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“Nothing wrong with mixing it up.” I added a nervous giggle after I spoke.
She took another sip of her drink. “No, there’s not.”
We sat for a few minutes, and then she smiled at me, the conspiratorial expression on her face one that I recognized.
“So, you’ve been spending a lot of time with Josh lately…”
“Have I?” I asked, taking a sip of the dirty chai to try to calm my nerves.
Instead, I felt my throat closing, the contents of my stomach threatening to make an exit.
I swallowed them back, then looked at Carol with hopefully a placid expression on my face.
“Yeah. He’s always dropping by your office,” she said.
“People always drop by my office,” I said with a shrug. “That’s why I can never get anything done.”
“Yeah, I’d put out a restraining order out on Keenan. Or break his kneecaps,” she said.
“Carol, I told you to let that go,” I said, my stomach sinking.
Keenan had been scheduled for vacation, one I knew he was never coming back from. I wasn’t sure how Davit planned to handle that, and as terrible as it was, I could barely make myself care. I had much bigger things to worry about now.
Carol scoffed, bringing me back to the moment. “Let it go? Never! I can’t believe Raphael hired him. That boy will be on my shit list until the day I die.”
I laughed but didn’t say anything else. In fact, it warmed me that at least Carol had my back, even if that meant holding onto what I could now see was a petty grudge.
“Anyway, Josh. What do you think?” she asked.
I shrugged. “He’s a great programmer. And he’s very good at his job.”
“I’m not talking about his résumé. The man is hot! Tell me you haven’t noticed so I can tell you you’re lying.”
I laughed, then took another sip. I’d done a lot more than notice, not that I would ever tell Carol that.
“Yes. He’s handsome enough.”
“Handsome enough,” she scoffed.
“But anyway, he’s a colleague. And one I highly doubt would be interested in me.”
That I managed to say that with a straight face after all we had done was a testament to me.
Two months ago, there’d been no way I could have managed the lie.
But things changed, and I was living proof of it.
“I’m just saying. If you ever decide to stop being shy, you should give him a go.”
“Give him a go, Carol?”
She laughed. “Well, what I mean to say is I would climb him like a tree. But you know I leave that stuff to young people.”
“I don’t think it’s anything you need to worry about,” I said.
Then I went quiet, not wanting to test my newfound ability to lie. Although I guessed it wasn’t really a lie.
Josh Kelley hadn’t gotten me into the situation that I now I found myself in.
