Gray

The week has been a good one. I finally got into the swing of living so far from the office and learned how to make love to my wife without making her parents attack me with an ice pick or crucifix.

The truth is though that I miss home. I miss getting up in the morning and going into my private gym to work out before grabbing a shower and making Mari a cup of coffee.

I miss her walking around in her skimpy night clothes, even if it was for such a short space of time that I wasn’t really all that used to it. Mostly I miss not waking up to the Byrd’s who seem to be morning people, every single one of them. Especially Mitch who wakes up at four and glares at me as if he knows I’ve been sexually corrupting his daughter.

I love the Byrd’s. Mitch is a kook, a straight talking, no-nonsense kind of guy who has a great sense of humour and laughs at the lewdest things. I like a man who can grab his wife’s ass in the kitchen and laugh when she blushes. Especially at their age.

I love Ro. No, you don’t get how much but I will tell you. The woman is just wrong on so many levels it makes her right. She guilts the hell out of Mari and laughs her butt off when Mari realizes and throws some big verbal abuse at her head.

Mari says her family is the reason she would be in therapy if she could afford it. I say her family is the reason she needs therapy but should never go because she’s just so whack she’s my perfect match.

The only time we’ve been out of the house, besides me working, which I am sad to say is only me because poor Mari had to quit her job, is when we went to mom and dad’s for dinner.

I hated it. I love mom and dad but they are in no way nuts enough to compete with my in laws and I told them so, screaming like a girl when Mari pinched my nipple and hissed at me to shush.

My wifey is an angry, angry woman deep inside and I love it because she brings all that fire to the bedroom and makes me thank God Blay saw Tink that day and was responsible for the miracle that was me meeting Mari.

Now I know I sound sappy, trust me. Mari snarls ‘sappy schmuck!’ at me at least twice a day. Until I kiss her and then she’s just a blob of sappy, happy goo.

But I like it. I don’t care if I have to be the soft one, I can deal, as long as I get to sleep next to her every night and hold her after sex. That’s all I need.

I got my girl, that’s all that matters and I would be ecstatically happy right now but for two things; Mari got her period.

Sidebar, it’s not just that it meant she isn’t pregnant that I wanted to cry. You should see Mari when she’s on the rag. It’s scary! She gets violent with anyone who so much as looks at her wrong and she gets gas, which makes her run to the bathroom at least ten times a night, because she said ‘farting in front of you is just not right. As far as you’re concerned I don’t fart, I don’t poop, I am a corpse!’.

I’d hate to tell her, no, scrap that, I will never tell Mari that she lets off the occasional ass burp in her sleep because she’d die of embarrassment after she killed me.

The other dark spot is living here. I’m spoilt. I want my cosy pad with the great view of the water and easy access to the office so I won’t have to waste sex time in the morning commuting to the office.

As it is I’m pulling long hours now that main construction is almost complete and Blay’s started bringing in the decorators to map out the crap I don’t care about.

It takes a long time, it’s a hard, frustrating process and I can’t leave the site sometimes until six or seven. And then I have to go back to the office to finish up before I commute to the Byrd’s place. In traffic.

By the time I get home I’m beat and looking for a shower, food and sleep. It’s so bad I haven’t even tried to con Mari into sucking my dick. And I am horny! I just don’t trust myself not to fall asleep mid hummer.

I refuse. No, I’m afraid. Because if I fall asleep with Mari going to town on my meat she’ll likely bite it off and make a snarky remark about me not using it anyway.

“Stop sulking Gray. It’s sad and pathetic and I wish you’d grow up and get a life already.”

I turn my glare on Blay where he’s tapping away at his keyboard, stress lines around his mouth as he frowns at the screen. I get it. This project has been a pain in the ass and the numbers for the designers aren’t adding up.

At this point I wish we could tell them all to fuck off but Blay doesn’t want to go through the process of interviewing and hiring others and I can’t blame him.

I don’t like the hideous shit they’re planning and neither does he but at the costs we’ve incurred already, I don’t have another solution.

“Leave me alone, old man, I’m tired, horny and homesick. I’m here for a Goddamn nap, not your stellar company.” I bark, readjusting my position on the couch with a moan.

“You’re on the clock and supposed to be helping me with this shit. I can’t deal with it much longer, Gray, or I may kill someone! Tink’s sick almost every morning now, like delayed morning sickness and she needs me while all I’ve been doing is working late with this crap because I want the hotel finished before she gets too big and needs me.”

Blay looks worse than I feel and I commiserate which is the only reason I sit up instead of throwing the onyx paperweight at his head. Mom will forgive me. And send me care packages in prison. I think.

