Page 14 of Fierce-Hyde

“You’ll figure it out, Hyde. You always do.”

“Just not so well,” he said, sighing.

5

BRING THE WORST

“You can’t avoid my office forever,” Raina said to her two weeks later.

“I’m not,” Tori said, stabbing her fork into her salad.

Raina had been out at a client meeting and picked up food and stopped into Tori’s office for their weekly lunch.

Last week the only two days Tori could have met for lunch, Raina couldn’t, so they skipped a week through no fault on either of their parts. It was just something that happened.

If Tori was somewhat thankful she didn’t have to chance seeing Hyde again, she didn’t say. Nor did she try to analyze why she didn’t want to see him.

Raina had told her that Hyde showed up in her office right away, but she’d told her best friend not to tell her more. She wanted to form her own opinion if and when she talked to him again.

She was leaning toward not talking to him again since he appeared to bring the worst out of her.

She hadn’t thought anyone had that ability. Not even her mother.

“Could have fooled me,” Raina said. “You hate eating here because you complain your office is too small.”

She had a small office, and to eat lunch together, they had to crowd around her desk. Raina had a table in her office where she was often laying out blueprints and they could sit there comfortably.

“You were out and this was on your way,” she said, grinning. No reason to argue about this too much. Raina would just call her out on it.

“What’s going on?” Raina asked. “You said you’d take care of it if Hyde came to me. Normally that means you tackle it head-on.”

“I know,” she said. “I just hate how he brings this ugly side out of me. Even though I feel I was justified in my responses to him.”

“Completely,” Raina agreed, nodding her head.

“I still didn’t like doing it. Or like feeling as I had. My mother doesn’t even make me say those things.”

“Maybe youshouldbe that way with your mother,” Raina said, grinning. “You’d feel better after.”

“She wouldn’t though,” she said. “And then it’s more of a headache for me again.”

“What’s going on now? You never said.”

“The same old same old. She hates her apartment and wants to leave, but it’s so hard to keep starting over. And she wants to retire but doesn’t have enough money to do that.”

“How old is your mother again?” Raina asked.

“She’s fifty-nine. She’s moved around so much and never put money away. If she did and got the payout, she didn’t reinvest and took a hit on taxes. I’m not sure what she wants from me. I’m doing well, but it’s not like I can go buy a house or anything and that is my next goal.”

“You’ll get it soon,” Raina said. “I know you. You probably are ready but just think you’re not.”

Story of her life. Plan for everything and then have more than she needs before she actually pulls the trigger.

Maybe it was the fact she spent so much of her life caring for others and helping them dig their way out of holes that she never wanted to get into one herself.

“Probably,” she said. “But it never hurts to put more away.”

“So your mother wants you to move back to Florida and buy a house there so she can live with you and not work?” Raina asked.

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