Page 12 of Infinite

“Hale, don’t push me away.”

Neesa is the first person to praise me for doing right and the one shoving people aside to slap me upside the head when I’m being a prick. In other words, she’s a real friend. One of the few I have left.

“Send her a golden retriever puppy.” I reach for another red pen when the one I’m using stops working.

“A puppy?”

I glance up. “Agolden retriever puppy,” I stress. “With a pink bow.”

“You know what?”

“Let me guess,” I say. “You don’t like bows?”

“Hale.”

“Or puppies?”

“Hale.”

“Pink?” I offer.

I think today is finally the day Neesa will kill me. If hate were sand I’d be looking at the Sahara Desert.

“Hale, from the first moment I interviewed for this position, I knew a day would come when I would have to sneak into your apartment and kill you in your sleep.”

See? I was right.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “I thought you women liked that shit?” I huff. “I mean what kind of sick fuck doesn’t like puppies?”

“Priscilla,” she says. “She’d skin that puppy alive, cut off its tail, and storm in here to smack you across the face with it.” She points. “After she dropped the decomposing body on my desk.”

“Flowers?” I suggest.

Neesa pushes away from the desk. “You have a ten o’clock with the Strubinskis, an eleven o’clock with the Holloways, and a lunch meeting with your top three.”

“Anything else?”

She whirls around. “Yes. You’re an asshole.”

I chuckle. The door barely finishes shutting when my cell phone rings and Sean’s face lights up my screen. “What’s up?”

He’s chewing on something as he speaks, but that’s just Sean. “Hey,” he says, his South Carolina accent just as thick as mine. “I think I have an ingrown hair on my ass.”

Normal people say good morning. That sort of shit is lost on Sean.

“You don’t say,” I mumble, scrolling through the stock report.

“I asked the woman I’m seeing if she’d take a look at it. She told me no. You think Mason will look at it this weekend?”

“I’m certain he won’t,” I say, making a note to call Mrs. Valez and tell her I just made her a millionaire. “And before you ask, I ain’t looking at it, either.”

“Well, hell. If your best friends won’t look at your ass, who will?”

“Probably a doctor is my guess.”

“Hmm,” Sean says. “You may be on to something there.”

“Mm,” I agree. I’m ready to discuss the excursion to Vegas we have planned for this weekend, but Sean’s not done yapping.

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