Page 12 of See You Next Tuesday

“I never said cheap.”

“You said ‘staff discount,’ which is close enough.”

“There was no non-awkward way to bring up that we’d met!” Gabe huffed. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, remember we talked one time?’ Like, okay? Who cares? And by the way, I didn’t know if you remembered me.”

He poked her arm playfully and gave her a little grin. But she drew her arm back under the booth and looked down at her beer.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

He peered at her. She really did look upset. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She looked up, and she was smiling again. “It’s a good night. Go back to the bar, okay? You were nice to check on me.”

Something about her face—that mask of “everything’s okay,” how quickly she put it on—felt like a punch right in Gabe’s gut.

“Okay, well, first of all you’re a terrible liar, and second, Dawn appears to be doing a bear fight with Toby, so I’m good to hang here for a second.”

“Bear fight?” Anya scrunched up her nose when she was puzzled—adorable.

“You do a car bomb and a Jager bomb in a row,” Gabe explained. “Whoever finishes first wins.”

“Oh, god. That doesn’t kill you?”

“It doesn’t kill her.” Gabe jerked his head toward the bar. “It would absolutely kill me. Anyway. What’s going on?”

Anya sighed. “I was up for this big promotion in DC. My boss said if I brought home a victory here, it was a sure thing. Except I just talked to him, and apparently it wasn’t.”

“You didn’t get the promotion?”

Anya swallowed hard. For a horrible second, Gabe thought she might cry, but then her expression went flat.

“He doesn’t think I’m ready,” she said, her voice dull and even. “And he calls himself my mentor, so I suppose he would know.”

“What the hell? This race was barely a toss-up when you got here, and we just won by four points. Toby will tell anyone who’ll listen how much that had to do with you.”

“You really think that?” She met his eye for a second, more vulnerable than he’d seen her.

“So what’s your boss’s problem?” Gabe pressed. “He told you to win and you did.”

“I had work to do for him too.” Anya shrugged. “I blew it off to do more here. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”

“Wait.” Something jogged in Gabe’s memory. “Like when you ditched writing that report to take a shift on doors?”

“Exactly like that, as a matter of fact.” Anya drained the rest of her beer.

“Why’d you do it, then?” Gabe was genuinely confused. He took Anya for an ass-kissing straight-A student, not someone who ignored a direct order from her boss.

“Because those reports are dumb! They’re basically reformatted articles that any idiot could google,” she grumbled. “And canvassing is my favorite thing in the world—it would suck if I spent two weeks here and never took a shift.”

He couldn’t help smiling at that.

“What?” she said. “You don’t believe me?”

“I do.” He leaned forward. “Listen, you didn’t want that promotion.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I can assure you I very much did.”

“No, you didn’t! That job sucks, and your boss sounds like an asshole.”