That Monday evening just before I leave for the day, Ryder walks by as Cash leans over my laptop next to me at the side of the bar, verifying an invoice for one of our alcohol distributors. “Make sure you get those numbers right, Cash,” Ryder says. “Cassie’s got a mean right hook, and she’s not afraid to use it.”
“What’s he talking about?” Cash says when Ryder disappears down the hallway into his office.
“He’s just being a jackass,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Am I sensing a lovers’ quarrel here?”
“Now what are you talking about?” I say, willing the blush I can feel blooming on my face to abort.
“I’m just saying, Ryder never spends that long with me or Jackson in the office,” Cash says. “Of course, all we do is discuss business back there.”
“What are you suggesting Ryder and I did?”
“Whoa, Cass,” he says, throwing up his hands. “It’s Monday. I like to start the week PG.”
“You are a child,” I say.
“I know you are,” he says, walking into the kitchen, dimples dimpling, “but what am I?”
Between Ryder trying to talk to me and Cash teasing me about him like we’re in junior high school, the rest of the work week is an exercise in mitigating annoyance, except for Shelby’s visit on Friday around lunch.
“Thought I’d stop in and say hi to my big brother,” she says, sitting next to me, plopping down her black leather Marc Jacobs tote on the bar. “I was meeting a client for lunch down the street.”
Cash told me Shelby works in marketing for the Atlanta Falcons, and at only twenty-four, she’s already been promoted from assistant to manager. At twenty-four, I was closing down my family’s lucrative auto shop to follow Sebastian to England when the London branch of the investment bank he worked for suddenly decided to call him back home. It’s funny how people can do the same age, the same point in life, so completely differently.
“I haven’t seen Jackson today,” I say.
“Well, I guess I’ll say hi to you instead then.” She smiles, and gives me a nudge with her shoulder. “Hi.”
“Hiya.”
“I’m into the new hair.”
“Thanks.”
“Looks like someone else is into it, too,” she says, nodding over my shoulder at Ryder, who glances at us through the kitchen window behind the bar. “He keeps looking over here.”
“I seriously doubt he’s looking at my hair.”
“He is a guy, isn’t he?” she says. “He’s probably just trying to get a good look at your tits,” she says. I laugh—something I realize I haven’t done all week. “Although from what I hear,” she says, “he may have seen them up close already?”
I take a long blink and shake my head. “No secrets in this place, are there?”
“Not for very long anyway,” Shelby says. “So, what’s going on with you two?”
I exhale. “Nothing anymore. Or ever, really,” I say. “I guess there were a couple encounters. But the most recent one ended with an indecent proposal and a slap across the face, so I’m pretty sure that’s the last one for a while.”
Shelby smiles. “You smacked Ryder?”
I squinch my eyes shut. “He was just being so…” I fumble for the right word. “Arrogant.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I shouldn’t have hit him. And he said he was joking.”
“He might have been, but still, I know how these guys joke. It’s annoying sometimes. And especially when you’re vulnerable. I mean, there you are, he’s your boss, he’s got his hands up your shirt.”
“Dress,” I say, clapping a hand over my face.
“Ooh, the truth is even better than the gossip,” Shelby says, her eyes wide with anticipation for more juicy details.
From my other side, a plate appears in front of me, a burger with all the fixins, cut in half to show its center, cooked perfectly pink. I look up to see Ryder setting it down. “I didn’t order a burger,” I say.
“I know. I made it for you,” he says. “Didn’t think you’d taken a lunch break yet.”
“No thanks,” I say. “I’m not hungry.”
“Cassie,” he says, sitting at the barstool next to me. “I’m sorry about what happened this week. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”
Ryder sighs. He combs his fingers through his thick hair, the sleeves of his button-up shirt rolled at his elbows to reveal his tats—a detailed bird, orange and red flowers that form a labyrinth all the way around his forearm. I turn my head away, so as not to breathe in how good he smells.
“You want this?” he says, gesturing to the burger. But it feels like that this could mean a thousand things: this job, this deal to pay back the debt, this apology. Ryder himself.
“I don’t care,” I say, still engrossed in the spreadsheet in front of me on the laptop. Or trying to seem like I am anyway.
“Ryde, I know you don’t hear it a lot,” Shelby says, “but learn to take no for an answer.”