Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82250 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82250 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“I hate you.” I cross my arms.
“You love me,” Martin replies. “And I know you don’t date, but if there’s someone you want to bring, you need to bring him. If Mom and Dad have a problem with it, they can leave. I love them, but they’re wrong here. Not you.”
I close my eyes, dropping my head back because how in the fuck do I say no to that? What I should say is thank you because I’m not sure Martin will ever know what those words mean to me.
And then…Gary fills my thoughts. I don’t even know if we’ll still be playing this fucked-up game when the time comes, but I realize that if I go to this party, I’m not sure I’ll be able to go alone.
Cody…I can always bring Cody. He’d love the shit out of playing it up for my family.
“Say yes,” Martin says.
“You really have no choice,” Malcolm adds. “You’re part of the family.”
Those words are meant to make me feel better, but all they do is make anger shoot through me because it shouldn’t matter. Why can’t they love me the way I am?
“I’ll think about it,” I say through gritted teeth. It’s then that the waitress brings us our food. The rest of lunch has a heavy tone to it. Martin and Malcolm can tell I’m pissed and I don’t try to hide it.
When I get back to my car, my fingers automatically move across the screen of my phone, finding Gary’s name. Maybe he’ll want to go work out with me to help me get my mind off this shit. It rings and rings before Gary’s voicemail picks up. I click end, not even sure why in the fuck I called him. What? To complain about my screwed-up family? Why should he have to deal with my shit? Why is he the first person I thought to call?
As I pull away, all I can think is, There’s nothing wrong with who I am. The only thing that’s wrong is hiding who that person is. Fuck anyone who doesn’t see it that way.
19
Gary
“I loaded the page three different times.” Eric’s voice comes through my Bluetooth earpiece as I sit at my desk, my laptop in front of me. “I added the one tab to the header that they wanted for their new price promotion, and then everything just went to shit.”
“Give me a minute,” I say. I can’t focus when he gets all worked up like this.
I scroll through the Notepad doc, checking over the code Eric was working with before the website for our biggest client, eSteem—a retailer for anti-aging products—started acting up. Eric typically runs codes by me before uploading changes, but he figured the adjustments were minor enough that he wouldn’t have anything to worry about. At least, that was his excuse when he called me in a fucking panic over this new crisis. Of course, this issue had to come up on a weekend.
“I’m already getting emails from Eva at eSteem because the checkout cart isn’t working,” he says. “That means they’re losing money…and that means fucking Alice is going to have my head when she finds out about this.”
Alice is the CEO of the IT company I’ve worked at for the past five years. Eric’s already on thin ice with her after he fucked up a major account we had with an online hardware retailer. It took me three weeks to repair the damage he’d done. The only reason he wasn’t fired over it was because he managed to convince Alice it was a mistake anyone could have made. I had his back at the time, mainly because he’s the contact who got me the job with the company. But it probably would have been better if Alice would have let him go then because more often than not, his issues arise from his carelessness and refusal to maintain his training with the major eComm hosts we work with.
He’s not passionate about coding the way I am. This is just a job for him. Coding is my life. My art. It’s having a vision and finding a way to bring it to life using my skills and knowledge. Keeping websites maintained and functional makes me feel smart. Clever even—although I sure as fuck wasn’t clever enough to figure out what Peter was up to.
I recall what Travis said about smart people getting cheated on just like anybody else, and my gaze shifts to my phone sitting beside my laptop.
Travis tried to call a few minutes ago. I’m curious to find out what he wanted, but he hasn’t texted, so it couldn’t have been all that important.
I’ll call him back as soon as I fix this issue. Because my actual life has to come before my fake one.
I keep searching through the code when Eric says, “So what’s this thing with Derek and Luke Henley?”