Page 47 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

He felt his neck growing hot beneath his shirt collar but kept his chin up and eyes on Jason the whole time. He could manage that much, at least, after so much cowardice.

Jason set his wine glass down on the table, more measured and calmer than Jason had ever really seen him, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

“I was only being quiet, man, mostly because you seem like you’re in shock. I wanted you to have a chance to let things sink in, you know?”

Kai nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s pretty accurate.”

“You look like a fish out of water right now, not going to lie.”

“That sounds about right. A fish out of water with shock, that sums it up pretty well, actually.”

“Here’s the thing, man,” Jason said, leaning back in his chair with a philosophical air. “It’s one thing to never do anything wrong or short-sighted. That’s impressive, for sure. It’s noble, you know? But it’s a whole other thing to mess up, like, royally mess up bad enough that you want to go crawl in a hole somewhere, only to come out and admit to it all. It takes a lot of guts, man, to do what you just did, setting it all straight and saying it to our faces. I’d prefer to work with someone like that. Someone who has the guts to own up to what they’ve done, even if it takes them a while to do it. That’s what’s impressive.”

Kai just blinked at him across the table. Was he… did he really mean that he still wanted to work together? Even after this hurricane of chaos Kai had caused? Was this really happening right now?

Jason grinned. “Are you still in shock, bud?”

“Yeah,” Kai said flatly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

“How about we save any technical talk for later in the week, then?”

“That sounds amazing, honestly.”

Then all thoughts of work, of contracts, of numbers and signatures left Kai’s mind altogether as he spotted Amy walking back towards their table, glowing in her cocktail dress and smiling at him as she crossed the room. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful.

---