Page 26 of Stuck On Them

“Well, when she came out of the bathroom after crying, we were talking about the ongoing email issues. It doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it at least correctly sorts most of it to make it more manageable.”

“She was crying?” My stomach churned at that. I figured she’d probably be upset after what happened earlier, but not crying upset.

Jesus, I had the emotional intelligence of a sea urchin and was just as spiky.

A knowing grin slowly spread across his face. “I see.”

“You see nothing, Ethan. Go do your job.” I went back to opening random files and closing them. I couldn’t even think about what I needed to do, but maybe Ethan would see I was busy and leave.

“I wonder how Garrett will feel about her unfair and untimely termination seeing as he took her out to lunch… to Pastrami Palace.”

“Garrett. Did. What?” It was common knowledge that when Garrett went to Pastrami Palace he wanted to be left alone. I’d eaten there plenty of times with Luca or grabbed a sandwich to go, but never with Garrett. “Wait. How do you even know this?”

“I heard them talking on the way to the elevator.” I wouldn’t have put it past Ethan to make shit up. If he wasn’t my sister’s best friend, I’d have fired him already.

Stop firing people, asshole.

It wasn’t my own voice in my head. Now, apparently Paige’s voice had wormed its way into my conscious thought.

I picked up my cell phone and scowled at Ethan, sending him scurrying out of my office. Garrett taking Paige out to lunch complicated things a bit, and I needed to find out what exactly he was thinking.

The phone rang once before Garrett answered with a loud sigh. There were muffled sounds of traffic in the background and the click-click of a turn signal.

“No hello?” My voice was calm even though I was anything but.

Out of the three of us, Garrett was the last one who needed to be taking one of our hookups out. We’d been down this road before, and it had been a clusterfuck.

The only difference this time was I was feeling some kind of way too.

Fuck.

“I told you I was leaving for the day.” He sounded as tired as I felt. “What is it?”

“I heard you took Paige to lunch.” It annoyed me more than it should have, or was that jealousy? No, I wasn’t jealous. Why the hell would I be jealous? I barely knew her.

You know her better than you think.

“Uh... Yeah, so?” His tone was dismissive and made me want to throw my phone across my office.

I looked at the time on my computer. “It’s barely eleven.”

“Again, yeah. So?” Garrett’s words were sharp and clipped.

“You took her to Pastrami Palace.”

He was silent.

“Garrett.” My voice was low and rough, my agitation starting to get the better of me. “You aren’t denying it? I thought Pastrami Palace was your sacred place of solitude or some bullshit.”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” he snapped.

“What the fuck does that have to do with pastrami?”

“You might want to take a look. You might be turning green.” Where was his attitude coming from? He was usually the calm one out of the three of us.

His words hit me like a wave. Why did I have the urge to jump through the phone and put him in a headlock? That type of behavior was completely beneath me, so I swallowed down my indignation and kept calm.

You forget where you came from.

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