Trade Me (20 page)

“Wow,” she says. “That was harsh. Does your dad usually call you an asshole? And a fucking bastard?”

“Yeah.” I turn away from her. “But he doesn’t mean it like you think he means it.”

“Oh, yes. The well-known
other
meaning of fucking bastard.”

“It’s a joke,” I say. “An inside joke.”

“Ha ha. So funny.” She makes a face.

“It is. Kind of. Five years ago, Peter—um, that’s Peter Georgiacodis, who used to be the CFO—told my dad that if he didn’t learn to watch his mouth, he was going to get sued one day. So he forced my dad to take corporate sensitivity training.”

“That worked well,” she says sarcastically.

“Actually, it kind of did. He’s…better, now. Really. With most people. But Dad said he wasn’t going through that sensitivity bullcrap unless Peter and I did it with him. And he was a little belligerent about it, as only he can be. Halfway through, he tried to explain that he just didn’t think that cursing was that insulting. Look, he said,
I
didn’t mind, and I was barely eighteen. So how bad could it be? In any event, the instructor lost his temper and told him that he could call the people he loved ‘you fucking bastard’ as much as he wanted, but that he had to treat his employees like real people.” I shrug. “Ever since then, that’s been the way we say ‘I love you.’ We swear at each other.”

She looks at me. “You know that is deeply fucked up, right?”

I smile at her. “Aw, I love you, too.”

She shakes her head. “I guess I’m hardly in a position to judge. My mom tells me she loves me by explaining the best way to transport meth.”

For a moment, we smile at each other.

And then reality hits: I just agreed to take over for my dad. The launch is in three weeks. After that, there will be no more afternoons with Tina. I won’t have time for a job washing dishes. This trade will be over—and I still don’t have a solution to my stupid problem.

I pull out a chair and sit. “I’m going to have to end the trade early.”

There are a thousand things she could say. I’m bailing early, just like she thought I would. I couldn’t hack it. It wasn’t real; it was never real. I couldn’t put down my life, any more than she could let go of her own terror. We’re still the same people we were before, scarred in the same ways we were scarred before. Everything I thought I could accomplish was fake. I can’t look at her.

“I won’t be in school anymore,” I say, “so there’s no question that you’ll stay here. And the money is yours—we agreed on that up front. You were right. We can’t trade. Not really. There’s nothing I can do to get out of my life.”

But it’s more than that. Once the trade is over,
we’re
over. We’re nothing. And we’ve tried—hard, so hard—not to be anything. But… I glance over at her and… My body yearns to press against hers. My lungs long to breath the air she releases. And deep down, somewhere inside of me, I just
want
. I want everything we haven’t had.

Don’t walk away,
I imagine saying.

“I still want to meet your parents,” I tell her. “And just think—three weeks from now, your mom will never tease me about you again.”

She doesn’t say anything. But even though I try to cover what I’m thinking with a smile, she knows what I’m saying. She reaches out and takes my hand.

There are a million things we could be to each other, if only we were different people. If I were a different person, I would have asked her out last September. If she were a different person, we’d have been in bed weeks ago. Instead, we’re us. Close enough to hurt, but not close enough to do more than touch for an instant and let go.

“Until then,” I say, “I don’t want out of any of this.”

She doesn’t let go of my hand. “Until then.”

But she’s already turned her head away.

TINA

It’s nine at night, and Blake has gone to work, when my watch buzzes on my wrist. I glance down, expecting a calendar reminder. Instead, a little green notification appears.

Incoming call: Adam Reynolds.

I let those words fill my vision for a moment. Not because I intend to make him wait; it’s simply that for a second I freeze. Blake’s dad is a wolf, and I feel very much like the rabbit. The last time Adam and I talked, it didn’t turn out particularly well. But right now, the CEO of Cyclone—and the man who, incidentally, still thinks I’m dating his son—is calling me.

What can I do? I hit
accept.

He appears on the screen: messy pepper-gray hair and beard scruff in need of a shave. His gaze fixes on mine.

“Tina.” His voice is just a little hoarse. He clears his throat and sniffs. “Is Blake there?”

“No.”

“Good.” He frowns. “Look. Blake’s a little distant right now. Is something going on with him?”

Something is obviously going on between them, but even I can’t tell what it is, and I suspect I know about as much as anyone on the planet except these two.

I shake my head. “I’m not talking to you about Blake.”

“Yeah.” He blows out a breath. “Probably just as well that you’re loyal to him. I just…” He pauses, tapping his fingers against his cheek.

“It’s not that,” I interject. “It’s just that you’re an…” I choke back the word I’d been planning to put in that blank. Last time was bad enough. “You’re a little intense,” I finish.

For a moment, he stares at me. Then, ever so slowly, he smiles. “Don’t start holding out on me now. I’m an asshole.” My surprise must show, because he shrugs a shoulder. “I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

I suspect this is as close as Adam Reynolds will ever come to apologizing for his behavior in that restaurant.

“
Blake
thinks you’re not an asshole.”

“Blake,” Mr. Reynolds says with a roll of his eyes, “is a ridiculously good kid. There’s a reason I’m a little protective of him. I’m always afraid people will take advantage.”

I don’t say anything. A
little
protective is what he is?

