Page 28 of Bulletproof

“Jory?”

I turned to my left, and there was Fallon Strauss. He was going in, and I was coming out for the last time. I shook my head and started walking away. But he was suddenly there, in front of me, lifting an umbrella over me, staring into my face.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, looking me over, up and down.

“I’m going home,” I said, walking around him, the rain that was really starting to come down soaking me in seconds.

“Jory,” he barked at me, barring my path again, the umbrella keeping me from drowning as he stepped in closer. “What’re you talking about? We’re both late for that stupid meeting.”

I shook my head. “I just got fired.”

His lime-green eyes got huge. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not ki— I gotta go, Fal. I’m gonna drown here.”

He grabbed the lapel of my peacoat and dragged me halfway down the street to a steak house that had a wide awning. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, so we were alone, but it was loud, the water rushing down the sides as if the sky had opened up and just dumped down water.

“Jory,” he said, shaking himself off, taking off his wire-framed glasses, which had fogged up, “what’s going on?”

I put my now-soggy box down on the bench under the restaurant menu board and took his glasses from him before he could say a word. My T-shirt, two layers down under my suit jacket, was dry. I wiped the lenses carefully, the cold air hitting my bare abdomen like ice, and then handed them back. His expression was hard to read.

“That was certainly a nice view,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

“Sorry?”

He shook his head. “Jesus, Jory, are you really this oblivious?”

“You lost me.”

Heavy sigh from him then. “Were you serious? Becker fired you?”

“Yep, just now. I pissed off Mr. Fisher, apparently.”

He nodded. “I see. That explains my client meeting this afternoon. I was supposed to be seeing Michelle this morning.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Yeah,” he said, dragging his hand through his short, dark brown curls. “Listen, I’ve been working on a deal for a while now that I’ve wanted to talk to you about, so this is absolutely amazing that I ran into you … and fucking terrifying at the same time.”

I studied his face and realized he looked really nervous.

“Jory, I’m resigning today and going to work for Benchmark Limited, and I would really, really like it if you came with me.”

I was still home, sleeping in my bed—I just knew it.

“What?”

He exhaled quickly. “You—I listen to you when we have meetings and stuff, and your ideas about events are great. They just never put you in charge of anything because you’re so all over the place. I think your thoughts and sort of rabid excitement would be fantastic if it was tempered with someone who grounded you and could see the task through to the end.”

I was in some bizarro alternate universe where Fallon Strauss and I were friends or had actually spoken more than ten words to each other in our entire lives.

“I’m freaking you out.”

“Little bit, but go on.”

“Michelle’s so worried that I want her job that she can’t get past it.” He smiled at me, shifting from one foot to the other, his restless hand back in his curls, tugging on them. “But she said that as far as concepts go and coming up with things out of the blue, you’re the guy. It’s just that your follow-through is shit.”

Which was true. Michelle knew me at work very well.