Graphically Novel (Love Hashtagged #3) (2 page)

Tori forced her jaw to work overtime, in order to pry her mouth open. She licked her lips a few times. It felt like she’d eaten her pillow in her sleep. And then the throbbing started, pounding behind her eyes and inside her skull, and rolling into her gut.

She breathed deep, to calm the nausea. A familiar scent greeted her, brushing a layer of calm over her body’s roaring protest of consciousness. What was that? She sat up, and her skull threatened to spin off. Why was it so dark? Oh, right. She opened her eyes and winced, as they adjusted to the light filtering through the blinds. She didn’t have blinds in her bedroom.

She managed to focus enough, to look around the room. Which wasn’t hers. More reason permeated her aching brain. Archer’s guest bedroom. Right. She brought her fingers to her lips, as the night before plummeted in on top of her hangover. She remembered the kiss. Wow, did she remember it.

And she remembered why she’d been drinking so much. Work had been an absolute nightmare at nine on a Saturday night. She glanced at the clock, and the hammering in her head grew another notch. Could she leave her skull behind? She’d woken up in the bed of the guy she’d thrown herself at, and if she didn’t get back to her computer soon, work would be even worse come Monday morning.

At least her shoes were easy to find. She’d file that under
Small Things to be Grateful for
. As she pulled her socks on, a new smell assaulted her. Not as delicious as the pillow she’d woken up on, but it called to her stomach, causing a grumble in response. Bacon. It was almost enough to push aside her embarrassment for the way she’d behaved last night and definitely enough to draw her from the room.

Not that she could hide out in his guest bedroom forever, anyway. She dragged her feet across the area rug and then scuffed them along the hardwood.
What am I going to say to him?

She hesitated at the edge of the hallway and watched his back as he cooked. When she let herself linger on the idea, she could admit he was attractive. Strawberry-blond hair just brushed his ears, and when he faced her, his hazel eyes drilled into her thoughts.

He was nearly a foot taller than her five-four, and years of hauling around boxes of comics gave him a narrow waist and shoulders almost broad enough to fill a doorframe. And since he owned the comic-book shop on the main floor of the remodeled Victorian where his apartment sat, he pretty much hauled those boxes around full time.

“Hey.” He hovered the frying pan over a plate when she stepped into the room, his smile casual. “Breakfast?”

It wasn’t unusual for him to make her breakfast, or vice versa. She couldn’t count the number of times they’d stayed up all night, watching movies at one of their houses, then waking up in the same place they’d passed out.

“Um, sure.” Sometimes she felt bad her contribution tended to be oatmeal and fresh fruit, but she managed to push the concern aside now. There was no reason to ruin an experience as delicious as the pancakes he was making with something like guilt.

His friendly greeting erased some of her hesitation. Were they pretending nothing happened? She wouldn’t be able to live with the stress of that.

She dropped into one of the empty stools on the opposite side of the island from Archer, and he slid a plate in front of her—bacon, pancakes, and scrambled eggs instead of over-easy. That made her smile. Runny eggs were gross, and nobody ever remembered she didn’t like them.
Except
Archer.
Her stomach wouldn’t have been able to handle the sight this morning.

“Dig in,” he said.

She poked at her eggs, trying to find the right words.

“Is something wrong? You’re suddenly vegetarian or something?”

“About what happened last night.” She forced the words out before she could have second thoughts.

Archer paused with a bite of pancake halfway between the plate and his face. He put his fork down, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “That was a lot of fun. I mean, not all of it, but the bit I suspect you’re talking about.”

“But was it… I mean… Are we…?” What was she trying to say?

“Eat something, before it gets cold.” He nudged her plate closer. “It was a kiss, and it was amazing, but it wasn’t like we fucked. I’m fine with it, if you are.”

Was she relieved or the tiniest bit disappointed that he brushed it off so easily? She needed to focus on the relief. If there was one thing life had taught her, it was that getting involved with a guy recovering from a breakup was worse than
seppuku
—ritual suicide.

She chalked up half of her reaction to misplaced ego and nibbled on a piece of bacon. Her disappointment that he dismissed the kiss had nothing to do with how good he tasted last night. His hands sliding over her. The way he wore his T-shirt and sweat shorts this morning—she took a bite of pancake—or that he made a world-class breakfast. “I’m good with it,” she said.

There. That sounded sincere, right?

The corners of his eyes dropped for the slightest moment, before his smile returned full force. “Awesome. You sticking around or coming back for anime club?”

He let the community-college anime club hold screenings in his comic shop on Sunday afternoons. He claimed it was because they bought things, so it was good for business. She suspected it was because he’d been a member once, and he knew how much they struggled to find club venues. A loud, familiar buzzing hummed through the room, and Tori’s gut sank. She knew that sound all too well—sometimes she imagined she heard it in the middle of the night, and she woke up in a cold sweat, waiting for it to happen again.

Archer grabbed the phone from the counter behind him and handed it to her. “It’s been going off all morning.”

Shit.
She shouldn’t have let herself get distracted. “I can’t do club stuff today,” she told him as she clicked on the phone. “This is Tori,” she said into the receiver.

“There’s still a problem with the art. Have you checked the email I sent yet?” Candace’s voice was frantic.

Tori bit back a sarcastic,
Good morning to you, too.
That would only make things worse. “I haven’t had a chance yet. I just woke up.”

Across from her, Archer leaned against the far counter, arms crossed and lips pursed.

She turned away from the disappointment in his hazel eyes. “I’m bringing it up now.” Her lie emerged without hesitation. It would be true soon enough, anyway.

