“You bet your ass I am. Been working with that man for years now, I have the right.”
“You mean you’ve been working with him for years and had a giant crush on him?” I said with a roll of my eyes.
He flinched in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Uh, I didn’t say that out loud,” I said quickly.
Reggie snorted. “Who told you that? I don’t need gossip ofthatkind floating around. Totally destroys my image.”
“No one said anything,” I said with a shrug. When he raised a brow, I shook my head. “They didn’t! It’s just, I don’t know. Obvious.”
“Really? So obvious you came to that conclusion on your own?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Hmm,” he said, sitting on the edge of one of the tables. “What led you to that conclusion?”
“This feels like a trap.”
“You’re not in trouble, I’m not pissed, and quit looking like I’m going to fire you because you told me I apparently have a crush on Marc,” he said with a smirk. “I wanna know how long you’ve thought that and why.”
“Not long,” I said and then stopped, frowning. “Well, I mean, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
I took a deep breath, realizing I wasn’t getting out of this, and tried to explain something I’d tried to get across to people before without success. “It’s just that sometimes I notice stuff, but I don’t always notice that I notice it. It still gets filed away in my brain. Sometimes it just sits there and does fuck all, and other times, like just now, the information clicks and the picture is obvious.”
“Hmm, and what information clicked?”
“You always talk about him in a tone you don’t use for anyone else. I mean, you’re always friendly and warm, but there’s something in the way you talk about him that’s... different. And you like spending time around him, but you guys aren’t, like, friends from what I’ve seen. You spend more time with him than most people do with their boss. And I know he’s your boss, but I’ve never seen you touch him. You always stick close, like youwant to touch him, but that would be weird because you like him, so even though it would be totally normal foryouto touch him, it doesn’tfeelnormal.”
Reggie stared at me thoughtfully, crossing his legs at the ankles and kicking his feet gently. “That is...a fascinating peek into an intuitive thought process.”
I squinted. “Huh?”
He snorted, leaning back on his hands. “I mean, this isn’t a proven theory or anything, just one of my own, but there are different types of thinkers, especially when it comes to Guides. You’re an intuitive thinker. All your observations and internal notes are below the surface, subconscious, and when something comes along that makes you realize you need that information, it springs up for you to grab. So like you said, you know without actually knowing until you need to know.”
“Oh...yeah,” I said, not used to people understanding. “That.”
He smirked. “And it proves I was right, you’re going to be good at this job. You just need enough experience to feel confident. You need to learn to trust your gut, and experience is the greatest teacher.”
“Ummm...okay.”
He leaned forward, hopping off the table and patting my shoulder. “And I also know that you understand the importance of discretion when you’re making one of your leaps of logic.”
I stared at him, eyes going wide when it clicked. “Oh, you’re saying I’m right.”
“You are, and it’s weird having someone tell me something about my behavior that I hadn’t realized until it was said aloud,” he chuckled. “But keep it to yourself, please. Marc and I have a great working relationship, casual enough that I don’t have to behave differently around him, but professional enough that it’s not weird. And I’d like to keep it that way. My feelings don’t and shouldn’t affect our working relationship.”
“No, I mean yeah, you’re right, sure. I wasn’t going to...say anything,” I said quickly, tripping over my words before taking a deep breath. “Seriously, I won’t say anything. It’s not my business anyway.”
“See? You figure things out quickly,” he said, and I realized we’d moved away from the serious topics because now he was mocking me. “Anyway, you do have your first ever meeting with one of our guests as his Guide. Ready or not, you’ve done the training, you’ve done the exercises, and now it’s time to get in that water and figure out if you’re going to sink or swim...or well, for me to figure it out. Not you. You’re a bad judge of yourself, which is hilarious.”
“There’s nothing funny about any of this,” I cringed.
“Oh God, it’s always funny when someone with excellent, even unnervingly good judgment of others is completely blind when it comes to themselves,” he said with a chuckle. “So, we’ll do the debrief, which you already know is pretty...brief, huh, weird sentence...anyway! He’s a first timer and part of the Recovery program?—”
My eyes were about to pop out of their sockets. “Oh my God, he’s new? Dammit, Reggie, you can’t hype me up then throw me in the deep end.”
