“I know. She’s one of my best friends, Corbin, for God’s sake.”
He nodded shortly. He leaned back a little, as if to get a wider-angle look on her.
“Avalon, I have to say... you look... you look... beautiful.”
He said it with great sincerity and the faintest surprise. He almost sounded a little affronted. Not as though he was just now remembering that he’d once had a beautiful girlfriend.
But sort of as if he’d expected her to have wasted away from heartbreak.
She scowled at him.
And she was going to be silent long enough for him to realize he wasn’t going to get a reciprocal compliment.
He looked fine. He looked the same as always. Heshouldlook like shit, thin from not eating with purple sleepless guilt shadows under his eyes. Maybe his hair should be a little thinner, since he had a tendency to tug on it when he was anxious.
Her diaphragm felt tight. It occurred to her that she was breathing shallowly. As if she begrudged the necessity to breathe the same air he was currently breathing.
He picked absently at the corner of the sofa cushion where it was already coming unraveled.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this. I would have told you I was coming up, but you would have told me not to.”
“Corbin, I’d like to sleep. I’ve been working all day, actual physical labor. If you have something else to say, for fuck’s sake, say it.”
“I did something horrible,” he blurted.
Oh, God.
“Are we referencing the horrible thing you did that led to my being here, or have you done a brand-new horrible thing affecting GradYouAte?”
She said this with utter dispassion and calm neutrality.
It badly rattled him, she could tell. Whatever his strategy was for coming up here, or whatever message he intended to deliver, it apparently depended on her giving a shit about him.
He drew in a breath.
“The first one,” he said. With a ghost of humor, an attempt at his usual glib self. “But I’m here for two reasons. So I’m just going to talk business first. Because you wouldn’t talk to me, and this requires your input. It’s pretty critical.”
Oh, crap. Concern twinged, and then the weight of that life she’d created almost without meaning to, a life with people who depended on her for their salaries, came and WHUMP—settled on her shoulders. She hadn’t fully been aware of how much of a weight it in fact was until she’d managed, for at least a few weeks, to shift out from under it.
“The football tryout mod for GradYouAte is way behind schedule because two of the key programmers were deported to Canada for not renewing their work visas on time.”
She knew what the cascade effect ofthatwould be. Advertisers, subscribers. They’d shed them accordingly, and lose a huge chunk of income.
“Corbin... Itoldyou to make sure everything is in order with their working visas! Twice! And youknowyou’re supposed to review all that before hiring decisions are made. Youknowthat but I made a freaking point of reminding you!”
“But there are somanyteams working on so many things. And I usually just do the programming and interviewing.”
She could feel tension like a noose around her forehead. “Yes, you do. While I do approximately a billion other fucking things. You know that about theteams, too. And if I can do all that, so can you. Unless you’re saying I’m smarter and more capable than you are.”
This was something she never would have dared voice aloud to him before. Part of the dynamic of their relationship had been the understanding that he was the brilliant one while she was the sparkly cute one who made it possible for him to be brilliant.
She wondered for one wild moment if he’d done this on purpose. So she’d have to come back and fix it.
“And I guess I’ve been feeling a little distracted by... what happened with us.”
She stared at him. “By ‘what happened’? You mean when I walked in on you mid-bang?”
He sucked in a sharp breath and continued. “There’s more. The new programmers hired won’t work for anything less than a hundred an hour. So it’s either a hundred an hour, or a further delay in the rollout. And there’s more trouble with the art for the cheerleader module. You know how we discussed the need for multicultural avatars and we had to have them redone? Well, they’re of all ethnicities now. But turns out what they turned in and began implementing... well, all the cheerleaders look like this.”