Page 38 of Wait for Him

Fantastic.

Love a productive morning.

I'm not even to the elevator before my phone goes off, Jackson's name lighting up the screen, which is how I know the universe has reviewed my morning, found it insufficiently punishing and decided I haven't nearly had enough yet.

“Hey, Jackson.”

“What's wrong?”

Damn it.

Straight to the wound, the way he always does.

I drag two fingers hard across my eyebrow because Jackson is genuinely the last person on this earth I want to talk to about David. Not because he'd gloat, but because he wouldn't. He called this whole thing from the jump months ago, and he'll have the good manners now not to remind me of it, which is somehow worse than if he stood in the street and boasted.

A gloat I could work with. A gloat I could return fire on.

It's the kindness I can't deal with this morning.

“Nothing. Got rerouted home, about to go talk to Bennet now.”

“I called him. He's not answering. I've been trying since yesterday. We brought a PR firm in Friday, and he needs to get on board with it right now, not after it's on the second news cycle.”

“Fucking hell.” I jab the elevator button harder than the situation strictly requires, as if the button is where the day's been going wrong.

My elderly neighbor and her grown son both turn to look at me with the specific, delicate trepidation of people rapidly reconsidering whether they want to share an enclosed steel box with whatever I've got going on.

I roll my eyes at the wall. I am fresh out of the number of fucks it takes to be soft for an audience.

“I'll talk to him. Just getting on the elevator.”

“Are you sure you're okay? You sound way off.”

I genuinely hate how much I wish he'd stop asking.

I wish, just once, he'd let a single thing slide past him unnoticed. Take the fine at face value like everyone else in my life gratefully does and let me carry the rest of it up to the next floor in private, the way I carry everything, the way I prefer, the way it's safe.

“I'm fine, Marcus.”

Ugh.

For fuck's sake.

I regret calling him that before it's all the way out of my mouth. It's so cold and detached, and I don’t do it intentionally. I just always reach for it when I need a foot of space between us and don't have anything else handy to put there.

There's a pause on the other end.

“Got it.”

“Wait, Jacks—”

I go to apologize, but the line's already dead.

Could this day get any fucking worse?

“We'll take the next one,” the neighbor's son says as the elevator doors open.

I look at him.