“I mean it, McNeill. Shut. Up.”
I laughed and went back to checking my e-mail. A benign group message from Rick made my blood pressure jump, but I played it cool and didn’t let on to the people around me. Not that they would have picked up on it, especially not while Scott was explaining the particulars and mysteries of female ejaculation to Bianca, punctuating his dissertation with references to me fucking Cal’s mom. Cal groaned and held his ears.
They didn’t have a clue who I was really sleeping with, and all I could do was grin to myself.
I concentrated on my work as much as I could. I was aware of the others cracking jokes and throwing the occasional office supply, but didn’t pay any attention. I just tuned my senses to the blaring music and let my mind go someplace far quieter. Not that it needed much encouragement. From the moment I’d woken up this morning with my body still aching, and I’d realized the weekend hadn’t been a dream, I hadn’t been able to forget it.
Whenever it slipped from the forefront of my mind, something dragged it right back into the center of my consciousness. The collar of my shirt brushing my neck right where his lips and breath had done so last night. Bianca’s perfume, glue fumes, coffee and every smell that wasn’t Rick’s cologne or our mingling sweat—everything made my senses seek out what they couldn’t find.
An hour or so into my shift, I wandered down to the supply room with a list of crap I needed to continue with the model. Though our communal room was huge, it had been too crowded with all the tool chests, boxes, crates and rolls of various materials that Teagan and I used on a regular basis, so when the accounting department moved upstairs last year, we’d taken over someone’s vacant office. Walking down the hall to get a coil of wire or a sheet of acrylic was annoying sometimes, but other times—like today—it was nice to step out and collect my thoughts.
As if these thoughts could be collected. In a couple of hours, I had to be in the same room with Rick, but not in the same bed. Not until tonight. And I was losing my fucking mind.
In the supply room, I riffled through three drawers before I remembered that the tubes of cement were in the drawer clearly marked Cements & Adhesives. After staring blankly at a shelf for a good thirty seconds, I found the piece of foam-core I’d been looking for right in front of my face. It was probably just as well I didn’t find the spare X-ACTO blades—which were in a drawer under my modeling table back in the NSFW Zone—because I did not need to be handling anything sharp right then.
I rubbed my eyes. Fuck. If I couldn’t get my head together now, I was going to be a wreck when it came time for the meeting.
The door opened behind me, and I turned around as Teagan stepped into the room.
She eyed me. “You get lost in here?”
“No. I…” I looked down at the supplies I’d gathered and tucked the foam-core board under my arm. “Just making sure I found everything.”
“Mmhmm. You’ve been out of it since you got here. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
She cocked her head. “Cal’s mom really ran you into the ground, didn’t she?”
“Yes, Teagan. That’s what happened.”
She snickered and brushed past me. As she pulled open the drawer where we kept paint, she said, “So who is she really?”
I actually felt a little guilty that Teagan still thought I was straight. I was closer to her than anyone else in this building, but even after almost ten years in the same office, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the woman I was dating was actually a man.
She turned around, eyebrows up. “Jon?”
I shook myself. “Sorry. And her name is none of your business.”
Teagan huffed. She pulled a couple of bottles from the drawer and closed it. “Well, even if you won’t share the fun details, I’m glad you’re getting laid.” She elbowed me playfully as we headed for the door. “It’s good to see you smiling like this.”
“Smiling like what?”
Teagan held the door as she rolled her eyes. “Like a man who got something this weekend that he’s been needing for a long, long time.”
I couldn’t argue with that, could I?
Chapter Eight