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I don’t give him time to growl the place down. I have enough to think about already. I leave, basically running out of his office, and shut the door shut tightly behind me.
I retreat past the wall of offices, out to the safety of my cubicle in the big open area. The whole building is bland and too modern, too white. The offices are super nice, but the cubicles leave something to be desired. I don’t see any of it when I sit down hard in my chair.
What the heck did I just agree to in there?Well, I agreed to help my parents out so that they don’t lose their house because my dad is on disability, to help pay for my little sister’s education and lower my student debt so I can breathe again, and also to a week-long holiday that I’ve been longing for almost more than anything this past year.
But none of that has anything to do with why I said yes.
I am so pooched in the poocher.That’s a new one. And nasty. Congrats.
I switch on my computer just to distract myself and nearly groan when I see that the internal messaging chat thread is still going on. I read a few of the last times, stopping on the very bottom one. It was sent just a few seconds ago.
Jane:Maybe instead of calling him Lord Poo, we should actually be calling him Mr. Vampire Devil Puppy Eater. Mr. Vadeputer for short.
I exit the chat and put my head in my hands.Great. What does that make me, then? Mrs. Vadeputer?
3
LEON
“This is a poor time to stand someone up.” My growl practically rattles off the walls of my room, and that’s saying something because the acoustics in this house are generally quite good, meaning sound doesn’t bounce around like the walls are hollow.
“I’m sure she’s not going to stand you up.” My sister, Kitty, looks way more certain about that than I probably do. Right now, I probably look like a thunderous arsehole about to bite someone’s head off. I’ve seen cartoon toilets do that. In that scenario, I quite enjoyed it. In this one, not so much.
My head is throbbing, and the only thing I need is for Darby to show up so that we can get married for the very real purpose of not getting my bottom tossed back to Ireland. I’ve spent the past few days putting everything together. I asked her to show up at eleven. It’s now twenty minutes after, and she. Is. Not. Here.
I must be raking my hand through my hair and rubbing at my temples because when I turn away from the windows in my room where I have the sun-blocking roller shades pulled all the way down, Kitty is giving me one of her favorite—you’re going to give yourself a coronary if you don’t chill—looks.
“It’s her wedding day.” Kitty snaps the gum that she’s chewing. She walks over to me and sets a hand on my shoulder—she’s the one person that is allowed to do that. She chews her gum annoyingly right in my ear, just because she knows it’s a pet peeve of mine. She’s not more than five feet tall, but somehow, her chewing sounds like she’s leaning right into my ear canal. “All women take a while to get ready, and they run late. She wants to look nice.”
“It’s not even real,” I hiss.
Kitty crosses her arms. “The fact that you would harp on that after she’s saving your bacon and probably your eggs, too, just shows me how little you know about women.”
“Of course, I know nothing about women. No woman in their right mind would actually want to get to know me.”
“Not when you act like a dude with a stick wedged so far up his butt cheeks that it’s actually a tree and not a stick at all. Yeah, they wouldn’t.” I huff, and Kitty grins. Her hand tightens on my arm, right above my suit jacket. “Seriously, big brother, anyone would love to get to know you if you’d give them half the chance. You’re the best man in the whole world.”
I want to whip off my prosthetic hand and get her to look underneath. I want to ask her if she’d like to have that hand anywhere near her. But she’s my sister, and that would just be wrong. She’d probably laugh at me and say my hand can still do wonderful things, like flip people off. And then she’d tell me to stuff that plastic shite where the sun doesn’t shine because what other people think doesn’t matter.
I bite down on the words to ask if Kitty would ever want to date anyone who was so fucked up that their own head was literally…well, mush(ish). She’d roll her eyes at me for that, too, then give me a lecture on why she thinks I’m wonderful, and while she might be entitled to think that because of the way we grew up, no other woman in the world would think the way she does.
“I’m far from the best man.” I settle for that instead.
Kitty nods. “That’s right. Today you’re not the best man. You’re the groom. It’s so romantic. The fact that she wants to take you to her family’s cabin. I know you’ll have a great time. You know, barring sunlight and all the awesomeness that you probably won’t participate in and everything.”
“Thanks for that. Thank you so much, Kitty. But she has to show up here first.” I will not look at my watch again. I’m starting to go a little mad upstairs with the waiting, and my upstairs is already squirrely as it is.
“Did you get her a ring?”
“What do you think?” I huff.
“No. But what will you exchange then?”
“Yes, I got rings. Fake ones from some department store.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I love you, Leon, but you’re a bit of a prick sometimes. You’re rich. You could have bought a real one.” I roll my eyes, but Kitty pretends like she doesn’t see it. “Are you going to tell her?”
“No,” I growl. “Absolutely not.”
