Page 19 of Due South

But at this very second, I’m not sure I deserve her. I don’t have enough space to give her what she needs, to give her what she should have. All I’ve got is a crappy car; an even crappier apartment; and a family who’s too consumed by the needs of my kid brother to spare a thought for me but still needs me and sucks up the time not devoured by my crazy job.

My job I might lose if we keep this up.

My eyes have finally adjusted enough to the darkness in here to see the outline of Lucy pulling on her clothes. I want to reach out to her, apologize because I can’t be the guy she needs, that she deserves. But admitting I’m not good enough for her and I was taking pleasure where I could because it’s in short supply around here… I don’t know if I could take that kind of abject humiliation and remorse. So I say nothing and reach my hands out toward where I’m pretty sure I left my pants.

How did this go from feeling so fucking awesome to feeling so utterly crappy in the space of seconds?

I’ve got to get going because if I don’t get home and get at least a few hours of sleep, I’m going to be useless tomorrow and I can’t be useless. I have to do my job and not let people down more than absolutely necessary. And to function, I need some sleep and I bet Lucy does too. I pull on my clothes hurriedly, nearly zipping my finger into my pants and crawling over to the trash to toss the condom I wrapped up in tissues I’d had the foresight to stuff in my pocket. The last thing I need is someone finding a used condom in the copy room trash bin.

She’s standing now, and before she can scramble out, I stand up too. “Are you done? I mean—” Crap. I know she’s done, she came like whoa. Could I not sound stupid for once in my life? “—are you finished working for the night? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can be anywhere near productive until I get some sleep.”

There’s a soft laugh from her direction, and I wish I could see her face because I bet she’s blushing and she’s so pretty when she blushes and her eyelashes flutter. How do girls do that, anyway? Do they have special girl classes? Of course not, that’s ridiculous. But it still makes me wonder. Is it somehow imprinted in their genetic code?

“No, I can’t work anymore. You fucked me stupid, Evans.”

Best complimentever.

“Then can I, uh…”No, don’t ask, just do. I plant my feet a bit apart and stand up straight. But then I feel stupid because I must look as though I’m trying to strike a Superman pose and in the dark, which is… Wow, am I a mess. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Yeah, okay.”

It’s possible there’s a note of disappointment in her voice, and I want to invite her to come home with me. Except my apartment is a piece of shit and I don’t want her to see that. And if she’s not disappointed, then I don’t want to be that guy. The guy who thinks because you’ve had sex with someone a few times it means you’re all, you know, together. Which we can’t be anyway, so says the Burke Consulting Group employee handbook.

I open the door and the light floods in, and Lucy looks amazing. She always looks good, but I’ve got to say seeing her hair mussed and looking less put-together than she usually is, is damn sexy. Partly because I made her that way.

I hold out my arm in what I hope is a charming gesture. “Ladies first.”

She pokes her head out of the door and looks around before she walks out. I follow her to her desk where she gathers up her things and then we walk out together. When we get to her car, she does the same thing she did last night—gets into her car straight away. I’m a little relieved because it saves me the embarrassment of going to kiss her or at least give her a hug and having her turn her cheek or pull away. Even though I’d like to. Kiss her. Not furtively and not in the dark and not because we’re so consumed with need there’s nothing else we could possibly do. I want to because I like her and I want to kiss her.

But there’s no space and she doesn’t want that anyway. Tonight, when I close her door, I manage not to catch anything in it and I thank the gods of suaveness for at least allowing me that. She doesn’t roll her window down, but fumbles with her seatbelt before offering me a wave and pulling out of the space.

I stand there, watching her headlights twist and turn in the dark until she rounds a corner and I can’t see her any more. Tomorrow. We’ll go back to being nice, polite Lucy and Evans instead of furtive sex fiends tomorrow.

Chapter Seven

‡

December 20th

Evans

The office getsquieter with every day closer we get to Christmas. India came in for a while in the morning, but Cris picked her up a couple of hours ago, and I’ve heard the open and close of the door from down the hall. Muted, but sometimes with the added confirmation of someone calling a goodbye to me because they see the light spilling out from my office into the hallway.

I’ve started getting a handle on this project India threw at us. I’m not surprised Travers and Ellington screwed this up; they tend to do best on smaller, bite-sized projects, not sprawling ones like this. Not to mention they also tend to perform better when it’s something they’re interested in. Ellington likes managing trainings and public meetings, and Travers…well, Travers is smart but lazy, and if a project doesn’t involve flirting with clients, it’s not his jam.

And this—acting as a municipal advisor and putting together an official statement for the PRA for the bonds they plan to issue in the coming year to finance a new mixed-use neighborhood—is not sexy. It’s not flashy and people’s eyes tend to glaze over when I talk about it, but this stuff is my bread and butter. It’s the unassuming, devalued detail work that makes the world go ’round. Airports, stadiums, hospitals—these are the things that can get built because of the drudgery of boring ass municipal bonds.

I would’ve taken this project on from the start, but India needed me on other things so she gave it to Ellington and Travers. Whenever I can, I assign people to projects that will play to their strengths, although that makes India roll her eyes. She seems to think everyone has the same constitution she does:You have a job, fucking do it. But it doesn’t quite work that way for us mere mortals.

Speaking of mortals and their very human impulses…I haven’t seen Lucy at all today. I know she’s here, have heard the sweet low murmur of her voice as other people have talked to her, experienced a smidgen of jealousy they could chat her up without all that…stuff in between them.

I could’ve gone to see her before, tried to play it cool, but knowing me, I would’ve been anything but cool, so I’ve been avoiding her. My body’s pretty unhappy about that, though, and not just my heart that misses her sunshiny face and not just my dick that misses…well, all of her. My stomach is unhappy too, because avoiding Lucy has meant avoiding the kitchen. And coffee for that matter.

Since my ten o’clock yogurt, I’ve subsisted entirely on gum. I even thought about swallowing the last piece to get something in my stomach, but that seemed gross, so I didn’t. Then I’d never be able to talk to Lucy. Evans, the gum swallower. I may as well eat paste. Which makes my stomach grumble even louder. It’s a sad state of affairs when your internal organs are all,Yes, let’s eat school supplies, because that’s better than what’s been on offer for the rest of the day.

So I spit out the last piece of gum, a white wad of tasteless rubber by now, and head toward the kitchen. Lucy’s sitting at her desk as I thought she would be, a pencil stuck through her twisted-up hair, which means she must’ve worn it down this morning and changed her mind at some point.

I can tell she’s so absorbed in what she’s doing she hasn’t heard me, because she takes another pencil out of the cup on her desk and bites on it before stuffing that one in her hair too and blowing her bangs out of her face.

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