“Ha. Ha. Hardy har. No, I did not.” I turned up my nose, not offended in the slightest because if I were talking to me right now, I would’ve said the same thing.
Monroe sighed. “All right, well, I don’t know if you can help me, but the computer is slow as shit right now and I don’t know why. Can you take a look at it before I call someone?”
I laughed and wiped off the froth on the outside of the glass, then slid it over to the customer. “Here you go, hon.”
He was an older man that came here for lunch every day and one thing I’d learned was he hated small talk. He grunted, which was his way of sayingthank you, and took a sip.
Throwing the towel onto the counter, I gently pushed Monroe toward the bar’s end. “Come on. Let’s see if I’m secretly a tech genius.”
“You wouldn’t own a bar with me if you were a tech genius.”
I scoffed in mock offense. “I would own all sorts of things if I were a tech genius because I’d be a quadrillionaire by now. I would own at leasttenbars.”
Monroe huffed a laugh. “You can barely manage half of one.”
When we stepped inside his office, I sighed and flicked on the overhead light. “Monroe, honey, you’re not a golem. Light is good for you.” I stepped across the room and pulled open the blinds.
“Fuck. Stop it, Lea, the sun shines right on the damn screen and I can’t see shit that way.”
“You know you can move your desk, right?” I sidled around his desk and plopped down into his very uncomfortable chair. “Ugh. Babe, seriously, please get a new chair. You’re gonna need corrective surgery if you keep using this one.”
I shot him a reproachful look while he rolled his eyes and rubbed his temples like I was giving him a headache.
“Just look at the damn thing,” he muttered.
“So what’s the issue?”
Monroe sank down onto the couch across from the desk and leaned against the cushions. “I have to get the financial records for this quarter ready, so I was working on the spreadsheet, but every time I click something, it takes a good two minutes to complete the action. It’s been doing that all morning and I can’t deal with it anymore.”
Blech. Technology. This was why I did not envy Monroe’s responsibilities at all.
I clicked on the open spreadsheet of our spending breakdown for the quarter, then clicked on the file menu.
And waited while nothing happened.
“Okay, let me ask you something,” I said, steepling my hands and raising my brows at Monroe. “And I need you to be honest with me because resolution only comes with honesty. Were you looking at porn?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “Yup. You got me. I was watching porn, Lea.”
I whistled. “Knew it.” The chair creaked when I sat back as I waited for the file menu to drop down. “Well, as a tech genius, I am diagnosing this problem as undiagnosable by me but potentially diagnosable by my new roommate. Who is actually a tech genius.”
Monroe muttered something as I pulled out my phone and called Shea because I didn’t have Beau’s number.
It rang. And rang and rang and rang and went to voicemail.
“Shea bae, I don’t know why you even have a phone whenyou hardly ever use it. What if I was dying? I could be dying right now, and this is the last phone call you ever get from me.”
I hung up, then pocketed my phone again and said, “I’ll just run back to the apartment and ask him.”
“Thanks.”
“And by run I mean walk at a leisurely pace.”
Monroe sighed, then stood up and walked with me back to the bar area. He split off from me and went behind the bar while I sashayed out into the blindingly bright sun. There was a warm, gentle breeze that felt so good with the heat of the sun. It would feel even better to be in the ocean right now. Had Beau gone down to the ocean yet? Did he even like to swim?
I turned left, headed home, and was only halfway back when Shea called me.
“Yes, my darling,” I said into the phone. “I’m still alive, how kind of you to ask.”