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She sniffed at his tongue-and-cheek tone. “I’m not avoiding anything.”
“Uh-huh.” He slid into the spot next to her and opened a bottle of water.
She eyed his drink. “So I drink alone?”
He glanced at the bottle of wine. “I have a feeling you’re going to keep me on my toes. I need all my faculties operating at peak levels.”
She laughed. “But it’s okay if mine aren’t?”
“You get one glass of wine because I know you’re nervous.”
“I am not.”
He lifted a brow.
“Okay, fine, a little.” She picked up her pizza and took a bite so she didn’t have to say any more. It was loaded with veggies, and the sauce had a bit of heat to it. A garbled sound of pleasure slipped out.
He smiled. “You like? I didn’t put any meat on it because I didn’t know if you were vegetarian or not.”
She shook her head and swallowed her bite. “I’m not, but this is fantastic. What’s spicy?”
“A shot of Crystal hot sauce. The locals are wearing off on me.”
“He shrinks heads and cooks, ladies and gentlemen. A man of many talents.”
He licked a dollop of sauce off his thumb. “I have a very limited menu with the cooking so don’t set those expectations too high. On most days, it’s just takeout and sitting in front of the TV, working.”
“No play for you?” She had to bite back the cringe when she realized he’d probably been going to Dr. McCray for playtime. But if he thought of that, it didn’t show on his face.
“I don’t go out all that much. I have a few friends in the city and there are a few people at work who don’t think I’m an asshole. But generally, I keep things pretty simple.”
“Yeah, what’s up with the reputation at work?” she asked. “You pissing in people’s Cheerios when I’m not looking? I don’t get the aversion to you.”
He shrugged. “When I started here, I was in a really shitty place. I wasn’t looking to make friends. I wanted to get the X-wing up and running, and I wanted things done a certain way. I pretty much shut anything and anyone else down if it didn’t have a direct effect on that goal. So the reputation is well-earned. I’ve calmed down some since then, now that things are running more smoothly and settled down. But I’m still never going to be the guy heading up the company softball team or going to the after-work mixers. I’m still not here to make friends.”
She swallowed her bite and swiped her mouth with a napkin. “What’s wrong with friends?”
“Nothing, I guess. But I had a time in my life where it was all about socializing and parties and being seen and who you knew and filling life with all this bullshit stuff. I thought it was good medicine after what I’d been through. But it was just meaningless fluff. Background noise. Nobody was really friends. Not the kind who’d have your back or stand up for you. It was window dressing. I have no desire to have that kind of existence again.”
“That was when you were in L.A., right?” She took a sip of wine. “The celebrity fiancée and all that?”
He tilted his head in question. “You know about that?”
She held up her thumb and index finger, indicating a smidge of something. “I may have looked you up once or twice after you graduated to see how things turned out.”
“Oh? And what did you think of what you found?”
“Honestly?”
“Give it to me, Rush.”
“I didn’t recognize that guy. You seemed . . . fake and pretentious and smarmy. I read one interview and couldn’t match it up with the guy I’d met. I just figured money had changed you.”
He picked a topping off his pizza, thoughtful. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t the money. I’d already had a good bit of that from my parents. But fame was its own kind of numbing drug. It was easy to get lost in the glare and just play the role that people expected of me. I didn’t have to think too much about anything. Things moved too fast for that. At the time, that seemed like a fucking miracle, to be someone else. But like any drug, it was just killing me quietly.”
She heard the wariness hiding behind the bitter tone. “What happened?”
He set down his pizza, something in his expression going shuttered. “The whole thing had been going downhill already but then I caught Selena cheating. Everything kind of went to hell after that. I was . . . not in a good place. Eventually, it was Dr. Paxton who got my head out of my ass. He flew out to meet me and basically told me I was acting like a fucking idiot and wasting my education, my research, and my life.”
