“The waitstaff seems to get younger every year.”
Merit snorted into his drink. Of the three of us he had the sweetest face, with a slight cleft in his chin. He brushed a hand over the short dark stubble on his jaw. “No, we’re just getting older. But unlike some people, I don’t mind. I like it when they call me Daddy.” He gave Creed a blinding white smile, and Creed simply fluttered his eyelashes. Merit turned his attention to me. “You agree, right, Case?”
I shrugged. “Don’t notice the help much, really. I’m too busy dealing with work. I haven’t had anyone call meanythingin a long time, and you know it.”
Merit winced. “How do you deal with that? If I don’t pump a wad into someone by noon, I’m awful.”
“You’re awful even if you do,” Creed said in that no-nonsense, quiet tone he’d developed at some point after he’d earned his doctorate, and that had me snorting as I took a sip of my drink. “So, you snapped today?” Creed asked, zeroing in on me. “This wasn’t like the laptop thing, was it? The cops weren’t called.” He lowered his chin and stared at me over the top of his obnoxious glasses.
“No, Doctor Feel Good. It’s not like they’d do anything to me anyway. Not in my own company. I can smash everything in my office. I own it.”
Creed pursed his lips. We had a stare down, and he shifted farther back into his seat. “That’s not really the point.”
“What happened?” Merit asked, cutting Creed off before he could get started on one of his usual lectures about how all three of us needed to be aware of our tempers, given our pasts. I didn’t need the point-blank reminder of all the horrible things I’d done when I was still a wet behind the ears kid. I hoped that, one day, he’d let it go and we could all move on with our lives.
“Yes, what precisely happened?” Creed chimed in. I could see the shrink in him whir to life; it had something to do with how he tilted his head. I hated it when he treated me like one of his clients, but I’d known him most of my life, and I wasn’t about to ditch him as a friend because of his annoying quirks.
“Oh, the usual. Something wasn’t going right. Computer pissed me off. I blew up at the first person I saw after I started getting angry. Destroyed some shit. It was bad but not too bad.” I told them all about the incident, and how Raven had ripped me apart over my lapse in control, and Creed stared hard at me when I went into the gory details about Angel and how scared he’d been, and then how I’d tracked him down to apologize.
“I did feel guilty about scaring the fuck out of him.” I rubbed the back of my neck and avoided looking at anything except my drink. “Angel seems like a… quiet type. You know, a sweetheart.”
“Oh, your polar opposite, then? That wasn’t a smart move,” Creed murmured and sipped at his drink. He gave me a condescending squint, and I flipped him off.
Merit frowned at Creed, and frustration bubbled up in my chest as they had a silent communiqué that didn’t involve me. Was every other person, including the IT nerds, intimately connected with someone else on the planet? I didn’t have anyone, anywhere, I knew so well that we could talk without words.
“Why not?” I finally snapped and asked. “I thought I was supposed to apologize if I ever lost it. You said!”
Creed shrugged and ran his tongue over his bottom lip. I didn’t miss Merit watching him a little too intensely for the “just friends” bullshit they’d been trying to pull off for the last couple of years. I was pretty sure they got too drunk and fucked sometimes, but they wouldn’t give in and get back together. Creed finally stopped screwing around, slugged half his drink, and then sat up onto the edge of his chair to do that other thing I hated. He treated me like I was a fucking headcase and stared directly into my eyes, waiting until I was looking right back before he would speak.
“What, Creed? What?”
“The poor kid was probably terrified.” He danced his gaze up and down me as if to prove his point, but I knew damned well what I looked like. “You screamed at him and broke things and then he had you at his front door? You’re lucky he didn’t call the police.”
“He agreed to meet me here for a drink, so he wasn’t that scared.”
Merit hooted, and I was disheartened as Creed’s jaw tightened and he upended the remainder of his scotch to drain the glass. “It’s not how I would have expected things to play out, is all.” Creed smacked the empty glass onto the table.
“People don’t always do what your books say they should, huh, Freud junior? No harm, no foul, man.” Merit turned to me and winked. “You gonna fuck him? Does he seem slutty?” He mimed spanking an ass, and I laughed and shook my head.
“No, nothing like that. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to bend him over, but he seems interesting. This might be a date, not a hookup.”
“There actually is a problem here,” Creed butted in, and I groaned.
Merit rolled his eyes and sucked down his drink in two swallows, turning around to shake it in the direction of the bar.
Creed ignored everything but me, the same way he always focused in when he talked. “You promised Merit and me a long time ago that you’d get your shit together. You told me three months ago you’d go back to your therapist because you punched out the window on a car that stole your parking space at the mall.”
“That jerk pulled in after he saw my turn signal!” I glanced at Merit for some support, but he pointed back at Creed.
Creed only stared at me.
Tossing my hands up in the air, I growled. “I know, but that therapist guy was a dumbass and hated me. I don’t care how much you recommend him.”
Creed’s surly gaze heated to a glare. “Explain how you are going to get your temper under control. Because, in spite of what some people think—” He snapped his irritated focus to Merit for a microsecond and then back to me. “—sex addiction is not a magic answer to any mental health problem.”
Merit sat straighter, “Hey, it’s good—”
“Not even fantastic sex solves anger issues.” Creed raised his voice to talk over Merit, who only sank back against the two-seater couch he was sprawled on and laughed harder at us. “You know what can happen if you aren’t in control, Casey. You’ve seen the worst of yourself, which not everyone can claim. I’d think you’d be more concerned.” He finished his rant and reached over to shove at Merit’s shoulder. Creed’s cheeks pinked up, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was mad at us or from the drink he’d slammed.
