Thankfully, my return to sleep came easily that night. No hands-on approach required.
The next day, while I was getting ready for work, I decided to give BAD_Ruck a piece of my mind. I spit toothpaste into the sink, rinsed my mouth out with water, and turned off the faucet. Striding into my room with purpose, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and sent the dick gremlin a response.
Suck. On. That. Buddy.
TAPRoseNEXT (7:03AM): Then it’s someone else’s dick? WORSE. Threat Level EXPLODED.
“Good morning, Mr. Brooks.”
“Good morning, Frank,” I replied, picking my head up from the crime scene on my phone just long enough to meet his honest amber eyes before sliding into the soft leather seat of my Town Car.
Fucking Thatch.
I swear, somehow he took doing what would already be really fucking annoying and advanced it to the next level. If he didn’t have the same ability with money, I probably would have dropped him by now.
To the bottom of the ocean. With a cinder block attached to his ankles.
She was right, of course. Sending a picture of someone else’s dick was considerably worse than sending a picture of your own.
Especially this one.
Three rings trilled in my ear before his sleep-laden voice forced one hungover syllable past his lips. “’Lo?”
“A dick, Thatch? Really?” I asked immediately, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache.
No amount of lingering alcohol could stop his answering laugh.
His throat cleared a little more with each chuckle, and by the time he responded, he was speaking clearly. “You’re the one using my picture for your profile, bro. It was only fair that I unleashed the gargoyle dick.”
Gargoyle dick. Too fucking right. A winglike knob, a hunchback, and questionable coloring all lent themselves to his description. I’d left my phone on the bar without hawk-eyeing it for two fucking minutes, and the asshole had somehow managed to send one of the world’s worst illicit pictures to some poor—now blind—woman in that time.
“That profile was only payback for the last awful thing you did to me.”
“Which was?” he asked, altogether too amused.
“Who knows,” I admitted, staring up at the passing high-rises and shaking my head. “I can’t keep up.”
“Then join in, K. Live a little, for fuck’s sake.”
The burgeoning sun glinted off of a pane of perfectly smooth glass at the top of a building and reflected a rainbow right into the window of my car.
“I’m living just fine,” I argued.
“Yeah.” He laughed and scoffed at once. “Say hi to Walter for me.”
That was Thatch’s version of calling me a cat lady.
“Hey, fuck you!” I said, only to be met with dead air. I pulled the phone away from my ear to discover he’d ended the call.
“Fuck that guy,” I muttered, somehow calling more of Frank’s attention to myself than I had with all the yelling.
“Sir?”
“No worries, Frank.” I paused for a second and looked back out the window. “You wouldn’t happen to know a hit man, would you?”
I glanced up front in preparation for his reaction.
“Um,” he murmured hesitantly, flicking his eyes between me and the road in the rearview mirror. “No, sir.”
I shook my head as I smiled, a brief chuckle tickling the back of my throat.
“Good. That’s good,” I remarked, just as we pulled up to the curb in front of my building.
Flexing the door handle in my hand, I shoved the door open with the toe of my shoe.
“Mr. Brooks,” Frank started to protest, as usual, jerking into motion in order to hop out to help me, but I just couldn’t get into the mindset where his and my time was well spent waiting on him to walk around the car just to do something my opposable thumbs and lack of paralysis made shockingly simple.
I smiled in response before he could get out, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before exiting.
“Have a good day, Frank. I’ll see you at six.”
With the slam of the door, I buttoned my suit jacket as I walked, twenty audible smacks of my soles eating up the concrete courtyard in front of my building in no time.
New Yorkers buzzed around me, continuing a marathon life that started the moment they opened their eyes. That was the vibe of this city—active and elite and totally fucking focused. No one had time for each other because they barely had time for themselves. And yet, each and every single one of them would still proclaim it the “best city on Earth” without prompting or persuasion.
As my hand met the metal of the handle, I surveyed the lobby of the Winthrop Building, home to Brooks Media, to find the front desk employees and security guards scurrying to make themselves look busy when they weren’t.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I’d never been the kind of boss to rule with an iron fist, and not once had I uttered a word of micromanagement to loyal employees like the ones practically shoving their hands in their staplers in order to look busy.
But being CEO of a company of this size and magnitude had a way of creating its own intimidation factor, whether it was intended or not. And, sometimes, the weight of unintended consequences was heavier than gold.
“Morning, Paul.”
He nodded.
“Brian.”
“Mr. Brooks.”
The button for the elevator glared its illumination prior to my arrival—more help from the overzealous employees, I’m sure—and the indicating ding of its descent to the bottom floor preceded the opening of the shiny mirrored doors by less than a second.
I stepped in promptly without another word, offering only a smile. I knew anything else I said would only cause stress or anxiety, despite my efforts to convey the opposite. For a lot of people, their boss was never going to be a comfortable fit as a friend—no matter how nice a guy he was. The best thing I could do was recognize, accept, and respect that.
I sunk my hips into the rear wall as the doors slid closed in front of me and shoved my hands into the depths of my pants pockets to keep from scrubbing them repeatedly up and down my face.
I rarely overindulged, so I wasn’t hungover, but Thatch’s antics, both in person and online, were wearing me out. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the gargoyle dick was funny—because it was—but it was really one of those funnier-when-it’s-not-happening-to-you things.
In fact, that rang surprisingly true for most of Thatch’s prank-veiled torture.
The direction of my thoughts and the weight of my phone bumping against my hand had me pulling it out of my pocket against my better judgment.
I hovered my thumb over the TapNext app icon.
With one quick click, I had the ability to make a bad situation worse.
The screen flashed and the app loaded as soon as my thumb made contact.
BAD_Ruck (7:26AM): Despite what the gargoyle dick conveys, I promise I’m NOT a sexual terrorist.
Clutching the phone tightly in my fist, I shamefully knocked it against my forehead multiple times.
“Fucking brilliant.”
I should have just dropped it. Moved on. I didn’t fucking know this woman, for God’s sake, but I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stand for even my fake dating profile persona to be remembered like this.