Page 59 of Faker
“I got your text.” His tone is nonchalant, casual, and every bit a surprise.
“Your timing couldn’t be more perfect. Or awful, depending on how you look at it.”
He shrugs. “I take it the meeting with Jamie didn’t go well?”
“You caught the tail end of it, didn’t you?”
He nods.
“‘Didn’t go well’ is putting it nicely. I’m pissed. We didn’t talk about work at all. He wanted to talk about you and me. And then me and him.”
He clenches his jaw, which shifts his expression into hard territory. When I cradle his face in my hand, he immediately softens. There’s a gentle moan.
“I told him I wasn’t interested in him other than as a friend.”
“A friend?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Friend” is the buzzword of the day.
“We have to work next to him for several months. You have to see him at the rock climbing gym. It’s best if we stay on friendly terms. You understand, right?”
“Not my favorite thing in the world to see him try to kiss you, though.” There’s an edge to his voice, but he seems to understand.I can tell by the softness in his eyes and how his hand squeezes my hip.
“I didn’t like it either.”
“Maybe you’ll like this.”
He places a giant orange and green papaya into my hands. My jaw drops at the sight of my second favorite fruit. I didn’t even notice he was holding anything. This is what he meant earlier in the stairwell when he said he would make it up to me.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asks.
“Of course.”
He takes my hand and leads me to sit down on the curb with him. “Why did your family move all the way out here?”
The randomness of his question nearly makes me laugh, but then I remember that he asked me this in the hospital. I never answered him, bombarding him instead with personal questions of my own.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
He nuzzles my neck, wetting my skin with his breath. “Not when it comes to you.”
I swoon from the inside out. “Money. My parents couldn’t afford to live in Hawaii anymore. My dad has family in the Midwest, and he and my mom decided it would be better to live here since it’s cheaper. And my dad’s family offered to watch my sister and me so my parents could save money on babysitters. So we moved, but it didn’t help things all that much. My dad still could never hold a job for long.”
“Why?”
“He has a difficult personality. Very stubborn. He got into arguments all the time with his bosses and coworkers. He’d get fired or quit. It drove my mom nuts. She eventually got sick of it anddivorced him. My little sister and I lived with her from then on and saw him every other weekend.”
He stares at me with tenderness and sympathy. I realize now he’s been looking at me with those emotions in his face ever since I fell at the worksite. It makes something in my chest flutter.
“That must have been hard,” he says.
“It was for the best. They’re better apart.”
“You’re so strictly business. About everything. I like that about you.”
My cheeks flush at his compliment. “It killed my mom to leave Hawaii. She loved it there.” My chest aches thinking back on how sad she was when we first moved.
“Do you think she regrets moving?”
“I think so. She would never admit it, though. She cried most nights our first few months living here. She waited until she thought my sister and I were asleep, but I could hear her sometimes.”
