Page 80 of A Hard Fit

“Unhinged?”

Rory laughed. “I was going to say intense, but yeah.”

“I mean, remodeling my house was stressful and he’s remodeling an entire amusement park. I get it. A lot of moving parts.”

Rory clicked open their calendar. “Are you free for a call with him this afternoon? Probably easier than trying to respond to all the emails.”

Finn nodded. “Sure. I’ll see if he’s available.” He emailed back to arrange a call at two o’clock and joined Rory in their office again when it was time.

“Markos.” An annoyed voice answered the phone.

“Markos, hi. This is Finn Owens from Breakpoint. Thanks so much for fitting us in today. How was your holid—”

“Yeah, it was great, how was yours, good, great. Let me tell you about this fucking boat ride—”

Finn and Rory exchanged a look.

“—You don’t mind if I swear, do you? Good. This fucking boat ride—the goddamned pipes burst in that cold snap last week, so now I’m up to my ass in glacier water and I’ve got a guy coming in tomorrow to rip the whole thing out—”

“You’re ripping out the boat ride?” Rory repeated, aghast. “Markos…are you sure you can’t fix it?

“I’m on the phone,” Markos snapped, a little muffled. “What? No! No, it’s not slate, it’sstone! I ordered fucking stone! Did he—? Goddamn it. Give me a minute.” His voice got louder again. “I’m done with it. We’ll put in a nice little… I don’t know what. Why don’t you two figure that out? Listen, I’ve got another fucking crisis on my hands. Call me when you’ve got some suggestions.” Then he was gone.

Finn and Rory stared at each other.

“Um…” Rory ventured.

“Yeah…” Finn agreed, rubbing his beard.

“I can’t believe he wants to get rid of that boat ride.” Rory sighed. “It was so romantic, the shadows rippling over your face, the smell of the honeysuckle, the water rippling… I wanted to kiss you so badly.”

“You’re the cutest ever.” Finn couldn’t resist leaning over to give Rory a peck on the cheek.

“Oh, stop,” Rory said, with an adorable head tilt and nose scrunch. “But I’m not wrong, am I? I wish he would keep it.”

“Let’s draft an email with the stuff you just said and send it off today. Maybe we can change his mind.”

Finn wasn’t expecting Markos to reply until the next day at the earliest, but his inbox dinged moments after he hit send, before he even left Rory’s office.

I told you to come up with something new. No boat ride.

That was it. No greeting, no sign off, nothing.

“Well, fuck,” Finn said, showing the message to Rory.

Rory stuck out their lower lip. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. Guess we need to come up with something else!”

“Any ideas?”

“Not yet.”

Rory leaned back in their chair. “What about all his emails, too? I thought he wanted to go over all that website design stuff with us and give us some notes on the commercials.”

Finn sighed. He had a feeling there were more problems ahead with Markos besides a leaky boat ride.

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