“You can’t make someone like you, Sunshine. Just keep doing what you’re doing and he’ll come around. He’s just going to be an ass**le for a little while. Trust me.”
“I do.” Always.
“Ready to go to bed?” I nodded and he picked me up again.
“My legs work, you know.”
“And what lovely legs they are.” He lay me down, but I had to get up again to undress for bed. Lucah let me do that, which was nice of him.
“It’s weird knowing there’s a third person living here now,” I said, climbing in next to him.
“It’s only temporary,” Lucah reiterated.
“I know. Still weird. But I’ll get used to it.” I curled myself into his chest and tried to make pictures out of his freckles, one of my favorite things to do at night. You couldn’t see the stars in Boston because of all the light pollution, so this was the next best thing.
“And by the time you do, he’ll be gone.”
He gave me a kiss that ended the topic of discussion, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it.
18
There was a rush the next morning to get everyone up and ready and breakfast made and so forth. Clearly, getting three people going, two of whom were NOT morning people, was more difficult than just two. Luckily Lucah was up to the challenge.
I was rushing out of the shower and heading to get dressed when I crashed into Ryder coming out of the bathroom. My towel slipped and I held onto it for dear life.
He didn’t say anything, but moved aside so I could get by.
“Sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for.
“Don’t be, I was enjoying the view.”
“Ryder!” Lucah snapped from the kitchen. “No ogling Rory unless you want me to kick your ass. I still know how to do a Full Nelson.” Ryder just cracked his knuckles and I tried to make sure my towel was covering all of my ladybits.
“On that note, I’m going to go put some clothes on.” I scampered away and Lucah and Ryder continued to argue about the ogling policy. I got dressed as fast as I could and dried my hair while Ryder was in the shower.
“Maybe I should just give him a show so he could get it out of his system. It’s bound to happen sooner or later,” I said to Lucah while I was putting on my mascara and he tied his tie.
“Let’s put that off as long as possible, shall we?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Lucah and I parted as we both hailed cabs. Ryder glared as we kissed and reluctantly got in the cab with Lucah. I said goodbye to them both, but only Lucah responded. Ryder’s shell wasn’t cracking anytime soon.
Lucah texted me later saying that he was in the office, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Even though he no longer sat across from me, just knowing he was in the building made me feel better.
And then a million things were dropped on my desk at once and I didn’t have time to think about Lucah or Ryder or family drama for the next few hours. One of our programs crashed, causing an office-wide panic as we struggled to fix it and also assure our clients that we were working on it.
Lilia brought me lunch and I ate at my desk while I was on the phone and typing email after email. I kept getting responses from tech support that everything was fixed, but then it would crash again. This was one of those times when smiling and remaining calm came in handy. No matter how much I wanted to scream and punch the person on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t until midafternoon that the issue got completely resolved, and by then all of the things I’d put aside to work on it were screaming at me.
My stress level rose, partially due to the stress at home, and I knew I was headed for a breakdown, so I got up from my desk and went to get a cup of calming tea.
I bumped into Dad in the break room, which was unusual because Mrs. Andrews usually took care of his coffee and snack needs.
He seemed deep in thought and didn’t even look up when I walked in.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, touching him on the shoulder.
“Oh, Rory, hello. How are you?”
“I’m okay, how are you?” His skin was looking grayish again.
“Oh, fine, fine. Just taking a short break. How about that glitch earlier?” I humored him and talked about that for a little while, but it seemed like we were going to need to have another chat about taking it easy. I’d have to ask Lucah if there were any developments in the Board takeover yet.
“Will Lucah be joining us this Sunday?”
“Yes, he will. Ryder’s with us now, and he’s stable, so things will be getting back to normal.” Or at least our new normal.
“Excellent. So it’s going well with him?” I gave him a quick rundown, editing out the part about Ryder almost seeing me naked this morning, and the fact that he didn’t seem to like me very much.
“Well, I should get back to work,” he said with a halfhearted smile. I patted him on the shoulder and he left. It was going to take more than tea to soothe me at this point.
“So how did it go?” I said to Lucah when we could finally talk like our regular selves outside the office building.
“I called to make sure he arrived at the appointment, and he did, but that’s all I can do. I’m just hoping the apartment isn’t a disaster when we get back.” He raised the hand that wasn’t held by mine and crossed his fingers. I crossed my eyes at him and that made him laugh.
“Oh, and Sloane texted and said she was coming home early so she could cook us dinner. I didn’t ask if she would be cooking in her apartment or ours.” I just gave him a look. We were definitely going to knock before we opened the front door. Ryder and Sloane was something I did NOT want to see.
Lucah and I talked about other things on the way home, and during the elevator ride up to our apartment. He listened at our door before getting out his key and jingling it in the lock quite loudly and opening the door slowly.
Nothing. The apartment was dark and no one was there.
“Maybe he took a nap,” I said, going to check his bedroom. It was empty, the bed still unmade from that morning. We checked the rest of the apartment, which didn’t take long, but Ryder was nowhere to be found.
“When I find him, I’m going to kill him,” Lucah said, getting his phone out to call Ryder. The sound of a rock song I didn’t know blasted from the coffee table, where he’d left his phone. Lucah swore again.
“Calm down. Let me go down the hall and see if Sloane’s seen him.” I dashed down the hall and knocked on Sloane’s door.