My jaw goes slack. “Do I know her?” He pretends to zip his lips together and throws away the key. “Oli, you can’t drop that and then expect me to move on!”
“You kept your secrets, Hulkette. Allow me to keep mine.”
I’m about to insist when Mason returns. “Alright, back to your desk, carrot top,” he sassily orders.
Oli chuckles, and as he gets up, he says, “Watch your tongue, you fastidious queen.”
As soon as Oli’s away, leaving only Joseph close to us, Mace turns to me and says, “Girl, I’ll need to be sat next to you at Dakota’s Friendsgiving.”
“Wait, aren’t you going back to Atlanta?”
“Nah, my dad pissed me off already.”
I grimace, aware of Mace’s complicated relationship with his family, especially his father, who’s a pastor with a substantial congregation. While his mom learned to accept their son’s sexual orientation, his father still denies his queerness. Mason came all the way to Seattle for work to get away from him.
“Are you okay with not celebrating with them?” I ask.
“I’m much better here, with the family I chose. And I’ll have the opportunity to get some alcohol into you.”
“Why do you want that?” I chuckle.
“Because I need some deets, bish. I need to know if my hunch about Mr. Bossman is right.”
“What hunch?”
“That man has the most big dick energy I’ve ever seen, and you’re the only person I know who can confirm it.”
I laugh out loud, only half shocked by his concern. “Mace, there isn’t enough alcohol in this city to make me talk about that,” I reply. “And it’ll be my first Thanksgiving, so I’m not getting wasted.”
“Girl, that ain’t gonna be Thanksgiving. There won’t be any dysfunctional family members or drama.”
“Those are mandatory?”
“Yeah. It ain’t Thanksgiving until you’re arguing with your far-right uncle or watching an auntie bring up some twenty-year-old drama after drinking too much.”
I laugh at the image. “Alright, noted.”
With everything that happened, I barely have time to dive back into work before Lex pops back in, a little more tense than he wants to let on. I save the script I was working on and get up to join him in the doorway. As we walk to the break room, I can’t tell if it’s paranoia or if everyone looks at us. The two people from the design team must have started spreading the word, or the guys did, via texts or whatever.
I’m tense the whole time we take our food out of the fridge, reheat it, and walk to an empty table together. Even when the guys join us there, acting as if nothing’s different, I can’t relax.
“Are you alright?” Lex asks after a moment. I’m not eating, which isn’t a very raccoon thing, so he must sense something’s going on with me.
“Yeah, I—I feel like everyone’s watching us,” I explain, eyes scanning the surrounding room.
He looks around, and because he doesn’t deny my worries right away, I know I’m not being crazy. “Let them,” he decides. “Whatever they might think doesn’t matter.”
“You’re right. Most of them probably don’t even believe it anyway,” I dismissively explain.
“Why?”
I quirk an eyebrow and wave up and down at myself, then do the same on him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, genuinely confused.
“That you’re you, all tall, muscular, handsome, and smart, and I’mme. So, people probably think it’s some kind of fake rumor circulating.”
“I don’t see why.”
