I’d always liked them feisty…
“That sounds terrible,” I stated. “She shoulda rescheduled the sessions. We’ve had this job booked for months, so I’m assuming youse’ve been warned.” I leaned closer to him. “That’s three sentences without cursing, motherfucker.”
He snapped his mouth shut and clenched his jaw.
I had nothing else to say, so I backed into the elevator again and?—
“You ate paste as a kid, right?”
My hand shot up and caught the doors when they tried to close again before I even knew it, and I stared at him, wondering if I’d heard him right. Had he just implied I was fucking stupid?
“Seriously,” he said, stepping closer. “Do you lack compassion altogether? Have you never lost anyone? We can’t just reschedule sessions with patients who depend on us in the darkest periods of their lives. Are we supposed to sit in there till five PM every day and apologize for your language to patients who’ve just lost a loved one or struggle to get past a robbery?—”
“Lemme stop you right there.” That was it. I’d lost my goddamn patience. This was ridiculous. “We. Don’t. Have. A. Fucking. Choice. Assembling scaffolding ain’t what’s causing all the noise around here, and construction tends to be loud. It has fuck-all to do with compassion, you piece of shit.”
He didn’t back down for a second. “Are you telling me you can’t assemble those structures without yelling motherfucker all the time? We’re not fucking stupid. We understand construction is loud, but when you’re standing ten inches outside of a psychologist’s office window, slinging every curse word imaginable, the last issue we have is with everyone drilling in the walls.”
Thank fuck he stormed away once he got all that out, because I didn’t have a good comeback.
Goddammit.
If his boss got off work at five PM, the yuppie should work similar hours, right?
I checked my watch and then squinted up at the building.
Five minutes past five.
A breath gusted out of me, and I ran a hand through my hair.
This was stupid. I should just head home, get out of my work clothes, and take a long shower.
And yet…I couldn’t shake the urge to smooth things over with the yuppie. In all the chaos earlier, and the damn heat, I’d misinterpreted what Garcia had said. Now I could recall his saying that several people had complained about the noise, and I’d applied it all to this suit guy. But all he’d mentioned was my creative use of words. He hadn’t technically bitched about the noise.
Hold up, is that him?
I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the late-afternoon sun, and I zeroed in on the guy coming out from the building.
It was him. He had put on his messenger bag, and he had a bike helmet in one hand.
Totally fit my impression of him. Yuppie on a bicycle.
I cleared my throat and trailed closer as he aimed for the row of bikes next to the stairs.
“Oi. Glasses.” I figured it was a better nickname than Yuppie.
Hey, it worked.
He threw a frown over his shoulder.
I gestured at myself. “The paste-eater from earlier.”
The frown faded, but he definitely nailed the standoffish vibe. “Now I remember.”
Okay, he had the biting, dry sense of humordown.
“I cut the goddammits and motherfuckers to a minimum after our productive chat,” I offered.
He unlocked his bike and stuffed the chain into his messenger bag. “My boss mentioned an improvement.” He side-eyed me. “Did you just get off work?”
