Page 7 of Eddie
Shelby had arrived.
“It’s going to be fine. Worst-case scenario, you apologize for being lost.” The advice in his adorable peptalk as he walked in the door wasn’t wrong and it even made Silas smile. “Oh.”
His deer-in-the-headlights look when he glanced between Silas, the omega at the front desk, and me was adorable, but my favorite part was the way he straightened and studied everyone.
“You are not Not-Henry.” His confident statement made Silas cock his head which added to Shelby’s sureness. “Not-Henry doesn’t smile either, but you donotwork behind a computer most of the day.”
Mumbling something to himself about hours in the day versus hours at the gym, he peeked around me at the giggling twink at the front desk who was actually kind of badass. “Nope. Too happy. Nice to meet you, though. I need friends who don’t think I’m weird. So I’ll be saying hello again on my way out.”
Of course he would.
Shelby dated terribly but he liked people and would talk to anyone.
The whole situation was just so very Shelby that I was smirking by the time he got back to me. “Hi, Not-Henry.”
“Still not Henry.” My response had him trying not to smile.
Silas seemed to think we were insane but he kept that mostly to himself as he waited quietly for Shelby to respond. “You’ll be Not-Henry forever at this rate. I’ve called you Henry the…”
Pausing, Shelby looked at our audience again. “I’ve called you Henry for so long it’s stuck. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to remember another name. I can try, though.”
“I’m not the pizza delivery guy.” My response had Silas and Shelby both rolling their eyes but for completely different reasons.
“That’s not fair. He has a thick accent. I’ve tried to figure it out but I can’t even narrow down what country he’s from. Every story about his family has them in different parts of the world. He’s either fucking with me and from Jersey or he’s fromeverywhere.”
From everywhere.
“How about you just make sure not to tell him anything personal and don’t ask specific questions about his family?” Thatguy really should not have been sharing as much as he did. “And don’t worry about his name. It’s six inches long and he actually tells everyone else to call him Bob.”
He just seemed to have a thing for Shelby but the slightly weird beta was nowhere near dominant enough to ping Shelby’s curiously skewed Dom radar.
“Bob?” His eyes went wide. “Mrs. Simpson upstairs keeps calling him that. I thought she was just being racist. Oh dear. I’m going to have to be nicer to her.”
As Shelby muttered to himself about bringing the crazy lady cookies, he gave his head a shake and stood straighter, focusing back on me before long. “I’m glad you’re real, Not-Henry, and I’m really glad this place is real. But why do we have an audience? It’s weird.”
“How much caffeine did you have today?” I was starting to hate the fact that I didn’t even have my phone on me. “You hadn’t bought any earlier and your groceries don’t get delivered until tomorrow.”
His guilty look had me sighing, but the way he rocked back and forth on his feet like a naughty toddler made me want to smile. “I used my spare change. You haven’t been keeping track of that.”
Brat.
“How much coffee?” He had an addiction that was slightly at the unhealthy level and it took a lot of effort to make sure he could only buy enough for two cups a day. It’d also takena lotof effort to get him down to just that much caffeine.
Looking everywhere around the room except at me, he finally shrugged. “The big one with the weird name.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Shelby.” I was going to have to redo my software to make sure I was taking spare change into account. “What did the doctor say?”
“You’re reading his medical charts?” Silas’s normally deep voice had gone almost screechy, but I kept my eyes on a very guilty-looking Shelby.
“That my heart doesn’t like caffeine and I need to make better decisions.” The doctor’s explanation had been a lot more thorough based on his notes, but it’d basically boiled down to Shelby’s body not processing caffeine the same way most people’s did.
It’d actually seemed to be more common in omegas than I’d realized, but Shelby was stupidly stubborn when it came to some things.
“Did you make a good decision?” I clearly hadn’t been watching him closely enough. “Well?”
“No.” Still looking like a wiggly child, he pouted as he finally turned his gaze in my general direction. “But I was nervous and excited and I didn’t have to use my car to get coffee, so I knew you wouldn’t figure it out. You haven’t been tracking my steps recently.”