Cece may just ask her Stevie boy to put a hit on me in prison but I doubt he’d succeed. No one can take a man in maroon seriously. Not even felons.

“This isn’t working at all Blay. We’ve been over it all a million times. I stayed late last night and looked at it all again. The designs are nothing like we agreed on and the numbers don’t stand up to the cost projections. I say we toss them and find another firm.”

He blows out a breath in frustration and throws the mouse back onto the desk so hard it bounces before settling upside down at the edge.

“Fuck! I know but it took months to get it all together and despite my stubbornness I called another firm yesterday. No one is willing to work with that time frame and the budget is so small now that they won’t do it anyway.” He snarls, pulling at his hair.

I don’t know what to do either. Some people think that because the company is ours, we can just throw money around as we please. If that were the case I‘d have fixed this a long time ago. The truth is that we have procedures to protect ourselves against bankruptcy and that means that more money would have to be approved and released to salvage it.

That’s not likely to happen but even if it could, it would take too long and we’d be months behind schedule. That would just drain more money and as Tyson said when he vetoed that idea yesterday ‘no sense losing more money on this thing, if we haven’t even made a dime yet’.

He’s right. And that’s why we have Tyson overseeing his department instead of Blay or myself or even Russell. Ty is more pragmatic and realistic. It’s all about the bottom line to the guy and it shows.

Two years ago we would have sunk in deep on a project in the Greek commercial property market. We’d dropped a cool three million as a down payment when things seemed to just go south. Ty pulled us out immediately, we lost that money but it saved our asses big time.

That was the one and only time Blay and I didn’t oversee a project personally and as a result it backfired on us. That’s why despite Tink being sick and Mari needing me right now, Blay and I are front and centre on this thing.

I won’t let anything else flop, even if that failed project was more on one of our execs, Ford Grover than us. At the end of the day the blame game won’t pay the bills and it was us left picking up the mess.

“We can’t keep the current people though and you know it. The head designer put me on hold yesterday and dropped the call two minutes later. They’re screwing with us Blay. They used the deposits up and probably don’t have the capital outlay to cover the job anymore. We need to cut our losses and move on. I’ll talk to legal about suing but you have to admit staying with them isn’t a good idea.” I say, wiping at my tired eyes.

Blay curses again and slams a fist into the desk.

“Shiiit. Who the hell is going to take this project? I’ve looked around. I even called a small firm looking to expand their portfolio. They declined due to the size of the project and the budget.”

“Well then we’ll have to look elsewhere gentlemen because the money is going to dry up soon and we have nothing else to sink into it unless we dip into our own,” Ty interrupts, walking in behind Rus. “I already called Bail down in legal and he’s looking into it. As for the rest, we either pull one out of the hat or we’re screwed.”

Rus mutters something around the cookie he’s eating like a rabid mutt and has Tyson nodding thoughtfully.

“What? For God sakes what? I need something here before I go nuts!” Blay explodes, his fatigue a thing of pity when the anger can’t even mask his tiredness.

“Ask your mom, Gray. She’s great at that kind of stuff and she did a good job with your penthouse. If not for her, poor Mari would have been swimming in leather, chrome and your sad lack of style.”

“Fuck you, Rus.”

I don’t even have the energy to give him snark because honestly I am way too tired. I miss the days when laughing was easy and work was just something I did because I liked it.

It feels like forever ago that I saw an ex-stripper violate a gravy boat with her tit and Mari tortured her cousin into falling down the stairs. I didn’t even laugh when Mari told me last night that sweet Pete called and told them Fayette ended up with a broken femur and a bruised tail bone.

Mari was crowing about her breaking her ass and all I could do was blink sleepily before I passed out.

What Rus is saying has merit though. A lot. My mom hired a designer to kit out my place properly and when she came back, found me screwing the woman on a leather couch that was butt ugly, well, my mom has no filter, like I’ve said and she went a little nuts. The designer almost broke her ass when mom kicked her out and then she rolled up her sleeves and started barking orders.

“I’ll call her but I don’t think it’ll work without help. It’s a big job. Too big for just one person.”

“Ask Mari to help.”

“Can’t, she’s at home with Ro.”

“So let Ro come along. Come on Gray, Ro is probably dying under that little dictator’s orders and I know for sure Tink said Mari threatened to shank her own mother when she caught her in the liquor stash.”

I grin a little because Mari misrepresents. She caught Ro in one of many liquor stashes. She still doesn’t know about the bottle Ro hides in the old laundry soap box. And I won’t tell her because it’s the good stuff and Ro’s a sharer.

“I’ll see what I can do.”