Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) (26 page)

She
stood a little apart. “For all the times I wanted a better life for you. For
all the times I wanted to kiss you on the cheek like I can Owen and Dev and
Kuch and not have you get weird about it. You’re one of my oldest friends, even
if you have no idea what that means. But I can’t do the cheek thing because you—”

He put
his hands up. Surrender. “I get it. I get it.”

“Do you?”

He
sighed. “I’m weird. Oh Christ. I’ll try not to be so weird in the future.”

She let
out an exasperated sight. “You don’t get it. Be as weird as you want. We dig
the weird. I get to have a cool life because of the way you’re wired, but you
can do better, Reid.”

“Did
you come here to chew me out?” Because he couldn’t take much more of this.

“Nope,
I came here to make sure he’s okay,” she smiled at Owen, “because that’s my job,
and it’s what a friend would do. I don’t have any trouble confusing the two
things.”

“I can
do better.”

“Yeah
you can. And if you don’t Zarley will find you out and leave you, and I like
her. I’d like to have Zarley as a friend.”

His
eyes were leaking again. “Dev will never forgive me.” He could tell by the way
Sarina nodded there was no reprieve for him with Dev. “Right.” He wished he’d
brought sunglasses. “I still have to fix this.”

Sarina
face palmed. “Oh Reid, you’ve done enough.”

He
looked into her eyes. “Trust me.”

Her
lips compressed and she looked away.

“I get
that I have to earn it again. Get Ziggurat back on track ’cause that’s your
mess and this one last time, trust me to clean up mine.”

Owen
had a coughing fit that turned into a laughing fit as Sarina pumped him on the
back. She laughed too. What was so funny? He had to do a bunch of interviews with
journalists and admit he was under the influence of the orbit of rash and
obnoxious or otherwise off his nut, and he regretted everything he’d said, he
was a sore loser, and needed to grow up, that Owen and the Plus team had things
under control and Ziggurat would deliver as expected.

And
then he had to go home and hope Zarley didn’t greet him with an empty apartment
and a tick in the box of that reduced him to a bad memory.

TWENTY-TWO

It was lunchtime, if you considered 2.30 p.m. a good time to eat
lunch, when Reid came home. He hadn’t shaved, he looked exhausted and there was
something about the way he stood back and didn’t greet her that made Zarley’s
heart spontaneously dismount. He really thought she’d clear out.

“Hi.” He
was fidgety like Cara got when she was having a bad pain day. A hand to his
hair, he patted his pocket, shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Sorry to run
out on you. Are you okay?”

She
walked toward him. “I’ve caught up on schoolwork. I’ve gossiped with Cara. I
made us lunch. I had a bath, all on my own, swam some laps in it.” He didn’t
smile. He wouldn’t look at her. She could virtually see the headache he had in
the press of two wrinkles over his nose. She stood still. “I voted for kink,
Reid.”

All the
air came out of him in a rush. He took two steps to close the gap between them
and knocked her off her feet in his haste to get his arms around her. He
staggered and she let out a yip, but he had her, they weren’t going anywhere.

“You
thought I’d leave.”

“I
still think you should, Flygirl. I’m not ready for you. You should send me out
to practice on someone else.”

Nothing
in the tone of his note or the way he was holding her, feet off the ground,
suggested he believed that, but she had to ask. “You want to be with someone
else?”

“Fuck
no.” He bent his knees and lowered her to the ground. “Last night.” His voice
hitched, he buried his face in her neck, whatever he was going to say was lost,
instead she got, “Run away with me.”

She
ruffled his hair and laughed, trying to give him light for the darkness he
carried.

He
straightened up. “I’m serious. I have to get out of town for a while. I have to
be uncontactable. Not in the apartment, or I have to hole up here until it all
dies down.”

“You’d
better tell me what you’ve been doing.”

She
served lunch and he told her about his morning. Not a play by play, not the
details, the themes: winning and losing, friendship and business, trust and
fear, ignorance and devotion and Indian grandmothers.

He
barely ate, he hadn’t slept. He’d spent the last few hours talking to
journalists, explaining how he’d gotten it wrong. And he still wasn’t done
fixing things, and the more he talked the more he distanced himself.

He sat
at the kitchen counter, his head in his hands, and she felt his despair as
spinning too fast, slipping from the pole, as attempting a move you’d not
trained well enough for and getting hurt.