“Shoot me a note as soon as you know. I need to drop it with FedEx”—a harsh edge ran through Candace’s pleading—“and let manufacturing know to expect it.”

More unspoken retorts died in the back of Tori’s throat. Things like,
If you’d done your job on Friday, they’d already have it,
and,
If you’d done your job last night, we wouldn’t be scrambling now.
She took another swallow of juice and counted to three before replying, “Stand by. I'll have an answer for you soon.”

Tori was the Senior Vice President of Design for her brother’s cosplay-themed lingerie company. She hadn’t wanted a management position—tried to tell Brad they’d both be happier if she stayed in her artistic corner and came up with new outfits all day. He insisted they were business partners, and her job should reflect how important she was to the company.

Except Tori sucked at disciplining her people. She knew she had a problem, but not how to fix it. Most of the time Candace was amazing at her job, so Tori kept her on, but the one thing Candace excelled at was leaving her work until the last minute, which meant Tori rushed along with her to meet their deadlines.

Tori stood and started to thank Archer for pancakes and to apologize for not being able to finish.

“Sit down.” He cut her off before she could say a word.

“I can’t. I have to take care of this. I’m really sorry. I know you worked hard on breakfast.”

“I don’t care about the food. It’s eight on a Sunday morning. It’s not fair they expect this of you. It’s not right that you put up with it.”

Same argument as always. And she’d never be able to make him see she’d rather do the extra work and get it done, than tear into a talented person over habits they’d never change. “I don’t
put up with it
; it’s my company.” She couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.

“Brad doesn’t keep the same kind of hours you do. Tell me he puts up with shit like this, and I’ll drop it.”

Sometimes she got so sick of Archer acting like he knew what was best for her, when all it did was add to her anxiety. “Brad has his own problems, and puts up with his own crap. That’s why we’ve got two different jobs.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”

With her hangover, she wasn’t prepared to ignore an assault on both fronts, and something inside snapped. “I do, and you’re not getting it. We can’t all work for ourselves and own our perfect business, in a house we inherited from a loved one. Some of us have to put up with the real world and a large-scale mess, and sometimes that means putting up with other people’s bullshit.”

He clenched his jaw. “Don’t get mad at me, because they don’t treat you with respect and you refuse to deal with it.”

The calm tone tugged her frustration loose, and tears pricked her eyelids. She choked back a snarl of frustration and stormed toward the front door, not trusting herself to speak. He was supposed to be her friend. He was supposed to understand why she had to do this. He wasn’t supposed to throw it back in her face.

* * * *

Tori paced between her couch and coffee table, careful not to trip over her laptop’s power cable. She should be working in her office, but she was already pissed off about having to work over the weekend, and there was no way she was sequestering herself while she blew her Sunday, making sure every last line on a pair of
Inu Yasha
panties fell in the right place.

When Tori and Brad started the business, it was supposed to be for kicks. She never expected it to turn into an on-call twenty-four-seven kind of thing. Over time, she helped a random employee here and there, never able to walk away when her people struggled. And one day she woke up and realized work consumed most her life.

When they started this whole thing, she loved the work, but covering for everyone else burned her out. The only advantage to the job these days was Tori got to do it from home. She often considered quitting, but the idea still meant so much to her, and she couldn’t let Brad down like that.

Her newest line of lingerie was designed on an exclusive contract with a national chain, which meant the retailer had enough cash to sue for every missed deadline, and the non-stop emails from Legal never let Tori forget it. Meeting their timelines shouldn’t have been a big deal. Candace simply had to check the newest design art on Friday, drop it in the FedEx box by close of business, and it would be at its destination Monday morning.

Then Candace missed the Friday drop, and when she checked the patterns Saturday night—a task she should have done a week ago—there were mistakes. Tori tried to talk her through corrections at Archer’s, and Candace said she got it. Apparently that wasn’t the case.

But it would be fine. As long as the client had the new art before Monday morning. Tori started the download, to grab the illustrator files off the office network, then leaned back on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. Her headache had faded, and that was something, but the memories of the kiss with Archer taunted her. She hadn’t felt anything like the spark they shared, even with—

She pushed the thought aside. Now was the wrong time to relive the past. Not that she’d ever come across a good time for it.

She turned her attention back to her work laptop. What had gone wrong? Why didn’t the layout look right?

And then she saw it. Candace’s last job before the weekend had been to convert the file to the client’s preferred format, but the image Tori saw was skewed and would only make panties to fit a paper doll. Because Candace had chosen the wrong file type on save.

Fury and frustration pumped through Tori. She closed her eyes and took a few calming breaths. At least it was a quick fix. She typed out a quick e-mail to Candace, explaining the situation and the error. She scanned it three times before clicking
Send
. It read politely.

She turned her attention back to checking the re-saved image. So far, it looked good. A whisper of relief flitted through her. Maybe her entire Sunday wouldn’t be lost after all.

About thirty minutes later, her e-mail pinged. A response from Candace. Tori’s gut sank to her feet when she saw the message. It couldn’t be a good sign Legal had been copied, and Brad was on there too. He didn’t need to deal with this.

Tori’s irritation mingled with resurging rage and helplessness as she read the note.

I saved the file exactly the way you trained me to. If it wasn’t right, it’s because you missed a step in your instructions.

Tori’s hands shook, as she typed out a reply. She couldn’t think clearly enough to make it sweet and passive, so she settled for,
We’ll revisit your training on Monday. I need to meet this deadline.

She tried to make her frustration evaporate as the day wore on. Each new success lightened her mood, but every time, it was squashed by another message from Legal, demanding a reassurance that the Monday morning deadline would be met.