Anyway, thinking about that felt like an enormous bummer on my soul, and I focused back on the important stuff.
Men had come into the office when Grandpa Gus had worked there, and they came in now with me. For business purposes. But it wasn’t every day that a six-foot-five-inch man built like a tank came into Maio House and headed straight into the office. It was something worth noticing. Especially when there were so many nosey eyes and ears.
I knew these people, and they wouldn’t avoid looking at me directly unless they were talking about me.
It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.
Fuck it. I had nothing to hide or any explanations I needed to make to anyone.
The old me would have asked them you got something to say? But now… now I just walked into my office and waited until no one could see me to turn around and give the floor in general the middle finger. Both middle fingers. Fuckers.
Half an hour later, I had my computer on and a cup of matcha tea sitting on my desk. I had side-eyed the guys and girls once more on my walk to and from the break room in the other building. I had settled in to go through the voice mails that had the red light on my office phone blinking. There were five new ones.
The first one was nothing special. One of the fighter’s managers wanted to schedule a time for a photographer to come in and take pictures of him while he trained. No big deal.
The second one though had me hitting the delete button like I wanted to break it. “It’s Noah. Call me.” The fact he had called the work phone instead of my cell phone said enough. I had to open my mouth to stretch my jaw after that.
The third call was from a blogger who wanted to talk to Peter, the fourth was some vague message from a woman who just said, “This is Rafaela Smith. I’m looking for Gus DeMaio. I’d appreciate it if—” That name didn’t ring a bell, and she didn’t say what she wanted, so no thanks on that return phone call, and the fifth was from the repairman who came in to fix the gym equipment. He was the first one I called back.
We had just barely hung up when the phone rang.
“Maio House,” I answered, moving the mouse so I could access my email. “This is Lenny.”
All it took was a simple “Hey” to piss me off.
If I could kick half the members out, I would. I really would. I’d kick all of them out if their dues didn’t pay the bills. Fucking bigmouths.
I knew it was petty, but I didn’t give a shit. “Who is this?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who it was.
Noah sighed. “Noah, Lenny.”
“Oh.”
He had to know how lucky he was I had gone with that instead of what do you want, person who I’ve known since I was three, who left me when I needed him.
“How you doing?” he had the nerve to ask like it hadn’t been months since the last time we had talked.
“I’m fine, you?” I asked him like I was petty and held grudges, because I did. But Noah knew that, yet he’d still decided to call me twice within twenty-four hours.
And, apparently, he did know that because he didn’t even bother sighing or getting his feelings hurt by how detached I was speaking to him. “I’ve been better,” Noah responded like I genuinely cared.
I didn’t want to waste my time rolling my eyes, but I did anyway because was he fucking for real? “Do you need something? Peter’s busy right now, but I can get him to call you back when he’s done in an hour.” Not that he actually would.
“I don’t need to talk to Peter,” my childhood best friend said, his tone weird and annoying as hell. “I heard something interesting.”
I closed both my eyes, grabbed my stress ball from the drawer, and squeezed the fucking shit out of it as he kept talking.
“Who’s the guy that’s been showing up to the gym?” he asked casually in the time it took me to do that.
Noah had been my best friend. We’d grown up together. We’d studied judo together at the same club for fifteen years.
And for a couple months, I had thought I’d been more than half in love with someone who couldn’t see me as more than