A shove
made him turn to her. She pulled his hands away from his face. “You’ll get
there.” He didn’t trust it. She’d been in his shoes doubting, fearing, feeling she’d
topped out, couldn’t spring higher, twist faster, land steadier.

The day
she performed badly in an Olympic trial event and expected to be thrown off the
team, Costin had said one thing to give her back her confidence. The last day
she saw him he used the same words, but they didn’t stick. She’d used them on
Therese. She didn’t know if this would work for Reid, but it was all she had.

“I
believe in you.” Eyes unsteady, he frowned. She said it again. “I believe in
you.”

“Why?”
It came out in a rush of breath, but his shoulders went slack.

“Because
you commit. Even if it’s only to wasting yourself every night.” His frown
morphed into a confused look and she laughed. “Eck, bad example.”

She
brushed a hand over his forehead then ran her finger down the stubble on his
jaw, how to explain it? He was a man of deep passion to the point of
overbalancing, there was nothing halfhearted in what he did, from building his
business to the way he was about sex. She touched her forehead to his. “You
committed to me.”

It was
the right thing to say. Some of the tension in his chest eased, and his hands
came to her hips. “Couldn’t help myself.”

Couldn’t
help herself kiss him. Couldn’t help herself climb into his lap or tug on his
hair or flick into his mouth with her tongue. She’d rattled around the
apartment thinking about him, missing him, worried for the things he’d have to
do to change what he’d set in motion, the cost to his reputation, the toll on
his relationships.

She had
his damage in her arms and like last night she wanted to make it better. She
put all of that in her kiss and hoped he could feel it. But truly making it
better meant allowing him the space he needed to get the job done.

“When I
failed to perfect a new sequence of moves, a new level of difficulty, Costin
would order me to go in the corner.”

Reid
frowned. “Like a naughty child.”

Not
quite. “First time he said it I thought I was in trouble. It’s a little
counterintuitive for a coach. He meant to stake out a space on my own and work
at the problem until I understood what I needed to do to break through, no
excuses, no distractions. When I’d worked out what I was getting wrong, then he
could help me.”

“And
you understood this at sixteen.”

She’d
understood it at thirteen. And Reid did too, that’s where he was, in the
corner, working his problem and the only way to help him was to get out of his
way until he was ready to ask for support.

She
kissed him one last time and drew back. “I could do that all day.”

“Suits
me.”

“I’ll
wait for you to do what you need to do.”

He
didn’t let go for a good five minutes, just held her and looked into her eyes,
but when he set her on her feet, he was energized. He went to the office. She
heard him at his keyboard and on the phone, talking to Kuch and others. He
wandered out to the kitchen with a headset on and she couldn’t help but hear he
was talking to his mom, telling her he was fine, in a voice that sounded forced.
He hung off the refrigerator door and almost took a slug of juice from the
carton, before pouring a glass. Later, when he called, she went to help.

“Would
you read something for me?” He caught her hand and drew her onto his lap. “This
is not how I wanted our day to play out.” Those words against her ear tickled
in places he wasn’t touching that had no business delighting. It wasn’t her
ideal day either, but it was the last week of college before a term break so
she’d have a little spare time to make it up, and she no longer wanted to box
their time into a corner as though it was a problem she was working out.

“What
am I reading?” There was a page of type on the screen. He’d been tapping away
for a few hours.

“An
apology to the company.”

“The
whole company?” Woo, that was a big deal. Reid nodded, then pressed his
forehead into her shoulder. She read the first couple of lines and clapped her
hand over her mouth. “Can you say that?”

“It’s
the truth.”

It was
brutally honest. It wouldn’t stay a simple apology to Plus staff. It was too
entertaining for that. The more she read, the more nervous she got, thinking
about how these words would take on a life of their own and how that would
affect Reid. She reached for his hand and held it. The more she read, the more
she understood this would strip his professional reputation away entirely.

“I
don’t think you need to go this far.” It was career suicide. Was he too tired
to see that?

“Halfway
good won’t get it done.”

It was
a rewind to the night he took the Lucky’s crew out for breakfast. They’d talked
about pole dancing and stripping and owning what you did. That was the night
they started this thing, and this was Reid to his core, this time, owning his
failure.

She
read on, and when she got to the part where he wrote about someone new in his
life he cared about, she closed her eyes. His words on screen were going to
make her cry.

“Is
that someone me?”

