1
Brady
The number on my desk phone’s call display makes my heart skip. If he’s calling first thing in the morning, nothing good can come from this conversation, but I’m such a slut for punishment that I’ll talk to him no matter how pissed he is.
I settle the headset over my ear, waiting for the call to connect. “Good morning, Brady speaking.”
“Brady!” His voice cracks over the speaker, and I can’t help the way I sit up a little straighter.
“Oh. Good morning, Nash. Everything okay?”
“No. It’s not fucking okay.” It’s never fucking okay when he calls before ten in the morning. After that, he’s calling because they have someone new starting, or the printer isn’t working, or someone left the projector on again and burned out the bulb. Before, though . . .
“Something I can help you with?”
“What the hell did you do to my phone?”
I take a very long, slow breath and let it out on the count of nine. I’ve learned if I start talking too quickly, he thinks I’m trying to cover something up and jumps all over me. If I pause, he thinks I’m trying to find a solution.
Not that I’d mind if he jumped me.
“Your phone?” I set up his new cell phone yesterday. He can’t possibly have broken it since then, can he? Nash is hard on his hardware. Two laptops this year, and he’s never managed to outlast his phone contract, but twenty-four hours would be a new record.
“Yes.” His voice drops low in a way that should be a warning but lately has been doing strange things in the general area of my crotch. “My phone. The phone you set up yesterday.”
I lean back in my chair, wrapping my hands behind my head. “What seems to be the problem?”
“My contacts are gone.”
I almost make a joke about whether he has a spare pair of glasses in his desk, but that way lies a verbal flaying I am not ready for on a Friday morning, so instead I say, “Did I send you the email about importing them?”
“I don’t check email.”
He doesn’t. He says it wastes time. But wasting my time is perfectly reasonable.
I close my eyes. “Did you plug your phone in last night?” As far as I can tell, he works a lot and has no social life at all. When I first got the queer film festival contract, I expected an office full of beards and torn T-shirts. Women in plaid and with long hair pulled up in messy buns. I was not expecting the festival director to come to work every day in pressed pants and a button-down. He’s even been in a tie on more than one occasion when I had to stop in. And he’s uptight and abrupt, but it’s hard for me to ignore the spark in his eye, the jaw that could cut glass, and the flecks of silver that pepper his dark hair.
Plus, he pays his invoices on time, and that is basically the only criterion for being my BFF these days.
“No,” he says. “I didn’t need to plug it in. It was fully charged when I left work last night.”
Right. Except plugging in a phone does more than charge it. But he’ll get his back up if I tell him so.
Ramona comes through the office door and grins at the exasperated look on my face. She mouths, “Nash?” with wide eyes and waggling brows. I flip her off.
“Okay. Do you have the charger?”
“Of course I do.”
“And your computer is on?” I am leading the mountain to Mohammed, but it’s what keeps my lights on.
“Brady, get over here and fix my goddamn phone,” he growls. I have to bite back a shudder at the sound.
“Okay, so plug your phone into the computer.”
The line goes quiet. He fumbles with something and curses softly. I wait.
“Nothing’s happening,” he snaps.
