Me… not so much.
“He wanted to change something in your design?” Harold asks incredulously. “Clearly he has zero taste.”
That makes me smile and relax a little more. I love my friends. “No, he has great taste, but it doesn’t usually include my style.”
“Ooh, you’re turning him to the dark side,” Butch teases, making me laugh out loud.
Xera slings an arm around my shoulders. “He’ll see the light, no pun intended. He’s probably spending the weekend sulking because the change he wanted didn’t work out better than your original.”
I hope so.
Harold’s gaze is on my face. “What else?” he asks. “Something else is bugging you.”
Fuck. The downside of having friends who know me well enough to be able to protect me from my own anxiety is that they know when said anxiety is acting up.
“Nothing. I… I couldn’t talk during our meeting. Calla had to handle everything.”
Xera squeezes, and Butch says, “That sucks. I know you hate it.”
Yeah. I nod, not because I can’t speak, but because there’s nothing more to say. It sucks, and I hate it.
“Calla wouldn’t have signed this client if he’d said something dickish, but why am I getting the vibe he said something dickish?” Harold’s eyes narrow. “Did he say something when she wasn’t in the room?”
“No. He…” My vocal cords freeze. Dammit.
They all notice, of course. “We don’t need to talk about this,” Butch assures me gently. “Only if you want to.”
She’s not implying that I could choose to talk; she’s saying if I want them to know but can’t verbalize, I should text. It’s how we’ve done it for years.
I consider for a second, then pull out my phone. Thinking about this riles up my anxiety, but maybe I just need to talk it out with someone. It doesn’t take me long to type out the relevant information, and then I hold out my phone to them.
They lean in to read.
He looked at me like he hates me.
Three faces frown.
“I’m not doubting the vibe you got,” Xera says, “but could some of that have been fed by anxiety? Like maybe he wasn’t sure what to think of you being nonverbal, and your anxiety read that as hate instead of… annoyance and confusion?”
I shrug, because yeah, that’s totally possible. Anxiety means sometimes thinking people hate you because of something as small as the punctuation they use in a text message.
“Did he know you might not talk before the meeting?” Butch asks. “Because if he did, I have zero sympathy for his confusion, and he needs to fucking fix his vibe.”
I shrug again. I’m pretty sure Calla says something before she brings people in to meet me—they sometimes have that deer-in-headlights look people get when she turns on her I-will-gut-you charms. But she’s never admitted to it when I ask her, so I have no idea what she says. I try not to let it bug me.
“Maybe you should talk to Calla about this,” Harold suggests, and I shake my head vehemently. No fucking way. I’m not risking that she’d react badly and we’d lose Margaret and Daria.
“Okay, then maybe I should go visit this stylist, make sure he knows hating you is bad,” he teases. “Who is he, anyway? Could I take him?”
I look my uber-trendy friend up and down, taking in his outfit that is definitely not appropriate for an active, sweaty day at a theme park. Then I picture Griff.
My laughter is involuntary and loud.
“Ouch,” Harold mutters.
“Intriguing,” Xera adds.
Butch huffs. “I betIcould take him.”
