Frenemies(37)
“Good for Chris Starling,” I said, propping my feet up on my desk, which would have given Minerva heart palpitations if she had seen me. Not because she cared about the desk, but because she felt feet on the desk was a mannish position and no woman ought to be mannish when she could be womanly. Happily, she was entirely too wrapped up in mapping her song lines to check up on my gender role today.
“I’m sure it’s great,” Georgia snapped, “but he’s the senior associate. He’s supposed to be handling the deposition. Whatever. I think he’s losing his mind.”
“I thought that happened a long time ago,” I said. “Like when he propositioned you. Or almost did.”
“Something’s up with him, that’s for sure,” Georgia muttered. “But that’s not why I called.”
“I could analyze Chris Starling for days,” I assured her. “It totally doesn’t matter that I’ve never met him.”
“You can change all that this Friday, as a matter of fact,” Georgia said. That she was trying, suddenly, to sound enthusiastic was so alarming that it took a moment for the words themselves to sink in.
“No way!” I said then. “Why do you think I want to go to your office party every year?” More to the point, why did I let her talk me into it every year?
“Because I want you to go, obviously,” Georgia said, dropping the scary enthusiastic voice. “Anyway, why not? The place is packed with young, reasonably attractive men. All of whom are gainfully employed. Any one of whom you could date.”
“You hate everyone you work with, particularly the young, reasonably attractive men,” I reminded her. “You refer to them as the Leeches, I believe, and that’s when you’re just being competitive. When you’re mad, you get way more personal.”
“Because I have to contend with them on a professional level,” Georgia said, sounding exasperated. “I can’t believe you’re arguing with me! When’s the last time you went out on a date, anyway?”
“A what?”
“Exactly.” She sniffed. “The fact of the matter, Gus, is that you’ve been locked in your scary post-Nate phase for way too long. This past weekend just proves my point. Whatever he might have said to you—and please, of course it was heinous, I’m not even debating that—racing across Boston with Henry f*cking Farland to go get in Helen’s face in the middle of the night was just insane. Lunatic behavior.”
“It’s not like I actually got in Helen’s face,” I argued, stung. “And like I told you the first eight billion times, spending time with Henry actually turned out to be sort of illuminating.”
That was the word I’d used repeatedly on Sunday, when I’d been forced to explain to my disbelieving friends what had gone on the night before.
Illuminating, I kept saying—surprisingly illuminating! But no matter how I tried to steer the conversation toward more interesting things, like what Nate was up to after I left Winchester—they kept getting stuck on the fact I’d chased after Helen in the first place. That I was stalking Nate through Helen. In the company of someone I hated. Someone we all hated, and had hated for years.
Needless to say, the version I’d told them of the end of the evening was edited to look a lot like the one I’d made up. As far as they knew, Henry dropped me off, I came to my senses, and decided not to go punch Helen in the face. The end. The part of me that felt badly about this was … very small indeed.
“It sure was illuminating,” Georgia agreed now. “For example, it illuminated the fact that you’ve been acting like a crazy person. You’re obsessed. But who cares, that’s over and done with. Come to the holiday party, find a nice lawyer boy, and you can start a whole new relationship with a whole new set of things to be obsessive and weird about.”
“Georgia—” I began, annoyed, but she cut me off.
“And anyway,” she said, “I always have more fun when you’re there. I have to go and kiss some asses, but I’m not taking no for an answer from you, Gus, so just prepare yourself.”
“I’m not going,” I told her.
“You have to,” she said then. “I told Jared it wasn’t a date thing. He wouldn’t go if it was just him as my date because he thinks that’s too much pressure and can you just do this for me, Gus? Please?”
“Georgia, that’s crazy,” I began.
“Like you’re one to talk,” she snapped, and then she hung up on me. Which happened to be one of my pet peeves, as she knew very well.
I returned to a more upright position, took my feet off my desk, and fumed, for two reasons. The first reason was that I knew I would end up going to Georgia’s stupid party, because I couldn’t withstand the guilt trip if I didn’t. Please. I couldn’t withstand a long, lawyerish look. More to the point, I already felt guilty for the crimes she didn’t know I’d committed. The second reason was that I thought Georgia was insane to let some little shithead play games with her, and she thought I was equally insane—but she had faulty information.
Okay, sure, Georgia and Amy Lee had maybe had a point about the Nate and Helen thing. I had gone a tad overboard. Not so much in anything I’d done, I didn’t think, but I could maybe tone down the rhetoric a bit—particularly, as Georgia had pointed out, since I was the one who kept bringing them up again and again.