The Promise (The 'Burg #5)(142)

It wasn’t like he was organizing a disaster relief effort.

Still, it was awesome.

Saturday during the day and Sunday before I left to drive home, Ben and I tackled his office. On Friday, Ben had called the cable company to have Internet jacks installed. On Saturday, we went out and bought a filing cabinet, shredder, and a desktop computer. It took us hours, but we got a system down that might (might) make the rest of our efforts throughout the house easier. We tossed a bunch of crap, filed some away, and in the end, the office looked more like an office and less like a dump. The kind of room you’d find in a home, not a bachelor’s pad.

In other words, I thought every minute was worth the effort.

The cool thing in doing this was that I found Benny wasn’t a hoarder. He just didn’t bother to throw shit away when it should have been thrown away. There were no battles about keeping stuff. He also didn’t get into the project for fifteen minutes, then get sick of it and try to find an excuse to escape. Except for me giving him guff about being a lazy ass and Benny grinning through it, we worked beside each other in harmony.

It was kind of fun.

Domestic bliss, Frankie and Benny style.

So now it was Monday. The Monday after being awed by Benny’s kitchen prowess and gaining another promise from Benny that a life at his side would be good, seeing as I wasn’t buying one with a hoarder or someone who would dump all the crap work on me and go his merry way.

It was also the Monday after I gave Benny what I considered lame birthday payback and he considered it something else entirely. And the something he considered it made me fall even deeper in love with him, because as simple as it was, it was everything to Benny and I liked that. A whole lot.

And last, it was the Monday after I gave a goof gift I expected Ben to laugh at and toss aside and it would be me who tacked it on the wall in the kitchen and wrote stuff on it, but it was very much not.

I liked that it wasn’t. Actually, I liked why it wasn’t.

It was a gift I had a feeling changed both our lives.

Because, unexpectedly, we’d made plans to move in together.

But when I gave him that calendar, we’d made plans to spend the rest of our lives together.

I was down with that. I didn’t think twice about it and I knew I didn’t in a way that I never would.

This was because Benny Bianchi was always going to be a promise at the same time Benny Bianchi was the prize at the end of a crazy life.

So there was no reason to think twice about it.

And I was also never going to feel stupid about my goof gifts again.

Now it was Monday and I had a four o’clock meeting with my boss to ask if there was a possibility the company would consider letting me work from a home office in Chicago starting in October.

I was nervous because I expected the answer to this would be no, since everyone who was management worked from our head office in Indianapolis.

I liked that job. I made great money. My reps (all but one) were awesome. They did good, and in doing it, they made me look good. And I had a great assistant. I didn’t want to lose any of that.

Further, job hunting sucked.

So a lot was riding on this meeting.

If they said no, I still was going to quit. I just was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do that.

“I’m fine,” I answered Tandy on a lie.

“You seem weird,” she noted, walking in, eyes to me. She sat across from me and went on, “I know it’s nosy, and it’s cool if you don’t answer, but Friday you seemed to be in a really good mood. But you went back to your guy this weekend and now you seem, well…not in a good mood.”

She was so sweet.

It would suck if I had to lose her.

Another reason for me not to be okay.

“We’re fine, Tandy,” I assured her, and at least that was the truth, though it was an understatement.

“Okay,” she replied, sounding like she didn’t buy it.

“I just have this meeting with Lloyd on my mind,” I explained. “Once I’ve had the meeting with him, I’ll give you the full story.”

She tipped her head to the side and I didn’t like the look on her face when she did it.

“Should I be worried?” she asked, explaining the look.

“No,” I said quickly, reaching a hand toward her and tapping it stupidly but hopefully comfortingly on my desk. “Absolutely not. It’s not about you.”

She suddenly looked evasive (thus, clearly the desk tapping didn’t work) as she murmured, “I just thought you might have found out…” She trailed off, twisted her neck to look to my wall of window, then back to me, but she said no more.

“Found out what?” I prompted.

“Nothing. It’s stupid. It’s probably not anything,” she stated.

“What’s probably not anything?” I pushed, not getting a good feeling about her manner, which wasn’t like her at all.

She drew in a breath, then rocked her ass in her chair like she was settling in and leaned toward me. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, quiet, conspiratorial.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I told Lloyd and he took care of it, so I really didn’t want to worry you, but Thursday, when you were taking a personal day up in Chicago, Mr. Bierman came and asked me to give him a copy of your schedule. He asked how many times you’d been up to Chicago on company business and how many days off you’ve taken.”