He was screwed, one way or another.
Spence would surely find out, eventually.
Tabbi cleared her throat and read.
“I’ll be in touch with Spencer about my plans moving forward. A few things have come up that might have me reconsidering employment there, but I’ll give it a day or two, then call him when I have a clearer head. On another note, you can tell Trask he can go take care of himself.”
The married pair shared one of those looks.
“What the hell does that mean?” Spencer asked, turning to glare at Trask.
“It’s not a direct translation,” Trask grumbled. “Jett actually told Sheila that I could go fuck myself, but our sensitive manager was too polite to write that down.”
“Oh, my God?” Tabitha turned to him, spluttering laughter. “What did you do to Jett?”
“I might have…pissed her off.”
“Ya think?” Spencer returned incredulously. “Igotthat from what she said. But how did the woman go from being so excited to join us, to high-tailing it out of here before she could meet us?”
“It’s…complicated.”
“So uncomplicate it, big bro,” Spence demanded.
Trask didn’t, as a rule, feel cowed, but right now he wished he could sink into the floor. Once he spilled his guts, Spencer was going to rip him up one side and down the other.
And Trask deserved it.
“We, uh, kind of had a mutual attraction that ended up not working out.”
“You fucked her?” Spence asked in horrified amazement.
“No. No. It wasn’t quite that… Okay. It was pretty intense, but we didn’t go all the way.”
“What is this, fucking middle school? Didn’t go all the way? What the hell does that mean?”
“Uh, Spence, why don’t you tone it down a little,” Tabitha stepped in and laid a hand on her husband’s chest while sneaking peeks at Trask. “He actually looks like he’s had a rough day.”
Spence took a moment to narrow his eyes and assess Trask before he agreed with his wife.
“You mean he doesn’t look like the take-charge, ball-buster that we’ve come to know and love.”
“Maybe not?” Tabitha posed uncertainly.
Spence took a few seconds to cool down, while Trask weighed what he’d say. He was thankful for his sister-in-law’s level head and intervention. If Trask was going to get out of this with his familial relationships intact, he was going to have to be honest. But so far, even after pondering it all day, he wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
“Okay, Trask. Explain,” Spence continued, his attitude softening a bit.
Trask ran a hand over his buzz-cut.
“When I first saw Jett, I was…attracted. Not to her personality, which makes me sound damned shallow, but to her physical presence.” He thought back to that moment when the sun had shone down on her at the airport, and even though he didn’t often wax poetic, he felt an ode coming on.
“She’s tall, and slender, but with really well-defined muscles. Her hair is this halo of blonde curls; a glorious crown that has a life of its own. Her eyes… They’re stunning; heterochromic. One is green like emeralds, and the other is azure blue like the clearest of skies. Her legs go on forever, and her breasts…”
Trask looked at Tabitha, coughed, and decided not to finish that statement. He already sounded like a prick, touting Jett’s bodily attributes without giving her personality any additional kudos, but he didn’t think that would save him.
“So you were attracted to her,” Tabbi allowed, crossing her arms under her own perky chest with a tightness to her lips that he rarely saw. “But not in a healthy kind of way.”
Trask thought it wasextremelyhealthy, how he’d felt, but he kept that to himself while trying to explain and talk Tabbi down from her ire.
