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The drunk man shrugged and pushed the door close button.
When the doors closed, I looked at him questioningly.
“They smelled bad,” he muttered. “And I’m not squeezing in there with that. Fuckin’ gross.”
I nodded in understanding. “My nose is all stopped up. I can’t smell a thing.”
He grunted out a ‘you should be thankful’ and pressed the button to go up a second time.
This time, when the elevator arrived, there was only one person on it and that one was too busy playing on her phone to even pay attention to either one of us.
“People and their electronic devices,” Slate muttered. “What the fuck? When did that get so important? Why not live and experience life? You can’t find what you’re looking for in a goddamn screen.”
I looked at him with surprise.
“I never really thought about that, but I guess I am quite guilty of doing that also,” I admitted.
He looked over at me.
“I’ve been with you for hours now, and not once besides when your dad called did you ever look at your phone.” He indicated the woman that had just left the elevator. “She didn’t even look up.”
I pressed the button for my floor, turned my back to the wall, and leaned against it. “I suppose you’re right. But there were extenuating circumstances.”
I.e., you.
Yet I didn’t say that part aloud.
“Still,” he muttered darkly. “It’s just fuckin’ annoying. What’s even more annoying is to find people texting and driving and almost running me off the road. It’s like I have to pay double the attention that I used to, based solely on the fact that people can’t keep their goddamn eyes on the road.”
That was true.
“I had my dad install a train horn on my car,” I smiled brightly. “It takes up a lot of my trunk, but it’s so totally worth it to honk at people that are on their phone.”
His lips twitched. “That’s actually kind of funny.”
The elevator doors opened, signaling we’d arrived.
“Come on,” I said with a tilt of my chin. “Come to the locker room with me.”
He followed me this time instead of me following him, and we arrived in time to see shift change happening.
The woman that was taking over for me waved. I waved back. “Good luck out there. It’s a mess.”
She snorted as she held the door of the break room open for me. “I’ve heard. Have a good one.”
“You, too,” I said, pushing the door open wide.
Slate caught the door and held it for me to pass through, and I did, going under his arm like I was a small child instead of a fully grown adult.
His eyes took in the small room as I walked to my locker, and his face lit on the cookies—or what was left of the cookies—that I’d bought from him just that afternoon.
“You shared?” he asked as I spun my lock, cursing when on the first try it didn’t open.
“No,” I snorted. “That was my lunch. I just didn’t get a chance to clean it up before I was paged back out.”
I fucked the combination up again, causing him to study me.
Then I really wasn’t going to get it.
“I guess I don’t really need my purse,” I muttered darkly.
He walked up to me and shouldered me out of the way slightly. “What’s the combination?”
“23-7-44,” I murmured.
He popped it open with the first try.
I glared at him.
He shrugged. “You went around twice instead of once the first time around.”
That was true.
I never remembered how many times I did it.
I should’ve bought a key lock a long time ago.
I missed it more than I got it at this point.
And having him this close to me wasn’t helping matters.
Grabbing my bag, I shouldered it and slammed my locker closed before once again locking it.
“If you could come open it for me before and after each shift, I’d appreciate it,” I teased.
His lip twitched—something that had been happening a lot tonight—and I felt almost giddy.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded and reached for my trash on the way out the door, tossing it in the trashcan as I left.
He watched me do this, then held the door open for me once again.
I didn’t duck as I went under his arm, but my hair did brush his arm as I passed underneath him.
“Almost made it,” he teased.
The ride down the elevator was less exciting this time, but we did happen to get on the same one that had the drunks on it earlier. I could smell the alcohol still, ten minutes later.
He didn’t say a word and neither did I as he led me into the parking lot toward his bike.
It was parked in a prime spot right outside the front doors.
“Nice,” I said as I handed him my bag to tuck into his saddlebags.
He took it, stuffed it in, and then said, “Sometimes luck is on my side.”
