass wants to!”

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