“I do now.”
“Awesome.” My grin was wide and genuine. As much as I loved Cary and enjoyed spending time with him, I needed girlfriends, too. Cary had already started building a network of acquaintances and friends in our adopted city, but I’d been sucked into the Gideon vortex almost from the outset. As much as I’d prefer to spend every moment with him, I knew it wasn’t healthy. Female friends would give it to me straight when I needed it, and I was going to have to cultivate those friendships if I wanted them.
Setting off, I headed down the long hallway to my cubicle. When I reached my desk, I put my bag and purse in the bottom drawer, keeping my smartphone out so I could silence it. I found a text from Cary: I’m sorry, baby girl.
“Cary Taylor,” I sighed. “I love you . . . even when you’re pissing me off.”
And he’d pissed me off royally. No woman wanted to come home to a sexual clusterfuck in progress on her living room floor. Especially not while in the middle of a fight with her new boyfriend.
I texted back, Block off the wknd 4 me if u can.
There was a long pause and I imagined him absorbing my request. Damn, he texted back finally. Must be some ass kicking u have planned.
“Maybe a little,” I muttered, shuddering as I remembered the . . . orgy I’d walked in on. But mostly I thought Cary and I needed to spend some quality downtime together. We hadn’t been living in Manhattan long. It was a new town for us, new apartment, new jobs and experiences, new boyfriends for both of us. We were out of our element and struggling, and since we both had barge loads of baggage from our pasts, we didn’t handle struggling well. Usually we leaned on each other for balance, but we hadn’t had much time for that lately. We really needed to make the time. Up for a trip to Vegas? Just u and me?
Fuck yeah!
K . . . more later. As I silenced my phone and put it away, my gaze passed briefly over the two collage photo frames next to my monitor—one filled with photos of both of my parents and one of Cary, and the other filled with photos of me and Gideon. Gideon had put the latter collection together himself, wanting me to have a reminder of him just like the reminder he had of me on his desk. As if I needed it . . .
I loved having those images of the people I loved close by: my mom with her golden cap of curls and her bombshell smile, her curvy body scarcely covered by a tiny bikini as she enjoyed the French Riviera on my stepdad’s yacht; my stepfather, Richard Stanton, looking regal and distinguished, his silver hair oddly complementing the looks of his much younger wife; and Cary, who was captured in all his photogenic glory, with his lustrous brown hair and sparkling green eyes, his smile wide and mischievous. That million-dollar face was starting to pop up in magazines everywhere and soon would grace billboards and bus stops advertising Grey Isles clothing.
I looked across the strip of hallway and through the glass wall that encased Mark Garrity’s very small office and saw his jacket hung over the back of his Aeron chair, even though the man himself wasn’t in sight. I wasn’t surprised to find him in the break room scowling into his coffee mug; he and I shared a java dependency.
“I thought you had the hang of it,” I said, referring to his trouble with the one-cup coffee maker.
“I do, thanks to you.” Mark lifted his head and offering a charmingly crooked smile. He had gleaming dark skin, a trim goatee, and soft brown eyes. In addition to being easy on the eyes, he was a great boss—very open to educating me about the ad business and quick to trust that he didn’t have to show me how to do something twice. We worked well together, and I hoped that would be the case for a long time to come.