“Tell me everything, love. You know I’m a safe place, and you can tell me anything.” I haltingly explained who Harley was, and how I’d often go to his shop with made up questions and concerns, just to get a chance to see him. How he always stocked the coffee I liked. How he always took the time to talk me through everything, and never mocked me, or made me feel less than.
“And he said to ‘buy him a coffee sometime’. I’m guessing he doesn’t know you well enough yet to now that kind of ambiguity can send you into a spiral, but I’m sure he’d be gutted to know it had.”
I opened my mouth to defend him, but then I realised she wasn’t badmouthing or blaming him. She also wasn’t blaming me. Did that mean I hadn’t done anything wrong?
“What should I do?” I whispered anxiously, waiting for mum logic to save the day.
“Do you have his mobile number?”
Oh god. I couldn’t call him! I could almost feel the panic welling up again at the mere idea of calling him, of speaking to anyone on the phone besides mum. She knew the anxiety it caused. The pressure of being stuck on the phone with someone who couldn’t read any visual cues, or see how their words would affect me. The uncertainty, the prospect of making a fool of myself. Oh my god, no.
“I was thinking you could text him. We both know you feel more comfortable chatting that way. Send him a message and ask if he wanted you to bring him the coffee, and that’ll open the door for an easier conversation. I’m sure he didn’t realise it’d upset you like this, but it’s easily clarified via text.”
“What if he calls me back?” I asked nervously, chewing at the skin around my thumbnail.
“Stop biting your skin,” mum admonished, because damn her, she always knew. I clenched my thumb inside my fist to stop myself. When my anxiety was high, peeling and biting at my skin of my thumbs was an outlet I often didn’t even realise I was resorting to. It didn’t offer comfort or anything. It was almost an unconscious action. One that often left my thumbs sore, stinging, or temporarily missing anything vaguely resembling a fingerprint.
“You said he offers you reassurance, when you get nervous around him, right?”
“Yes.”
“So why not give him a chance to get this right too?”
Chapter Five
WORK FELT DIFFERENT TODAY, and I wasn’t sure if it was the impending official VP status being announced tonight, or whether it was the fact that I felt like that wasn’t all that changed yesterday. Caroline seemed interested in me yesterday, and I hadn’t realised just how attracted I was, until I realised it might be reciprocated. Trust me, I’ve done things wrong in the past, but something about her made me wonder if I could get it right this time.
“How about if I turn your shelving this way, and build the booth here in this pocket of space?” Rocket was still working out how to set up his space, and I was finding it irritatingly disruptive, because I liked to have things in order, and he was slowly decimating every inch of the place. There were piles of boxes containing equipment, paints, and various parts he was working on for his own projects, since he had no clients at the moment. He was messing with my organised non-chaos, and even though I should have seen it coming, it was screwing with my head.
“We’ve already moved that shelving once,” I argued, stepping over some of his crap, and catching my toe, narrowly avoiding falling flat on my face.
“Maybe should have kept this stuff out until you decided on the layout,” I grumbled, smoothing my jeans as I straightened up again.
Rocket grinned at me. “Dude, I already had it all planned, and then you said, what if… and it kinda threw my planning out the window. It’s on you really.”
Prick. I gestured to the booth he was trying to set up.
“Backing the shelves up to this, you mean, like adding it as a wall?”
He nodded, moving over to rest his hands on the counter he’d already set in place.
“It’d help close off the spray area, so nobody thinks they can wander in there.” Well, safety first, right?
“Yeah, sounds good. Do we need some brothers to come help out with the setup?”
Rocket pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked it. “Has-Been’s on his way. Since he’s a spray specialist too, he’ll be able to help set it up right.” Good. That meant he wouldn’t need me too. I had a job coming in later today, and I was waiting on another collection.
“Cool. I’ll be over there then. Don’t leave so much shit here like a trip hazard though, man. We’re not all like fucking gazelles.” Yeah, I’d fallen over it twice already, so if I could, then so could anyone else.
“That chick who was here yesterday,” Rocket said quietly, immediately setting my hackles up on the back of my neck, because he shouldn’t be even thinking about her.
“Yeah.”
“She yours?”
“She’snotfucking yours, that’s for sure.”
Rocket chuckled, lifting one of his boxes into the designated spray area.
