True to his word, he stayed quiet as she outlined half the forest, working her way toward the stag. But the silence didn’t help. It left her alone with her thoughts and she didn’t much like them. Toby might be a fuckhead and a rich bitch, but she’d been a dick about Mopsy, and the butterflies that took flight in her stomach whenever she glanced at his shirtless torso were undeniable.
So, he’d fucked her over, so what? She’d agreed to do this, and lashing out at him wouldn’t make the hours they’d have to spend together any easier to endure. She drew in a breath as she moved her needle along the Stag’s delicate antlers. “Look, sorry for grilling you like that. I’m having… it’s just… Sorry.”
Toby shifted slightly. “It’s all good.”
“Don’t be like that. Don’t just let me off the hook.”
He laughed. “You’re not on the hook. It’s cute when you get angry.”
Tabby lifted her tattoo gun. “Fuckin’pardon?”
“I think you’re adorable when you get mad,” he said like that was a normal thing to say. “Can’t be that surprising. I told you that time you pushed the guy who threw a glass at Nightcat? Remember?”
No. And then yes. She and Toby had been chatting by the sound stage when a straggly guy in his twenties drained his beer and threw the pot glass toward the dance floor, collecting a pretty brunette in the back. Tabby had shoved him without a second thought, knocking him to the floor. He’d recovered quickly, grabbing her arm and shaking her as she kicked and screamed and then Toby had come out of nowhere, pulling the guy back by the roots of his curly hair and punching him in the stomach.
It was the one time she’d seen him angry, really angry, and it had transformed him. Gone was the meek little office jockey, and in his place was a white-collar superhero kneeling on the villain’s chest until security arrived. She remembered telling him how great he’d looked going all Superman as they sat filling out incident reports in the tiny pub office. It had been easy to say stuff like that back then. When he’d been someone else.
“Shithead,” Toby muttered. “He thought they were on a date, remember? Even though they were there for work?”
Tabby didn’t think she’d ever forget. The brunette crying as she begged the bouncers not to call the police because she’d done MDMA. Telling the straggly guy she was sorry for kissing someone else, even though they weren’t remotely a couple…
“You were great,” Toby said quietly. “We talked to the cops, and then we went to Maccas, and you said being angry gave you Elmer Fudd face, and I said you were wrong and that you looked more like…”
“What?”
To her amazement, Toby’s cheeks went pink like they used to. “I said, uh, you were adorable like, uh, Sailor Mercury?”
Tabby scanned her memories of McDonald’s and could only remember being annoyed the ice cream machine was out of order. “No…?”
Toby turned his face to the ceiling and muttered something. She wanted to ask what it was but decided it was safer to refocus on the tattoo. But as she continued her work, her insides were warm. Sailor Mercury? Had he really said that? Had she really not remembered him saying that?
A phone pinged in Toby’s left pocket.
“Mind if I get that?” he asked, already sliding it out.
As the rest of him remained perfectly still, Tabby knew she didn’t have a right to complain, but when he started chuckling at his screen, she wanted to slap it away.
“Blonde ambition hitting you up?” she asked, knowingly soliciting pain.
“Blonde ambition?”
“The two extremely nice women you were tongue-fucking at Village Belle?”
Toby didn’t blush. He didn’t even blink. “Nope. One of the guys from my podcast. He just ‘invested’ in a Nintendo 64 because he thinks it’ll be worth millions in twenty years.”
“Will it?”
“Hard to say. Investments are tricky that way.”
Tabby resisted the urge to imitate him again in a whiny kid voice. She’d been doing that too much lately, even if he was so fucking obnoxious, pretending to be all money-smart and grown-up. “Ahh, investments. The lifeblood of any predatory economy.”
“You’re opposed to people making money?”
“Rich people? Sure.”
“So you wouldn’t personally take money off a rich person?”
Tabby scowled. There wasn’t a lot of room on the moral high ground with five grand of Toby’s cash burning a hole in her bag. “I’m opposed to the finance industry.”
