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THREE
Amethyst
I went home full,happy, and surprisingly content.
An unlikely end to the evening after the way it had started with my father. But then, Josh always had that effect on me.
He always made things better, made me feel valued, feel special.
I knew it was nothing, but that didn’t stop the way I felt when he was around, or even when I thought of him.
I made sure to remind myself it was just a harmless little crush, one I would never act on. And that was exactly how it would stay.
First, because there was no way Josh would ever be interested in me. We got along well enough, but I was me—awkward, overweight, dorky me.
And he was, well, him, with sexy eyes, a drool-worthy body, and a voice that made me shiver.
Beside, even if, by some miracle he expressed any kind of interest, I’d shut that down. I had fallen for pretty words once, and it had ended miserably.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake again, so I had nothing to worry about.
I could admire Josh from afar, knowing that he would never have any interest in me, and be safe.
And while sometimes that thought—looking but never, ever touching—left me a little hollow, it beat the hell out of the alternative and spared me the pain of the rejection that would inevitably come.
Once I made it back home, I watered the cactus Josh had given me and prepared to settle in for the night shift.
My house was small, a little over a thousand square feet, with two bedrooms and one bathroom. My father had insisted I not buy it, had even refused to give me the down payment like he had promised when I’d graduated college, but I’d loved the place from the first time I’d seen it. I had been smart with my money and saved up enough of a down payment to buy it on my own.
It was in a lovely neighborhood, though my father often called it transitioning with a derogatory little sneer. I never pointed out to him that he had been raised less than two blocks away from my house, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate the reminder.
This house was one of the only things in my life that he hadn’t dictated, and I loved it. And every time I walked in, I felt a tiny bit of pride.
So, after I changed into pajamas, grabbed a bottle of water, and settled on the couch with my laptop, I sat in silence, enjoying the few moments of peace and contentment.
And then I got to work.
I’d gotten a dual degree in computer science and mathematics, but I enjoyed working in the records department.
Or at least I told myself I did.
Sometimes I wished that I was a little more challenged at work, but the job in records freed up my mind to do things like this.
I had full access to all of the company’s records, and several weeks ago, something had caught my eye. Now was my chance to follow up on it.
I flipped through the invoices for the past month, again noticing the discrepancy I’d spotted before.
All of our bills of lading included a packing list and overall freight weight.
But every fourth delivery had a slight discrepancy between the packing list items and overall freight weight.
At first, I’d overlooked it, thought that someone had made an error.
But as I looked closer, that error didn’t seem so accidental.
In fact, the “error” was a pattern, and as the night progressed, I dug deeper and saw that the same pattern had repeated again and again, every third or fourth delivery for at least the past year.
I stretched, looked at my watch, and realized it was three in the morning.
