SIX
Rip
“Whoa, who spit in your Cheerios this morning?” Banks, good friend, coworker, and full-time pain in the ass, stopped at my desk and lifted his mug to his lips.
I sighed. “Do you really think that’s work appropriate?”
He blinked down at the mug. In big, bold letters it read, “I love to wrap both my hands around it and swallow.” He grinned. “I mean, it’s true.”
I groaned. “You and your mugs.”
“It brings joy into an otherwise perilous day saving people from their taxes, what can I say?” He moved farther into my office. He was wearing some sort of black skinny-leg trouser, a loud red tie, and a white button-down shirt that had peppers on it.
“And the shirt? Is that just to give people seizures?”
“Oh, this? No, this I do to piss you off. You’d probably die before wearing a pepper.”
“You hear yourself when you talk, right?” I reached for my own perfectly normal black mug and took a sip of lukewarm coffee, then winced.
“I’ve been told my voice is soothing.” He winked and ran a hand through his ridiculously long mop of brown hair and sat down. “So, you gonna answer the question?”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be? Anywhere to be?” I wasn’t in the mood for his constant verbal sparring, not after the morning from hell.
“I’m fine.” Everything was fine. It would be fine. I just needed to learn how to adjust faster and how not to murder my new roommate.
See? Easy.
“You’re literally gripping your coffee cup like you might use it as a weapon, and if you clench your jaw any tighter you’re gonna pop a molar,” Banks pointed out. “Seriously, take a break from the joy of numbers and talk to your best friend.”
“We aren’t best friends.”
“Correction. Your best friend died. But I was next in line. So now I’m the new best friend, and before you get all pissed off again, that’s exactly the sort of thing that Brooks, our mutual friend, by the way, would have said—at my fucking funeral.”
I cracked a smile.
“Ah, there it is.” He leaned forward, his white teeth blinding me with a knowing smile. “Now seriously, how can you be in such a bad mood so early in the day? Problems in suburbia?”
I groaned. “She’s impossible!”
“Most women are.”
“Heard that.” Our coworker Olivia flipped him the bird as she walked past.
One day they’d finally hook up and relieve every single person in the office of the blatant sexual tension they refused to acknowledge.
That day was not today.
“Anyway…” Banks cleared his throat very loudly and rolled his eyes. “Let’s discuss.”
“Let’s not.”
“I think talking would help.”
“If I wanted a therapist, I’d hire one.”
“Best friends can be therapists.” He grinned. “Let’s start with the stick shoved so far up your ass that I’m worried you lack the ability to even order anything other than black coffee while you adjust your twice-ironed pants and judge the girl ordering the mocha.”
“I don’t—”