He made the universal gesture indicating giant bosoms.
Oh, good God. They would need to be redrawn to reflect the range of bosoms really possible in the real world.
“Anyway. The way it stands now, we can redirect the ad spend for the football module, but in light of all this stuff, and to make a long story short, we still might not make office rent. Or meet all of payroll. So pick your favorite employee and they’ll get paid. Ha ha ha.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Jesus, Corbin!”
“You know I’m not good with the money decisions.” There was a whiff of passive-aggressive accusation here.
“What you actually mean is that you don’tliketo make the money decisions. You know that’s not a reason to abdicate responsibility, right? ‘I don’t want to?’ You know those aren’t magic words, right?”
But she’d said this same thing to him in ways both pissy and diplomatic over the years. And in years past she’d made excuses to herself for him. “There are actual peopledependingon you.”
Her mind was spinning. They’d had these kinds of blips once or twice early on, where the delicate balance of income and outflow had gotten away from them, where some surprise or snafu had resulted in them coming up short. They’d dip into their own earnings or savings to handle it; they’d foregone salaries for a few months more than once. They hadn’t had an issue like this inages.
They sat in silence, Avalon seething. Because he’d come all the way up here to force her to solve the problems he could have easily prevented.
And she was mad at herself, too. She’d needed time away and to prove a point to Corbin. So she’d left him in charge, which shouldn’t have led to anything like a disaster. She’d figured he’d rise to the challenge or...
... he’d do exactly what he ended up doing. Which was fucking everything up.
Now she’d need to go back into town and handle things from there. And she’d need to come up with money for payroll, because damned if she would let any of her staff go without a paycheck. Go hat in hand to their current investors?
She needed to sell this house as soon as possible.
She was absolutely silent. Resentfully, despairingly absorbing all of this. Already working on a solution.
“I wish... wish I did have magic words,” he blurted suddenly. Sounding wretched.
“What?” she said. It felt like a non-sequitur.
“To... undo what I did to you.”
She stared at him. Astonished.
He reached for her hand.
She slid it out of the way in time.
“Because... when I see you... I see this beautiful, funny, confident woman I’ve loved for four years... and I oh, God, just want to make it better. I want to turn back time.”
Some part of her was amused by the specificity of this. They’d been dating for five years.
“Yeah, but you can’t.” That was pretty brutal, but it was exactly how she felt.
He took a long, deep breath. “I know what I did was pretty unforgivable and... if I could take it back I would, believe me. We clearly have a few issues. I was hoping we could go to counseling, work something out, find a way to be together.”
He had to be joking.
She stared at him wonderingly. For so long, she could see that he’d begun to hope.
“The problem, Corbin, is that whenIlook at you...” she said slowly, “I see an ass.”
His eyes flared in split-second outrage. He drew in a long breath through his nostrils, and exhaled. Then he nodded rapidly in agreement. “Okay. I know. I know. I deserve that. Ihavebeen an ass. I was just hoping we could talk about how it—”
“No.” She leaned forward, her hands clasped between her knees, and said earnestly and slowly, explaining it as if it were a compelling abstract concept that he might find fascinating, “Anactualass, Corbin. I actually see your white ass bobbing up and down between two sets of ten sparkly orange toenails. That’s what I see when I look at you. An ass. That is what I’ll always see when I look at you. From now on. Forever.”
