“She’s relentless,” Simon muttered. “But yes. He’s hot.”
“Do we need to call a sexual harassment lawyer?” she asked. “I mean, Nancy’s coming by for Chris anyway—”
“No!” He half stood and then realized that might seem a little extreme. “I mean, no. No. I, uh, made it very clear that his job performance was appreciated and we’d do anything to keep him at this branch, and that if we were to date and things went south, I’d change branches, and—”
“Wait, is this why he wanted to transfer?” Gabby asked, and he silently cursed Alex Kennedy because all of his pre-Gabby personal skills were coming back to bite him.
“No,” he muttered. “This is why—I hope—he decided not to transfer. He, uh, wanted to transfer because he thought I was dating Audra. I mean, I think that’s why he wanted to transfer. Whatever. It’s just very clear that the request to transfer was not what he really wanted and that what he really wanted was to stay here and deal with my socially inept attempts to get him to eat with me at a food truck.”
There. It was out. His two best friends now knew he’d pushed the button on the wayback machine to the era where he’d literally split Gabby’s lip open and shown her underwear to their entire prep school lunchroom because he was trying to help her retrieve a dropped purse. Gabby told him later that if she hadn’t given him a black eye and smeared pudding down the back of his neck in reaction, that might have been a deal breaker in their friendship, but as it was, mutual humiliation had served to bond them tighter than brother and sister.
“Oh my God,” Gabby said, and she looked down at the last forgotten cinnamon roll in the box. “Wait, was he your mysterious baker?”
Simon shook his head. “No. His roommate and best friend baked the cinnamon rolls this morning—”
“You had a sleepover?” Chris asked. “Seriously? And you didn’t tell us? Simon! We had a pact! We tell each other everything!”
“No!” Simon retorted. “No. I would have told you. Especially because he works here. No. I stopped by his place this morning with a dog—I texted you about that—it was… well, it belonged to his friends but he was watching it, and anyway, his roommate baked and… ugh.” He buried his face in his arms. “You guys, I don’t know what it is about him, but look at me! I’m regressing! I should probably just give it up and move to the other branch and become a nun. Or a monk. Fuck.”
“Simon!” Chris laughed, his hand a comfort on Simon’s shoulder. “Look at you. You’re a mess. I love it!”
Simon glared at him. “After what I just did for you, this is the thanks I get?”
Chris crouched down so they were eye level. “Simon, you worry too much about being a mess back in the day. You’re afraid nobody could love you if they knew you then. But I love you like a brother, and Gabby does too, and we did know you then, so you’ve got to lighten the hell up, okay?”
Gabby was crouching down by his other side, in Jimmy Choo heels no less. “Honey, you were starting to take yourself too seriously. I asked you if you wanted to maybe add a little color to your wardrobe, and you called it a signature.”
“It’s not like he—” Simon flailed and came up with Alex’s own line. “—wears rainbow robes and braids his armpit hair!”
“No,” Gabby admitted. “But he’s not your usual. You usually go for guys in suits like Chris’s or girls in stilettos and pencil skirts. You know, flash and class and bling. He bikes to work, wears his green on the outside…. Alex has some character.”
Simon gave a snort, remembering the ritual he’d witnessed that morning and the rather remarkable things that followed.
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
“So, are you going to see him?” Gabby asked, shaking him gently.
“Well, not tonight,” he said sadly. “At least not for long. He’s got… a sort of club meeting, and I promised Audra we’d do movie night.” He looked at Gabby and Chris hopefully. “You guys are welcome to come.” They made it some nights. Audra and Chris’s parents had passed away right before Audra graduated from college, and movie night at Simon’s was their way of staying connected too. And while Gabby had her choice of high-powered men, sometimes she wanted to wear sweats with her friends.
“Absolutely,” Gabby said, giving him her lipstick mark on the cheek.
“Yeah,” Chris said, nodding. “It’s a good night to be with friends.” He tapped his cheek to remind Simon that he’d been lipsticked, and Simon rolled his eyes and gave Chris a tissue, tapping his forehead.
“Gabby, you rat,” Chris said, standing. He sighed, obviously drained. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go get ready for that meeting with my lawyer, which Simon so graciously set up.” He gave them a tired smile. “You know, if I’d just had some way of knowing Jasmine was a lying whore in the first place, I could have saved myself a whole lot of trouble.”
He left, and Simon and Gabby both sucked air through their teeth.
“Poor guy,” she murmured. “I’m glad he’ll be at movie night. He’s been trying to drink and sleep his way through the divorce, and it’s not good for him.”
Simon nodded. The last few months had been worrisome, that was for sure.
“But now that he’s gone,” Gabby continued, standing to go back to her domination of the couch, “are you going to tell me—coherently—about Alex and how he ties in with that dog you found last night and all of the other things you’re not telling me right now?”
Simon stared at her. “Don’t you have work to do?” he asked helplessly.
“Nope. This place is a well-oiled machine, darling. I suggest you start at the beginning and cover every detail thoroughly.” She smiled, catlike, and licked a scarlet-tipped finger. “But before you start, give me that last cinnamon roll, because I think that would make this story perfect, and I know you’re not going to eat it!”
Simon laughed, appreciating her so very much, and leaned over the desk so she could grab the box.
And then he proceeded to tell her everything, witchcraft and all, because he didn’t keep secrets from family.
When he was done, he glanced across the office to see her eyes alight with excitement. “The dog just… disappeared? From his house?”
“From next to the recycle bin,” Simon told her. He’d checked the spot on his way out and had seen the remnants of several candles and a sweater’s worth of yarn. They really had been spellcasting their little hearts out trying to get the dog back.
“And you believe them?” She cocked her head, obviously skeptical, and he pursed his lips, trying to explain.
“Well, to begin with, Alex didn’t really have enough time to drive up to my house, drop off the dog, and turn around and come back,” he told her practically. “I live forty-five minutes away, and he and his friends have to do a sort of ritual, at sunrise and sunset, or….” He shuddered, remembering snakes and squirrels and juries of turkeys and flocks of starlings and a creeping darkness that—as Lachlan had said so colorfully—looked like the stain of alien blood.