“What’re we going to do?”
“About what?”
“This. You, me, work, all of it.”
“Why do we have to do anything about it? We’ve gotten away with it for this long.”
“You want me to go home with you after I get out of here.”
“That’s right, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“People will have questions.”
“Fuck them. It’s none of their business.”
“It’s not Lafferty’s business?” she asked, referring to their boss.
He’d spent the better part of a year praying that Lafferty would never catch wind of his… whatever it was… with a subordinate. “It’s no one’s business what we do on our own time.”
“You know that’s not true. You’ve conveniently forgotten that you’re my boss, and we’re not allowed to be together outside of work.”
“We’ve been together outside work for a long time, and it’s never affected anything. Why should it now?”
A deep sigh was her only response.
“Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind?” he said in a snappier-than-intended tone.
“I’m trying to, but you’re being obtuse.”
Jesse stood and immediately regretted the movement when the pain had him trying not to cry like a baby. “How am I being obtuse?”
She stared at him in that way of hers that made him anxious from her ability to see right through him and his bullshit. “You said things to me… after I was shot that made me think you maybe see me as more than just a fuck buddy.”
He stared back at her. “I don’t think of you that way.”
“How do you think of me?”
Before he could answer that burning question, her mother and grandmother came breezing into the room, bringing their traveling circus with them.
“How is our darling girl today?” her mother, Alberta, asked in a singsong voice that grated on his last nerve as she swooped in to hug and kiss Memphis like she hadn’t seen her in a year.
Judging by her perturbed expression, Memphis wasn’t pleased to have their conversation interrupted, whereas Jesse felt like he’d been thrown a life ring.
He knew it was a temporary reprieve and that he’d better have some answers for her the next time they had a minute alone. What those answers would be, he couldn’t say. “I, uh, I’m going to run home to shower and change. I’ll be back.”
The three women ignored him as he moved carefully to leave the room, his head tilted at a fifteen-degree angle to keep the agony under control.
* * *
Memphis wanted to scream from frustration and annoyance. Her mother and grandmother’s timing was exquisite, as always.
“What’s the matter with you?” her grandmother, Beatrice, asked.
“Nothing. I was talking to Jesse.”
“That man…” Alberta plumped Memphis’s pillows. “He’s a strange one.”
The comment made Memphis want to defend him when she’d wanted to stab him a few minutes ago. He gave a little and then took it away again so fast that she existed in a constant state of whiplash. And he thought his neck hurt. Ha! “He’s not strange.” Yes, he was, but her mother wasn’t allowed to say that.
