Catarina

I sigh when a sack of food is placed on my desk in front of me.

“I don’t want that.” My fingers on the keyboard, I change an adjective in my article from “cocky” to “egomaniacal.”

“Come on, Kitty Cat—”

“Stop with the nickname, okay?”

For a change, his lips press closed. Barrett looks a touch scolded standing there with our coffees—mine the taller one that reads “Kitty Cat” on the side. His reads “Fox.”

He has a great name. Barrett Fox. Three syllables that roll off the tongue and sound at once sophisticated, manly, and capable.

“Tell me what’s going on with you.” He teases my beverage but doesn’t hand it over when I reach for it. “There’s an empty office around the corner where we can chat.”

He points—with my beloved cup of coffee—toward the corridor off which there is, in fact, an empty office. Marge retired last week and they’ve yet to decide who to put in there. I asked. Mia said “maybe.” So much for seniority.

I stand and Barrett straightens, giving me a cocky—no, egomaniacal—smirk.

“I’m only coming with you until I can claim my coffee, then I’m out.”

“We’ll see.” He leads the way. He has a nice walk. I’ve referred to it as a swagger before, and it is. His back is straight, his gait easy. He’s tall, long limbed, but muscular. Underneath that fitted button-down white shirt lies a sturdy form. Rounded, strong shoulders.

Maybe talking to him won’t be as bad as I think. I should talk to someone. Since it happened Monday evening, I haven’t told a soul.

Inside Marge’s former office, he flips on the light and shuts the door. Mills already pilfered Marge’s ergonomic chair, swapping it for a torn one with stuffing popping out of the seat. Barrett gestures to the chair and I plop into it and hold out my hand. He sits on the edge of the desk.

“No coffee until you tell me what’s going on with you. You’re always serious, studious, and focused. What you’re usually not is blatantly angry. I know I pissed you off on our date—”

“You behaved like a rowdy teenager instead of a grown man.”

“—but you’re not petty or uncommunicative. If you were still pissed about that, you’d tell me.”

“Fine. I’m still pissed about it.” I fold my arms and lift my chin into a stubborn tilt.

“What do you have to lose sharing?” he asks, not buying my fib.

“Why do you want to know so badly?” My voice creeps into “whine” territory, but that could be because he’s breaking down my walls. They were stronger earlier this week but as the long nights and longer days passed those walls have started to crumble.

He doesn’t answer my question, so I decide to tell him the truth—quick and neat and right to the heart of the matter. Or the heartless of the matter, as it were…

“Northrop and I broke up on Monday and please don’t use this moment to make fun of his name.” I shoot my arm out to collect my coffee and Barrett hands it over. I take a drink of the delicious, hot, strong Pike Place with a splash of half-and-half. It’s perfection.

“What’d you order?” I ask.

“Was he cheating?” Frowning, he sets his smaller cup aside.

“Worse,” I confess with a head shake.

“What’s worse than cheating?”

“I guess we’re really doing this,” I grumble into the edge of the lid. After a fortifying drink, I set my cup next to Barrett’s and slump in the tattered office chair. Literally slump. My arms are on the chair’s arms. My knees together, lower legs splayed, and I’ve sunk down so my neck is uncomfortably bent. I stay that way. It’s what I’ve felt like doing all week but couldn’t. I’m in the bullpen with the rest of the journalists. I’m the no-nonsense one with a job to do. I’m in charge of writing Mia’s pet project and luring in advertising dollars for the quarter.

I chew on my lip while I consider where to start the sordid tale.

“North has been working longer and longer hours tending to one client or the next. Things between us were okay but not great. I saw him but not enough.”

“And the sex?”

“That’s none of your business!” I straighten in the chair, the heels of my Louboutins digging into the ugly brown carpet.

“No sex?” He lifts his eyebrows and whistles. “Had it been long?”

“I never said—”

“Was it longer than a week? That’s when I start getting itchy.”

“I’m not—”

“Two weeks? Damn, Kitty Cat.”

I shut my eyes and shake my head, trying to will away the flush creeping up my neck. Damn my pale skin.

“When is the last time you had sex?” I ask in an attempt to reclaim the upper hand while I turn the color of a candy apple.

He considers, his lips moving while he studies the ceiling. “Three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks! Aren’t you ‘itchy?’ ”

“I’m dying.”

His answer is so honest and I can relate so much I don’t know what to say.

“Are you?” he asks softly.

“It’s been two months, what do you think?” I mumble.

I expect him to overreact to the length of time I’ve been celibate but he doesn’t. “You saw him but not enough. Go on.”

“One night he mentioned his new associate Maria who was helping him sell an apartment building. I was certain that’s who he was cheating on me with.”

Barrett gestures with a hand. Obviously.

“Saturday night I decided to show up at his office.” I pick at the material on the chair’s arm while I talk, unable to handle the burn of shame that lights my cheeks. Embarrassment I can handle. Shame is more challenging. “And he was in the office with Maria. She was pretty, blond, and they were sitting very close.”

“This all sounds like cheating to me.”

“I followed him Sunday afternoon. He picked up Maria at the office and drove to the apartment building where they were supposed to go. I showed up Monday in his office at seven A.M. when he was working early and she was there again. They were drinking coffee and poring over contracts.”

“The plot thickens.”

“I confronted North that evening. I told him I suspected him of sleeping with Maria and confessed that I’d followed him to work and to the apartment building. He wasn’t angry. He was sad.”

“Sad?”

“Sad. He said he wasn’t cheating and the only reason he could think to leave me was disinterest.” I swallow and force myself to continue, unable to stop now that I opened the dam. “He said the reason he hasn’t had sex with me was less that he was busy and more that he didn’t want to lead me on. He was waiting for the right time to dump me, and since I broached the subject he took the opportunity to do it then and there.”

I bat my lashes when moisture creeps along the edge of my eyes. I cried Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday. I’m not crying today. I have a life without North and I’m determined to live it.

When I finally become brave enough to lift my face, Barrett’s expression is neutral—he doesn’t appear pained for me or angry on my behalf.

“Need to revenge fuck someone?” he asks.

“That’s your suggestion?”

He shrugs. “It works. It helps. We’re both itchy.”

“You’re the one whose itchy, Fox. Probably from the last airhead you screwed who left behind an STD.”

He chuckles, unoffended.

“Have you ever been in a relationship that lasted longer than two minutes?” I snap.

“Yes.”

I blink. Really?

“How long were you together?” Now I’m curious.

“Six years.”

I know I look startled. How can I not? It’s startling. “Six years?”

“On and off.”

That makes more sense.

“Alternately, you could rub one out while I watch,” he offers.

My mouth drops open as his spreads into a smile. “That was a joke. Unless you’re considering it, in which case it wasn’t.” He points to the door. “That knob locks.”

I push out of my chair but before I can gather my hard-won coffee and exit, he wraps a hand around my upper arm and turns me. Now I’m standing awkwardly between his spread thighs, face to face with a man I really don’t like.

But damn, does he smell good.

With gentle fingers, he holds each side of my jaw and studies my features, my mouth, and then meets my eyes.

“You’re going to be okay, Kitty Cat. He was holding you back. Guy who doesn’t care enough to cut you loose is a complete dickhead who doesn’t deserve your time. He was a coward. You’re the brave one.”

It’s such a tender comment, especially following the lewd one a few moments ago. Have I misjudged him? Under that bravado is he all heart—a muscly teddy bear?

“Do you at least want to make out while I have you here?”

I swat his hands away and he chuckles.

When he slides off the edge of the desk, he hands me my coffee cup and I take it, marching out the door ahead of him.