Page 13 of Talk Birdie to Me

She’d have thought Ricky would want to move through the paperwork and finalize this divorce even faster than she did since he’d been the one to initiate the separation. But Ricky was dragging his feet through every step. Sometimes he was too busy. Sometimes it slipped his mind. Sometimes he was taking his new girlfriend out of state for the weekend.

Either way, he was treating the legal filings with as much importance as he’d treated Geena during their marriage.

Geena wanted to remind him of the deadline and how he’d told her he would send the latest round of paperwork to the mediator two days ago.

But she’d had a long day and was in no mood for his inevitable condescension.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow Geena would remind him of the deadline.

Today’s Geena needed a good night’s sleep.

It was Thursday morning before Ricky turned in his paperwork, and the mediator shared copies with her.

She had tons of work to do, piles of paper and endless emails, but she couldn’t focus on anything except the persistent alarm bells those financial disclosures were sounding in her brain.

“Can you look at this for me?”

She extended the printout in front of her coworker, James, who was enjoying his usual lunchtime routine at his desk. He held a half-eaten chickpea salad sandwich in one hand while the other hand zoomed his mouse back and forth, looking for a new carpet cleaning video to watch. Expert cleaners would remove what looked like nuclear waste from a carpet, and James loved to guess what color the rug beneath would turn out to be. He claimed they were soothing, but the videos were absolutely disgusting.

Geena never understood how he could watch those videos while eating. Then again, she couldn’t watch anything while she ate her rice bowls at work. She preferred to eat while listening to a lo-fi playlist, something to give her eyes and brain a break.

James put his sandwich on the empty plastic bag and wiped the crumbs from his hands before taking the papers from her. His black hair was slicked back in its usual style with so much product that it didn’t move as he tilted his head side to side, examining the forms.

“What am I looking at?”

“Ricky finally turned these in.” Geena frowned. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t seem right.”

She’d decided against emailing the request to James and instead printed it out and walked it over. Something about sending a digital copy of their financials didn’t sit well with her risk-assessing brain, even if she did trust James.

They’d met when he started working at the firm three years ago. He was several years younger than her, but they’d bonded over being the only people under fifty at the accounting firm. Since then, they chatted every day and would meet for the occasional post-work drink.

He’d been her only confidant besides Taylor since her separation from Ricky. And she had been his one-person cheering squad when he was considering proposing to his long-time girlfriend a few months ago.

Ricky had never approved of their friendship. He’d called it inappropriate. As a result, Geena spent far too long avoiding spending time with James outside of work.

Then again, Ricky had never approved of anything she did.

Thankfully, James never held her avoidance against her. Now that Ricky was out of her life, she could fill some of the space he’d left by hanging out with James, just like she’d filled some of that space with Taylor.

Taylor and a certain zookeeper who’d turned out to be more than a onetime date.

Ricky definitely wouldn’t have approved of Cody. Even if their only interaction had been at the zoo discussing that bird.

She almost wanted to ask for a second date just to piss off Ricky, even if he never knew about it.

Almost.

“What am I looking for?” He squinted at the paper. “I’m assuming you triple-checked the math. You’re even more thorough than I am.”

Is my rat bastard ex hiding assets?

She couldn’t flat-out ask that. Well, she could. But she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to influence his analysis.

Geena couldn’t tell if her intuition was being clouded by her annoyance and disgust. Normally, she could stay detached when analyzing numbers like this, but she felt it would be smart to get a second opinion.

Her gut was telling her something was off. But her gut had also told her it would be a good idea to marry the man who’d submitted these forms.

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