Taking a deep breath, I started walking to the door, kicking myself in the ass for coming here the whole time.
What was I thinking?
“You thought you’d be an adult and see your friend, dip shit,” I muttered as I got to the door.
Shaking off my stupidity, I plastered a smile on my face and raised a hand at the girl behind the desk. Naomi, wasn’t it? Did that sound right?
“Hey, Bexley,” she called, waving back at me. “It’s great to see you back.”
“Thanks, Naomi.”—please let it be Naomi, please let it be Naomi—“It’s great to be back.
“Bex,” a deeper voice said, and I turned to see DB as he joined us. “How was your trip home?”
Was it my imagination, or were his lips twitching?
“Uh, it was okay?” Until Sakegate, that was.
He definitely bit down on his lip this time, like he was fighting back laughter.
“Well,” he cleared his throat. “You’re here to see Logan, right? Or did you come to hand yourself in?”
“I came…” I trailed off when three of the guys behind him started shaking bananas at me like they were waving. That could be a coincidence, though. “Uh, yeah, I came to see him. Is he around?”
“Yup, he’s working in the room over here. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”
Following behind him, I did my best to smile and not grimace as all three of them bit into the fruit as we passed by, but then DB picked up a banana from a large bunch on one of the desks and started peeling it as we walked.
“You guys on a diet here or something?”
Instead of answering me, he shot me a grin and started eating it. Just watching it was making my shitty gag reflex go to hell.
Thankfully we reached the room Logan was in before I had to watch him eat more of it. Opening the door, DB sighed loudly.
“Guy’s working himself into a coma trying to get this shit sorted out. Give me one second.” Not telling me why or explaining any of it, he walked away, leaving me staring at a fast asleep Logan, his head on the desk in front of him with paperwork spread around it.
“Here we go,” DB said from right behind me, making me jump. Then, moving around me, he walked over to where Logan’s head was, raised a bullhorn, and yelled next to his ear, “Party’s over, princess. Get your boyfriend, your panties, and move out!”
It was like watching someone get electrocuted as he jumped up out of his chair, smacking the back of his head off the shelves that were at a stupidly low height above it.
Holding the injured area, Logan glared at his boss. “You’re an absolute fucking asshole, Bell.”
Not moving the bullhorn away from his mouth, Dave replied loudly, “That’s Sheriff Asshole Bell to you.”
With the muscle in his jaw ticking, he glanced over at where I was standing and froze. “You’re back!”
“Got back last night, remember?”
Groaning, he lifted his free hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, I’ve been trying to figure this shit out,” he waved at the paperwork.
This time, Dave turned the bullhorn in my direction. “He hasn’t been home in thirty-six hours, and he smells. Take him away.”
Logan’s head snapped back in his boss’s direction. “I haven’t—"
“Away!” DB yelled, still using it. “Go before I get the guys to carry you out.”
“I need to put this stuff—”
“Away! I’ll deal with it, just leave.”
Growling, he started moving slowly toward me, stretching out his back as he did. “I think I’ve trapped a nerve sitting there.”
“And killed a few brain cells hitting your head on those shelves,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “They’re at a fucking stupid height.”
“Not for me, they’re not,” Naomi snickered as she breezed past us into the room.
The guys were still eating their bananas as we passed them, and it was then that it all started to make sense.
“You saw the video, didn’t you?”
Not one of them could look me in the eye as they laughed around their mouthfuls of fruit.
“Ignore them,” Logan said, tugging my arm toward the door.
“Don’t you have to get anything out of your desk? If I just got up and walked out of work, I’d have no keys, no phone, no Chapstick. All my essentials would be stuck in my desk.”
Logan patted his pockets. “Got it all right here, and I don’t wear Chapstick.”
Just as we got to the door, DB used the bullhorn one last time. “Sorry about your gag reflex, Bex. Bananas aren’t your enemy!”
And, for the second time, I walked out of the building feeling like the world’s biggest dickhead in history.
Garrett, who was walking toward us from where he’d just parked up, pulled a banana out of his pocket and pointed it at me. “Kapow, kapow!”
I ground my teeth together so hard it was a miracle I didn’t need an expensive visit to the dentist.
“You work with a mean bunch of fuckers.”
Logan stopped and looked at me in disbelief. “You just saw what my boss did to me, didn’t you?”
I wouldn’t have stopped walking away from them all if you’d paid me a thousand dollars, so I continued to where I’d parked Pops’ car. “Yeah, but you’ll have done something to deserve it. All I did was get drunk and accidentally do it on camera.”
There was a pause, and then he sighed. “Yeah, I probably do deserve it.” I’d parked next to his truck, so we were getting into our vehicles when he added, “And we need to talk about that damn video. Your dad’s making me do it.”
As I drove behind him toward Papa’s house, I gave serious consideration to taking a detour to Canada.
I also thought about calling up my dad to kick his ass for making Logan do it, but then I looked at the clock and thought about how he had a meeting today with a big supply chain in