Despite my silence, he sighs and waves his hand. “Good point,” he mutters in response to the thing I didn’t say. “It hasn’t happened yet, and God knows if he were as naïve as I really feared, it would have by now. Of all the women he could have had, he
did
choose you.”

I think this is intended as a compliment.

“Still,” his dad continues. “I worry. Is everything okay with him?”

I have the distinct impression that even though Blake has never said so, most of his problems lie with this man. Somehow. Some way.

“This is a conversation you should have with Blake.”

He puts his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Fuck.” He doesn’t move for a few moments. And then—of all things—he sniffles. Unconvincingly.

“Mr. Reynolds, are you fake crying to try to get my sympathy?”

The hand lowers. He glowers at me—obviously dry-eyed. “Fuck me,” he says. “First, call me Adam.
Mr. Reynolds
makes me sound like some bullshit old fart. Second, I don’t fucking cry. I especially don’t fake cry. Emotional manipulation is for morons who don’t have the strength of will to get people on their side with reason. I have a cold.”

“Aw. Poor baby. You should get some rest.” I incline my head toward him, and then widen my eyes. “Oh, wait. I forgot. You can’t.”

He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Yeah, yeah. My kid has good taste. I’m fucking things up for you. I hope it won’t be too much of a disturbance.”

“You know.” I swallow. “I think Blake gave you the wrong impression about us.”

“What, that he’s into you more than you’re into him? I got that from him.”

I swallow.

“That you need to be convinced? That he’s going to end up convincing you, no matter what you’re telling yourself right now?

I let out a breath.

“Exactly.” Adam points a finger at me. “That’s what I thought. My money’s on my boy. But hey, don’t tell me what’s going on. Who needs details? Surely not his own father. I’m not invasive.”

“Right. Calling me in the middle of the night when Blake’s not around isn’t invasive at all.”

He just snorts. “If I were really invasive, I would check the fucking logs. You and Blake are both wearing GPS-enabled devices equipped with 3-axis accelerometers and heart rate monitors. The whole fucking point is that we’re supposed to be able to detect exactly what you’re doing with every minute of your day. Every ounce of data you generate is getting dumped to Cyclone servers every midnight.” He rubs his forehead. “Sometimes I fucking hate myself for believing in privacy.”

“But you do,” I say to reassure myself.

For a long moment, he looks at me. Then he sighs. “Yeah.” He swallows. “Peter Georgiacodis—I don’t know if Blake’s told you about Peter. But Peter felt very strongly about it. And there was a point, when we first started data collection a few years ago, when Peter told me if I ever used any logs we collected to satisfy my own curiosity, he’d make Blake hack into the server and post my logs for the public, just so I could see how it felt. Peter’s…not here anymore, but I think Blake would do it. Just on principle.”

“And that’s enough to scare you? What would your logs tell us about you?” I ask.

He fixes me with a steely stare. “They’d tell you I have a fucking cold,” he says. And then he cuts the connection.

13.

TINA

“I need another word for devour.” Maria is sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, chewing her lip and staring at her laptop.

“Eat?” I suggest.

She waves her hand. “Used it already.”

“Bolt? Chew?”

“Something that suggests more carnage.”

“Swallow whole?”

She looks up at me. “These are zombies,” she says with a toss of her hair. “They don’t swallow whole. They tear. They rend—oh, hey, that’s it. Rending. Thanks!”

“You’re welcome,” I say in amusement. “But I thought you were trying to avoid zombies.”

She adjusts the glasses that she only uses for reading. “I’ve given in. I couldn’t resist. The math is strained, but at least it’s funny. Asteroids next week.”

My roommate—housemate, I suppose I should say now that we’re no longer sharing rooms—has a secret blog. I have a secret life. Funny how that works out.

“Adam Reynolds called me last night,” I say.

She looks up. “Seriously?”

“He thinks I’m dating his son.”

“Whoop-te-doo.” She rolls her eyes. “
I
think you’re dating his son.”

I point a finger at her. “Et tu, Maria?”

“I’m just saying. If you’re trying not to get hurt, you’re doing it wrong. You’re still friends. You still care about him. You still do things for each other, and you’re still going to hurt when you walk away. It’s just that the way you’re doing it, you have fewer orgasms.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. I have to admit that she has something like a point. Blake isn’t
less
under my skin right now because I’ve managed to keep from kissing him.

“He wanted to know what was going on with Blake.”

“Did you tell him to join the club?”

I don’t answer this. I keep trying
not
to wonder. The thing is, I know everything’s not right. I mean, I’m
here,
in this house, and he is, at the present moment, washing dishes. He hasn’t told me what he’s looking for, and I suspect he hasn’t found it.

But this is ending. At this point, I’ve written the script for how our relationship will come to an end—literally. I know that a little bit less than three weeks from now, there will no longer be early afternoons spent together going over launch details. There will be no hours where I talk to my mother and try not to worry, no time when he listens to me fret and takes care of things.

“I don’t want to talk about Blake,” I say. “And you’re one to talk about orgasms anyway. You didn’t give Hot Tattoo Guy your number.”

“Irrelevant.” Maria absently types in a sentence. “That has not made him any less instrumental a figure in my orgasms.”

There is that. I could respond in kind. I could tell her that I’ve thought of Blake a little too often, a little too much. But my own fantasies are not ones I want to examine. I imagine myself touching him. Taking off his clothing. I imagine myself going down on him, feeling the hard length of him in my mouth.