He
turned her face from the screen. He was done with words. It was in the slope of
his shoulders and the weight of his hand on her hip. In the pinched skin
between his brows and the smudges under his eyes. He was done with this day and
this issue and feeling shitty. And yet once he sent those words into the world
he was opening himself up for more criticism and attention.

There
was resignation on his lips when they kissed and a ragged hope in the way he
held her that he hadn’t ruined them too. They ate, he put a movie on but
neither of them paid much attention to it. Reid’s hands never left her. Spooning
her, he played with her hair, held her so they fitted together.

“Come
away with me, Flygirl.”

She
understood why now. “Where would we go?”

“Where
would you like to go?

Maybe
they could drive out to LA or even head to Portland. If she missed a few days
of school, it wouldn’t kill. Missing work was more of an issue. The only travel
she’d done had been for competitions. She’d been to Moscow and Prague but had
never been to Disneyland. “How about Vegas?” There’d be plenty of mischief to
have there.

He
laughed, “I was thinking further afield.”

She
rolled over to face him. “Texas.” He thought she could fly; she’d show him how
high.

He
smiled. “What’s in Texas that’s got you excited?”

“The
longest waterslide in the world. It’s got this sweet kicking ramp you can do aerials
off. I’ve wanted to go for ages.” For Royal Flush in Texas she’d take a few
days off work.

“I was
thinking Paris.”

There
was a Paris in Kentucky. She knew a gymnast who lived there. His family was into
horses.

Reid
put a hand to her knee. “I was thinking you might like to visit Madame Amour.”

Madame Amour
was in Paris, France.

She
scrambled off the sofa. “Europe. You want to go to Europe.”

“I want
to get out of here.” He sat. She couldn’t stand still. “I want you to try out for
the scholarship.”

“No. What?”
How did he know about that? Anyway it would be over. Some other dancer who’d
passed the audition and gotten themselves to Paris to perform would’ve locked
the scholarship prize money away by now. It was easier to dream of aerials in
Texas than center stage at the most exclusive gentlemen’s club in the world.

“How do
you know about that?”

“It
came up at breakfast that first night and I saw the flyer on Kathryn’s coffee
table. I looked the place up. It’s a champagne and supper club. Membership only
with a waiting list. An international clientele. No sex on the premises.”

She
slapped her hands down on her thighs. “Oh my God. I’m not good enough to be an Amour
performer. I dance at a two-bit dive bar.”

“Like
hell.”

“You’re
not taking me to Paris.”

“Why
not?”

A
thousand million reasons. She had college. She had work. She had
responsibilities. She didn’t have the money to spare for an airfare and what
about accommodation? Paris would be an expensive city. And, no. Simply, no. She
had a good solid floor to pace around so she did that. Paris. Madame Amour. What
was he thinking? He couldn’t know about these things because he saw a random flyer
on someone’s coffee table.

“No.” Chicks
who slept on airbeds because they were homeless didn’t pack up and go to Paris
on the vague chance to win a scholarship that’s probably already been given.

“No
isn’t the answer.”

Yeah,
it so was. “I don’t work for you. You don’t get to tell me what you think of my
answers. You don’t get to make decisions for me. No.”

He
blanched.

Slapping
him would’ve been kinder.

Reid
made a stifled sound and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.” A muscle in his jaw
jumped and the furrow between his brows was back. “Fuck.”

He got
off the sofa to leave the room and she stepped in front of him. “I didn’t mean
that.”

“Yes,
you did.” He moved around her.

He’d
had a totally crappy day, but yes, she did mean it. She backed up, but put a
hand to his chest and when he didn’t try to avoid that touch, she stepped onto
his bare feet. She wasn’t heavy enough to stop him moving physically but
there’s no doubt he took note of her words. He’d added an I believe in you to his
note to Plus.

“Yes, I
meant it. I thought you were talking about getting away for a couple of days. Take
the bike and ride off into the sunset, and I can afford that. I’d love that. I’d
love it if you hired a car and we drove to Waco. But I don’t have the money to
go to Europe, or the talent for that stage and anyway the deadline to audition must’ve
passed.”

He put
his hands to her waist and picked her up so they were nose to nose. “I wasn’t
asking you to pay. I need to get out of here and Paris is a far enough away,
the competition is still open and if we went you could try out. How can that be
a bad thing?”

“You
can’t pay for me to go to Paris.”

He
lowered her to the floor. “That plain pisses me off. You’re my girlfriend and
I’m loaded and if I want to take you to the moon I should be allowed to.”