“Hey. How’s it going, man?”
I look around my empty apartment. “Fine.”
“Are you still at the office?”
“No, I’m at home.”
“Let me guess, in your home office?”
I can hear the smile in his voice.
“No,” I lie, standing and walking out to the living room.
He laughs. “Right. What are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
“Daydreaming about your girl.”
I don’t bother answering that question.
“Just ask her out already, dude,” Carter groans.
I plop down onto my couch. “What if she says no? Or runs straight to HR?”
I hear him moving in the background—probably at his cabin. Carter returned from his last deployment, got out of the Marines, and has been holed up at his place ever since. I’ve tried to ask him what happened, but he doesn’t want to talk. He just wants peace and solitude. I get that. Or I did until I met Hazel. Now I just want her.
“Well, at least you’d have your answer,” Carter says.
“I don’t want an answer,” I snap.
“Fair enough. But you need to do something, man. Figure out a way to ask her out that won’t make her quit.”
His words remind me of the look on Hazel’s face this afternoon when she left. She’s going to quit. I could see it in her eyes. She’s probably waiting until she’s worked for me a year. Then she’ll leave me.
I snarl at the thought, squeezing my eyes shut. That doesn’t give me much time. I have to convince her to be mine before then. How long is that? Seven weeks?
“Fuck!”
“You good, brother?”
“No,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Jesus, may love never find me,” Carter remarks wryly.
“Oh, it will, and when it does, I’m going to laugh my ass off,” I warn him, slugging down the rest of my scotch.
“Ask her out to dinner,” Carter suggests. “Hell, make up some fake business trip and tell her she needs to go with you. You could be on some beach somewhere when you tell her how fucked up you are over her. That’ll stop her from running to HR. Solves one of your problems.”
“You’re suggesting I kidnap her?”
He snorts. “Like you haven’t already thought of that.”
He’s got me there…
“Yeah, well, I don’t fancy prison food.”
Carter chuckles. “Good point.”