I turned my head to look at him to see if he was serious. “So you want to be a tattoo artist?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No, I’m just pointing out that I could be a tattoo artist.” I stared at him for a minute.
“Never mind. Uh, I rigged up a buddy’s videogame system to play in his bathroom.”
Okay, that was somewhat impressive, so I changed the wording a little and added it to the list of skills. I also really wanted to see this bathroom videogame system.
“Genius.” He gave me a fist bump and I was reminded a bit of his brother. They were so much alike sometimes.
“What are we fist bumping?” Lucah said, coming over with three cups of coffee.
“Your woman making my résumé seem much less pathetic than it actually is. She’s not just a hot piece of ass.” Before Lucah could reprimand him, I reached over my shoulder and grabbed hold of Ryder’s ear and pinched it between my fingers.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he said, wiggling to get away. Lucah just laughed.
“You asked for it.”
I finally let go and gave him a look that I hoped he understood.
“Rip my ear off, why don’t you?” he said, rubbing it.
“Next time I will. You keep your smart mouth to yourself.”
“Yes, Miss Clarke,” he said in a mocking tone.
“Watch it,” Lucah said, pointing at him.
“Fuck you,” Ryder said. And that was the end of that.
Sloane and Ryder still couldn’t take their eyes off each other, but they didn’t appear to be taking things any further than that. I almost asked Sloane about it a dozen times, but I kept my mouth shut. I’d tried meddling before and that had crashed and burned, so I was going to stay out of it as much as possible.
Lucah and I kept to our new ritual of sharing the things that bothered us before we went to sleep. They varied from me being irritated that he didn’t clean the sink after he shaved, to him being annoyed by one of the other software developers’ mouth breathing tendencies, to me being bugged by the Board of Directors. That was my key annoyance. Actually, it went beyond annoyance. I was pissed off about the whole thing, and had been for a while. It was going to take everything in me to keep my mouth shut at that meeting if Dad did what I had the feeling he was going to do.
The work days seemed endless, but finally Friday dawned. Cold, rainy and miserable, but at least it matched my mood.
“Are you nervous?” Lucah said as he did my hair in a power twist and I slipped on my favorite red heels.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” He met my eyes in the mirror and laughed. “What? I heard Ryder say it the other day and I decided to add it to my verbal repertoire.”
Lucah just shook his head and added a few more pins until my hair was hurricane-proof.
“You’re going to be fine. No, better than fine. You’re going to be magnificent.” He rested his chin on my shoulder.
“Magnificent? Such high praise.” I turned my head and he kissed my cheek.
“You are.”
Magnificence aside, I was nervous as hell, and jittery from lack of sleep the night before. Part of me wished Dad hadn’t told me about the meeting at all. I’d almost rather be caught unaware than be in the emotional place I was. He’d given me just enough information to worry over, but not enough to be comforting.
“I wish I could crawl into that head of yours and reassure you.” Lucah said, tapping the top of my head.
“That sounds both painful and invasive,” I said as I went to grab my purse and Lucah his briefcase.
Ryder waved goodbye from the couch, where he had a bowl of cereal perched on his stomach and was flipping through the channels.
“Have fun at work, kids,” he said, waving.
“Don’t break anything,” Lucah said as we closed the door.