Page 66 of Sick of You

“Do you not hate me anymore?”

“Hate you? I didn’t hate you.”

He shot me a skeptical eyebrow, taking another bite of his bacon. “You can’t lie to me. It’s part of the platinum membership.”

I opened my mouth to fire back, but then I remembered how I’d treated him from the moment I’d met him. I shifted to try to swipe at the sweat tickling my back. “You can’t cut in line, platinum member or not.”

“I’m sorry.” He was surprisingly sincere. “I’ve never boarded coach before.” He cringed. “That sounded bad. Aaand you probably hate me for it.”

I held up my gloved hand, my finger and thumb an inch apart.

“Nobody wishes I had different parents more than me, but I can’t change it. Can we get past that?” he asked. “Or is that your final judgement?”

“Well—I mean, of course not—but that isn’t... why... I...”

“Why you hated me,” he repeated.

I started to object again but decided to settle for him using the past tense.

“You didn’t think a platinum member could do ethics?” he asked.

“Well—that food on the plane—that was basically stealing.”

Davis’s eyebrows jumped up an inch. “Accepting something offered to you is stealing now? I’ll be sure to let my father know the legal definition has changed.”

“No—I—but you asked for some for us.”

“I was trying to be nice. So you’d stop hating me.”

I had judged him instantaneously based on what, exactly? A slight that I now knew he didn’t intend? An attempt at generosity? I tried to ignore the blush warming my cheeks. I hardly needed more heat in this suit. Could I have been that wrong?

“Any other reasons?” Davis drawled.

“Well, Dr. Donaldson told me you asked him to be on the task force.”

“Oh yeah.” Davis’s smile deflated, like my hatred was now understandable.

“And Ithoughthe was saying you told him you didn’t want to work with a woman, and you basically didn’t respect women.”

“What?” He nearly dropped his forkful of eggs, and his understanding expression was gone. “Did I do something—?”

“No, no, it just wouldn’t be the first time. This week.”

Davis cringed for my sake. “Those Health Department dudes. I’m sorry about that, too. I thought you didn’t want to work with me.”

“You weren’t wrong. But now...” Now I thought about him all of the time.

Not admitting that. I held up the guidelines he’d revised. “Now we’ve made a lot of progress together.”

“Yeah.” His gaze held mine—and surely I was imagining this, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the guidelines. Or maybe I just hoped it didn’t.

“Just in time.” Davis gestured at the room. “You don’t think I hate or disrespect women anymore, right?”

“No, I don’t.”

“And my ethics check out?”

“Yes.”

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