“Really? You’d seriously ink yourself with me?”
“Hell yes. I mean, if I can get my lady bits pierced, I can get a tattoo.” That was right, I forgot she had that done. One of those post-breakup things. I hoped I didn’t do something like that, although I hadn’t technically broken up with Ryder.
“Okay, then. We’re doing this.” I held my fist out and she bumped it with hers.
“We’re doing it.”
The timer dinged and we raced to get the pizza out.
“I’m so starving. I barely had lunch today,” she said as we stared at the still-bubbling cheese on top of the pizza.
“If we eat it now, we’re just going to burn our mouths and that would definitely not be fun,” I said. This was torture.
“Maybe we should stop staring at it,” she said, and we both turned our backs on the pizza.
“Salad. We should eat our salad first,” I said, and handed her a bowl filled with arugula, parmesan, fresh figs, and almonds with an olive oil dressing.
“The worst thing about salad is that it isn’t pizza,” Rory said, glaring at the bowl of greens.
“That is true. But if we eat all our salad, we can eat as much pizza as we want.”
“Is that from another study?” Rory asked as she poked at the salad with her fork.
“Yup.”
~*~*~
“Is it bad that I don’t want to go back to my fiancé?” Rory said after we’d demolished the entire pizza. To be fair, it was a thin crust, so there wasn’t much to it in the first place.
“That depends. Do you never want to go back to him, or do you just not want to go back to him tonight?”
She thought about it. “Ugh. If only I wasn’t in love with him,” she said.
“Yeah, that can definitely put a wrench in things,” I said. Fucking love. Ruined lives.
“It’s that damn chin dimple, I swear. And the singing. And the red hair. And the tongue ring.” She could go on forever.
“And everything?” I asked.
“Yeah. And everything. I should really get back. Hopefully they haven’t killed each other. Although, that would solve a lot of my problems.”
“Yeah, but then you’d have two bodies on your hands you have to dispose of.”
She sighed. “You’re right. That would be even more work. Oh well. Thanks for dinner and for listening.”
“Anytime, girlfriend,” I said. She headed out the door and down the hall, back to Lucah and Ryder.
He was here. I had a feeling that was going to happen. This time, though, I wouldn’t be finding reasons to go down the hall to get a glimpse of Ryder and maybe have a word with him. I was going to avoid that door like it was infected with the plague.
Eighteen
For the next few days Rory came over and had dinner with me, sans Lucah and definitely without Ryder. If she hadn’t told me he was down the hall, I might never have known. My fears that I’d bump into him in the hallway or going to the trash chute went away as I repeatedly didn’t encounter him.
When I wasn’t hanging out with Rory (who was also trying to avoid the drama at her place) I was at work with Inari, hammering out the details of my show and going through the first round of intern applications.
“No, yes, no, no, hell no,” I said, separating them into piles.
“Okay, you only have four in the yes pile, and we need to hire three interns,” she said, “which means you are relying on those few to really wow you at the interview.” Very few people impressed me in interviews. Inari had been an exception.