"Okay."
God, I was such a friggin' pushover.
Dipping a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, he pulled out his keys, giving me a once over before tilting his head up. "And quit wearin' that fancy shit. I know you ain’t got any ink but you don't need to look like some sorority girl either."
Fancy? I bought most of my clothes from the clearance rack at Target.
By the time his words—insulting my clothes—settled into my brain, Dex had already unlocked the front door and let himself in.
Maybe it should have bothered me that he told me to change the casual work clothes, but it didn't. The thing was, I couldn't get that pissed off. I felt resigned and annoyed.
Halfway down the hall by the time I came in, Dex called out on his path toward his office. "There's a week's worth of pictures to upload."
Did I have a clue what I was doing? Nope. I connected the camera to the computer anyway and thanks to my investigative skills—and the search option on the operating system—found where I needed to dump and arrange the thirty five pictures.
That's exactly what I was in the middle of doing when Blake strolled in, plopping onto the couch like they were old friends.
I nodded at his question, not wondering once how he'd found out where I lived before. "Yep. Near Miami, well, really Fort Lauderdale. Miami's way too expensive." It was. It totally was. Completely out of the price range of a customer service employee. Astronomically out of the price range for two unemployed girls, which only reminded me that I should check in with Lanie at some point.
He made a whistling sound. "Always wanted to go to Miami. Why the hell would you move here?"
At the risk of not wanting to be rude, I didn't laugh. "My old job had a lot of cutbacks. Since I was one of the newest hires, they let me go first. I couldn't find another job, one thing led to another, and I thought it'd be best to—," come mooch off my brother? "Come here. Mr. Locke knows my brother."
Blake laughed, loud. "Mr. Locke?" He laughed again. "Call him Dex. Please."
I smiled at him and shrugged. It wasn't like he'd told me what to call him. Plus, with as quiet as he seemed to be, the last thing I wanted to do was piss him off and call him something that he didn't approve of. My last boss had lost his mind if he wasn't referred to as a sir.
Which I figured completely merited the fact that we called him an asshole when he wasn't listening.
"I heard Sonny's sister or something was visiting the last time I went to Mayhem," he threw in.
"Are you... a member of the Widows?"
"No," he answered instantly, his face flushing out of what I could assume to be embarrassment for shooting down the idea so quickly. "I've known Dex for a long time. That's it. I know all those guys." Then he plunged in the knife. "Only heard of your dad though, never met him."
It took such a small part of me to smile like what he said wasn't a big deal, when it still was. Which was stupid. I was too old to still let him bother me. I'd been through too much to care about where he was and who he'd kept in touch with, when he hadn't kept in touch with his own kids.
But it did.
I'd gone from thinking about him once a year to all-of-a-sudden getting constantly bombarded with reminders of something—someone—I'd rather forget.
And it must have been noticeable on my face because Blake had a guilty expression on his.
"I'm gonna get a pop, you want one?" he asked, already pushing himself off of the couch he was on.
Avoiding the awkwardness? I think I liked Blake already.
"No thanks."
He shrugged and was around the desk a moment later, his Meshuggah t-shirt draped loosely around his shoulders, faded jeans sagging, before he was out of my line of vision. It kind of made me feel like an old grandma, dressed in black work pants and an elbow-length lavender blouse that covered all my fleshly valuables.
I just didn't feel like explaining my arm. Everything always changed after The Arm Conversation.
As long as I could keep wearing my longer sleeved shirts, I could put that bomb off for a while.
~ * ~ *
I'd been staring at the screen for the last hour. The notes that Dex had set down almost two hours ago seemed to be mocking me in mute delight.
What I should have done was ask him the day before to explain to me one more time how to work the program.
Half of it had been more than easy enough. Memos, dates, all that stuff I could guess. But I'd already gone through the same spreadsheet twice, and I swear two of the numbers on the balance were different than they had been originally.
Holy crap.
I had two options. I could go ask Dex for help. The other would be that I could look up instructional videos on how to use the accounting program because the Help button wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped.
In hindsight, I'm really not sure why I chose to ask Dex instead of suffering through a thirty minute long video.
But I got up and headed toward his office, feeling that same urge to gag as the day before, creep up my throat.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
The folder clung to my fingertips as I paused right outside of the opened office door. Dex was behind his desk, a sheet of paper spread out where the keyboard had been yesterday. A pencil bobbed back and forth as he stared at the sheet, two fingers pinched the bridge of his nose.
Deep down I knew I was going to regret this. I really, really did.
"Hey Dex?"
Those two Crayola Blue eyes shifted up to look at me. Emotionless. Impassive. "Yeah?"
I had to swallow back the urge to gag as I lifted the blue folder for him to see. My mouth, the traitor, lifted up into a nervous smile. "I'm having some trouble with that program you showed me yesterday, and I was wondering if you could show me how to use it one more time?"
He didn't say anything. That concentrated, undiluted gaze stayed on me indefinitely.
And the babbling kept spewing out of me. "I just don't want to mess it up any more."
Dex's blink was so slow it could have lasted a day. The hand that had been up shielding his mouth while his fingertips pinched the bridge of his nose, dropped. He let out a deep, deep sigh straight from the monstrous caverns hidden beneath his chest and flat abs. "You already fucked it up?"
Triple crap.
I'd smiled at things worse than Dex, so the fact that my nervous smile stayed on my face wasn't a surprise. "I may have messed it up, but I haven't saved my work yet. That's why I was hoping you could help me."
He looked up at the ceiling and closed those brilliant eyes. "Fuck me. Fuck me."
Quadruple crap.
Maybe I should have told him I was sorry for bothering him, but I wasn't. I really didn't know very well what I was doing, and I figured that I was saving him time now by asking for clarification and not waiting till later and causing a bigger mess. Right?
"I already showed you how to do this shit yesterday, girl. I don't have time to hold your fuckin' hand through this, got it?"
What. The. Hell?
Something that wasn't exactly shame or humiliation rushed through me. I wasn't sure what exactly the emotion was, but it left this terrible, sticky layer over my skin.
"I'll show you one more time, but if you can't handle somethin' as easy as that program then I don't think you have any business workin' for me. I need help around here. I don't have time to be helpin' the help, make sense?" he asked in that clipped, sharp tone that could saw off pieces of lumber.
My fingers curled into themselves on their own just as something knotted in my throat. I was a spineless little wuss. Where had this person come from?
I was pretty passive. Okay, extremely passive, but I could hold my own. I knew when to say no. I knew when people took advantage of me. Yet, there I was. Letting my boss get mad because I hadn't mastered how to do something on the first try.