Both Simon and Gabby had gone through their awkward, ugly phase together, egged on by parents with political aspirations to somehow be less painfully lacking in every direction.
He’d seen that she’d be an absolute beauty, even then, and together they’d practiced scripts and scenarios for how to talk in public, how to interact with people in peer groups, how to look and act as successful as their parents expected them to be. They’d been in the middle of their self-transformation when they’d met Chris in graduate school. He already had the looks, the talk, the schtick down, but his grades hadn’t been fantastic. The three of them had become inseparable, and while Gabby had picked up Chris Lockhart’s propensity for the best clothes, the best makeup, the best cars, she had never forgotten about also being the smartest in their class.
And Simon had never forgotten that anything they’d wanted had come with hard work.
Between the three of them, Reddick, Lockhart, and Baldwin was one of the most successful accounting firms in the Sierra Foothills and, if their proposed branches in Sacramento and San Francisco panned out in the next ten years, in Northern California.
But only if Chris Lockhart could not be stupid.
“You’re eating cinnamon rolls now?” Chris asked, standing in the middle of Simon’s office without a pity-party rage-rant to throw.
“Mmff, ohmigod, yes!” Gabby said on a moan. She swallowed and tried for coherence. “Chris, come here. Have a bite. I swear to you, your day will improve.”
Chris just stared at her in obvious disbelief and then, with a sigh, stalked across the carpet and used a napkin to fish out one of the small, pillowy mounds of sugar and perfection.
“You know I don’t even like—” He took a bite and practically dripped through the carpet, he melted so fast. “This is magic,” he said, and Simon wanted to laugh and tell him how right he was. “I would give up my house for these cinnamon rolls every morning.”
“You’d have to,” Gabby said practically, taking another bite. “You wouldn’t fit through your front door.”
“What about you?” Chris asked, and Gabby rolled her eyes.
“I’m not the one with the metabolism problem,” she said—accurately. Every Achilles had his heel, and Chris’s was that only a meticulous diet and workout regimen kept his figure trim and boyish. Otherwise, he’d admitted to both of them, he’d look like one of those fleshy, prosperous banker stereotypes who died of heart failure at forty.
“They do seem to make your problems melt away,” Simon agreed musingly. “But Chris, you need to talk to Nancy Slater so she can get your signature on the forms that will save our company, okay? I made an appointment for you at two. She’s coming to your office, so you just have to not be an asshole and show up.”
Chris looked wounded. “I wouldn’t miss an appoint—”
“We almost lost two accounts last week because you missed appointments with clients,” Gabby said, her voice softened somewhat by the cinnamon roll. “Look, honey, you’re off your game. We get that. And we are obviously here for you, but you have to let us help.”
Chris let out a sigh and took another bite. “I’d forgotten about that,” he said after he finished his bite. “You guys….” And Chris had always been smooth and a little bit arrogant and a little bit superficial, but the look he gave them both now was the exact opposite of that. It was naked and full of pain. “This…. I was so excited about the baby,” he said. “And I know it was five months ago that I found out it wasn’t mine, but she’s getting close to delivery and….”
Aw. Chris.
“Oh, honey.” Gabby put an arm around his shoulders, and Chris fell into her hug easily. “We will take care of you. In fact, since Simon is on the legal side of things, how about you take me through your clients today. I’ll have Cheryl cancel my appointments, and you and me can make sure you’re all up to speed. We’ve got some really good employees. We can give them a little extra work.” She frowned. “And I was thinking of Alex, but he’s not here today, which is really odd. Simon, you made sure he wasn’t transferring branches, right?”
Simon met her eyes and nodded—perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “Oh yes. That was just sort of a misunderstanding.”
Chris’s relief was almost comical. “Oh, thank God. He’s, like, our biggest asset in this branch.”
Gabby socked him in the arm.
“Besides you two,” he added belatedly, but he was smiling. He sobered and turned a look to Simon. “You really did all that for me? I was… I was losing my mind. I can’t even think right now.”
Simon shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, you know. We could all see you were struggling, Chris. You just needed a little help.” He thought of the group of witches trying to fix whatever they’d done wrong in their spellcasting and wondered who they’d go to for help.
Chris leaned his head on Gabby’s shoulder in the classic platonic snuggle. “I was so embarrassed. I thought if I could figure out how to fix it myself, it wouldn’t show what a complete asshole I was.”
Gabby placed a kiss on his forehead that left a red lipstick mark, and she winked at Simon to let him know she wasn’t going to wipe it off. It was a trick she’d played since prep school, and Simon had gotten a surprising number of dates from people while trying to explain why he had a big lipstick stain on his cheek or his collar. Somehow knowing that a girl bold enough to wear garnet-red lipstick would kiss him, even in fun, made him that much more desirable.
“Well,” she said, “you’re still an asshole, but you’re our asshole, and I don’t know about Simon, but I’d sell the firm—all four branches—just to be able to tell your ex to go fuck herself.”
Simon shrugged. “We’d start again,” he said confidently. “I mean, I’d rather not, but we started this firm together, we hang together, right?”
Chris nodded sheepishly, and then Gabby proved she really was the smartest of the three and narrowed her eyes at Simon.
“So what was the misunderstanding? With Alex? ’Cause he’s a sweet little nerdy guy, and I’ll cut anyone who hurts him.”
Simon was tired of embarrassment sweat, but that didn’t stop it from seeping up under his collar and setting his face aflame. “Uhm, it’s, you know, personal.”
“Simon!” She laughed. “Why do you look so guilty?”
“No reason,” he said. “Nerdy? Do you really think he’s nerdy?”
Gabby and Chris slid their eyes toward each other.
“A little,” Chris said carefully. “Until you see him on his bicycle and he looks way cooler than we do.”
Simon nodded. “Right? I mean, way cooler. Super competent and compact and sort of….” He stopped himself. They were both aware that he dated all genders, but he didn’t usually gush about, uhm, attributes.
“Hot,” Gabby said, one eyebrow raised and one corner of her mouth quirked upward. “You’re trying not to say hot. And I heard him tell Cheryl he was gay. She was trying to set him up with her daughter, and he politely declined, and she tried to set him up with her nephew instead.”