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She added a deep frown to her already pinched brows and said, “Rude?”
Shit, now I was making a bigger mess of this.
What was it about these people that threw me off my game?
I was a goddamn mediator. My job was to talk and persuade. I was damn good at it but as soon as I got around Easton I lost my temper. My very first team meeting I had a breakdown. I couldn’t speak to anyone in this office without sounding like an idiot.
What the hell was wrong with me?
“You look like you’re taking a bad trip down to Shitsville,” she pointed out.
Great.
Now I couldn’t even mask my feelings.
It was a good thing I’d quit-fired because I’d officially lost my edge.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I blurted out. “It’s like all you people have voodoo. You know, three months ago I sat at a table with a mob boss who’s missing three fingers and some wannabe twit who’s encroaching on territory that’s not his. But he’s so gung-ho and stupid ambitious he doesn’t heed warnings. Big Boss decides to teach him a lesson and there’s a drive-by shooting in a neighborhood. The house Baby Boss lives in with his family is hit but so are four other houses and there were kids playing basketball in the driveway of the house across the street. Those kids saw that shit. Those other houses were occupied and someone could’ve died. I had zero hesitation calling a meeting. Not a single moment of dithering during negotiations. Two mob bosses, no problem. But sitting in a nice, cozy office, safe and sound, I can’t think straight. I’m screwing this up because I don’t know how to do it. No one trained me how to be a friend. No one taught me how to be normal.”
Since I was on a roll, spilling my guts, I continued.
“And Easton. What’s up with that? I barely know him and I’m falling in love. Am I delusional? I must be. I’ve gone totally insane. I found out my whole life was a lie and what do I do? Fall in like with some guy. That’s the first step, right? You fall in like?”
“Yeah, that’s the first step,” she confirmed.
“Right, okay. But before that, like the day before that, he’s annoying as shit and I’m calling him a dick. A lot. I told him he was a dick repeatedly and I was liberal with my assholes, too.”
Kira smirked and suppressed a chuckle.
“Gross, not like that. I mean, not gross if you like butt stuff, but I wasn’t liberal with my asshole. I was calling him an asshole left and right.”
Kira’s hand came up, palm facing me, and she was shaking her head.
“Please…please…stop.” A laugh burst from her with such force she bucked. “Oh. My. God. Dead. I’m dying,” she hooted. “Liberal with your asshole. I’m stealing that. Not your asshole—Easton can keep that—but I’m telling this story.”
My back shot straight.
What had I done?
Who was she going to tell?
“Okay, Nebraska, here it is for you,” she said when her laughing stopped. “First, badass you worked that deal with those bosses. Next is, we don’t have voodoo. You can’t be badass Dove around us because you’re not Dove to us. You’re Nebraska.”
She stopped and made a show of waving. “Hi, I’m Kira or KK or Kid Genius, or as Zane calls me, Mini Me. Feel free to call me any or all of my nicknames or make up one of your own. That’s what friends do. It’s not rude to call a friend a nickname. It’s what friends do. Next, you calling Easton a dick, I’ve called him a douche nozzle dozens of times when he’s annoyed me. I call Smith Smithsonian a bunch because he hates it and he can be annoying, too. Jonas is mostly cool and chill so I’ve only called him a fuckwit a few times. And Cash, I’ve given up. You can call him anything and he’ll embrace it and turn it and that’s more annoying than the original thing he did. And don’t let the Dimple King fool you; he’s still a demon and I call him that to his face. Right or wrong it’s just what we do around here. It’s a way to blow off steam, it’s the way we joke, it’s family.”
“The last time I called Easton a dick he spanked me.” As soon as I blurted that out I covered my mouth so my order was muffled. “Forget I said that.”
“Sure. I’ll forget if you promise to call me KK.”
“I’ll call you the Queen of the Universe if you never tell that to a soul.”
She sobered immediately.
“Here’s a lesson for you. There is a difference between a good story that’s embarrassing but hilarious and a secret between sisters. I’ll share the asshole story because it’s funny. What you confide in me, whether it’s a slip or intentional, never, and I mean never, leaves my lips.”
I was back to screwing this up.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
