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“Whoa, where’s the fire?”
“Is it something we said?”
He snapped back to the meeting room. Fifteen or so faces looking at him with what the fuck expressions.
“Do I need to be in this meeting?”
Nerida was standing too. “Reid, are you okay?”
He sat, “Fine.”
“You don’t look fine. Would you like to take a break? We can come back to this.”
This was a presentation of advertising concepts for their new campaign.
“Is there such a thing as breakup sex?”
If the standing up for no appreciable reason hadn’t enlightened them all to his less than focused on the task at hand state of mind, what he’d said blew a hole in their collective heads.
“There is, right?” He knew it in his cold bones. Zarley was thinking of leaving him. Maybe already had.
“Ah, Reid, maybe you should—” He looked at Nerida. She closed her mouth and nodded. “There is.”
Another voice, one of the ad agency guys said, “Hurts like a bitch.”
His female colleague said, “It’s a damn good idea, the whole concept of breaking up with your current supplier and starting a relationship with Plus. How it’s emotional, the various stages, complacency, fear, regret, relief.”
A conversation started, the attention shifting from him. Nerida knelt by his chair and pitched her voice low. “That’s not what you meant, is it?”
He grunted a no.
“We’ve got this, boss. You should go and do stuff that’s more important.”
“I should fess up. They think I’ve given them an ad concept.”
“You have. Ideas come from everywhere.”
“That’s—” he shook his head. More important things. He stood and the conversation stopped. Everyone in the room looked at him. “Sounds good to me.” He hadn’t taken in a word since the meeting started. “I’ll get out of your hair.” He looked at Nerida, who’d stood with him. “Nerida’s got this. If you louse it up there’ll be breakup sex all round.”
That got a chorus of laughs and groans and he used its cover to quit the room. Two doors down, Dev was running a team meeting. He barged in. No women in this room, less chance of offending. Six engineers he’d worked with for years turned their heads to look at him.
“I have a question.”
Dev tried to shut him down. “If it’s about the changes to the back-end protocol—”
“Are you meant to know if you’ve had breakup sex?”
Stunned silence. No one here was going to misinterpret him. Dev put his head on the table with a thump.
Reid pulled a vacant chair out and sat. “I had. I’m not sure what it was. I might’ve fucked up. I need help.”
“We were meeting about work things, because we’re at work,” Dev said largely to the table.
“I know, but who else am I going to ask?”
“I’ve had it.” They all looked at Greg. Unmarried, untidy, surfed in his spare time. “I really liked that girl,
white blonde hair, crazy blue eyes. I never saw it coming. She stopped answering my calls.”
