Page 23 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

I finished payroll fairly easily, but the nagging thought that Gilbert had left the café without saying sorry to Brian stayed with me. It wouldn’t let me go, and as soon as everything was submitted so Common Grounds’ employees could get paid on time by Friday, I stood, took the two mugs, one empty and one full, and headed out into the main part of the café.

Brian wasn’t behind the counter where I expected him to be. I looked around, even poking my head into Hannah’s kitchen, but he wasn’t there.

“If you’re looking for Loverboy, he went home,” Hannah told me with a disapproving look.

“Shit,” I sighed. “Did he say why?”

“Um, we all heard why when Gilbert yelled at him earlier,” Diccon answered from where he was doing double duty, making drinks as well as taking orders. “He was really upset.”

I growled, rubbing the back of my neck. As soon as I saw Gilbert again, I was going to wring his neck.

“I said it was okay for him to leave,” Diccon went on. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, although I actually did. It was harder for me to make sure Brian was okay when he wasn’t right in front of me. I would have left the café and gone to find him, but now that we were a man down, I was needed behind the counter for the tail end of the morning rush, such as it was.

Before I took up Diccon’s position of taking orders, though, I fired off a quick text to Brian.

“I’m so sorry about Gilbert’s behavior this morning. He was out of line. I’m not angry with you and no one else at work is either. Take some time today, but please come back for games night tonight and we’ll talk. Everything will be okay.”

Once that was sent, I focused in on working the counter, though there were so few people coming into the café that Diccon and Hannah probably could have handled it on their own.

It took a good half hour before I got a reply from Brian. Even then, it was a voice message, not a text. I had to wait even longer before I was in a quiet place to listen to it.

“Hey, it’s me,” Brian’s voice came through the phone, sounding sad and defeated. “I’m sorry I ran out like that. It’s just…I….” He sighed, and there was a long silence before he said, “Gilbert hit a nerve is all. But that doesn’t mean I should have run out like that. I will be there for games night tonight, I just need to get my head straightened out first. Thanks for understanding.”

I smiled at my phone as the message ended, my chest squeezing with affection. I needed to do whatever I could to make things up to Brian. But more than that, I wanted to get to the bottom of whatever it was that had caused him to react the way he had. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more going on with my new boyfriend than met the eye. He needed me for something he wasn’t talking about. Wasn’t talking about yet. I needed to get him to trust me enough to be completely honest with me about whatever had hurt him and was continuing to hurt him.

CHAPTER 8

Brian

Ishouldn’t have walked out of work the way I did over something as minor as embarrassment. Running away was the coward’s way out of difficult situations, but it seemed to be a default setting for me when all my inadequacies were laid bare. I should have been beyond being crushed by the truth, but not being able to read in my mid-twenties was more than just a shortcoming. It was a handicap that made me feel like dirt.

By the time I reached home, I felt lower than dirt. Not just because Gilbert had snapped at me, but because I just knew Sam was on the verge of figuring things out, and once he did, he wouldn’t want anything to do with a dummy like me anymore. Whatever pride I had left was about to turn into ugly crying as I let myself into the apartment, then closed the door behind me and leaned against it, lowering my head.

“Whoa,” Kendra greeted me as she stepped out of her bedroom in her pajamas, carrying an empty mug. “You’re home early, and you do not look good.”

I jerked straight, my eyes going wide. “You’re still up.”

“I was just about to head to bed,” she said, continuing on to the kitchen, “but it looks like you might need me to stay up a while longer for some sort of therapy session.”

My stomach twisted in shame, but I followed Kendra slowly into the kitchen all the same. “I got yelled at this morning at work,” I confessed, hanging my head.

Kendra put her mug in the sink, then turned to me with an incredulous look. “You? At work? Who in their right mind over there would have anything to yell at you about?”

I sighed and leaned against the counter. The whole thing was so embarrassing, and I’d reacted to it all wrong, but the best way to save face and start to grow a backbone again was to come clean about everything. “Sam and Gilbert were having a meeting in the office. There was some sort of sign posted on the door that I couldn’t read. I let myself in to bring them coffee, since they were both having a rough morning, and I got yelled at for not reading the sign.”

Kendra looked like she might murder someone. “You were being nice and Sam shouted at you?”

I shook my head. “Not Sam, Gilbert. He called me out for not reading the sign.”

A different expression came over Kendra. She crossed her arms and studied me. “They still don’t know?”

Prickles of shame washed through me. I shrugged, and the gesture turned into something more like flailing desperately as old emotions tried to drag me under. “What am I supposed to tell them? That they hired an illiterate idiot who can’t even read the labels on cleaning supplies? Do you think Sam would really want to date someone who has to show up early at the restaurant for a date so he can ask the server all about the menu so he doesn’t look like a moron?”

“Don’t talk about yourself that way, Brian,” Kendra said, sadness settling over her. “You’ve got a learning disability. That’s a brain thing. It doesn’t mean you’re dumb. Far from it.”

“I got yelled at for failing to read a simple sign on a door,” I reminded her in a flat voice.