Tech Bros (Bay Area Bros Book 3), page 3
“Perfect,” she exhales.
Being an only child of divorced parents is a little like being constantly stretched on a rack with the purpose of being split in half. Their guilt over divorcing when I was five manifested itself into aggressive love and possessiveness from both ends, both of them wanting to reassure me it wasn’t my fault, and they loved me no matter what.
One would assume since I’m now an adult and custody is no longer an issue, this “pick me” pressure would have let up some, but old habits die hard. No one values my time and my presence quite like my mom and dad do. It’s just that I can’t be in two places at once, and they can’t be in the same place together. The balancing act is fucking exhausting.
“How are you doing your hair tonight? What are you wearing? Where are you going?” I throw the barrage of questions at her to keep her from crying and torturing me anymore.
She switches into a brighter mood and tells me about her plans. By the time we hang up, the train is at my stop, and I’m craving a stiff drink.
3
DEACON
“Is this the fresh start?”
I look over the multiple frozen containers of leftover food on the kitchen island and answer my friend Bailey’s question. “Something like that.”
She holds her tote bag open. “Load me up.”
“You can’t take everything. I invited Ryan and Mal, too.”
She makes a face. “I got here first. That at least gives me dibs.”
“Knock knock,” a female voice that’s neither Ryan nor Malcolm’s calls out from the hallway.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bailey grumbles as my across-the-hall neighbor Millie peeks her head in the door. Her huge brown eyes pop open wide as she sees the amount of containers I have laid out.
“Is this a giveaway?”
“I was here first,” Bailey snaps.
Millie ignores Bailey’s tone and skips up to the island, clapping her hands in what looks like excitement. I cook a lot. The freezer was overflowing, and yes—today is officially meant to be a fresh start. I even marked it that way on my calendar.
Until you get to know her, Bailey’s personality could probably be described as off-putting. Ryan called her slow to warm up, which, as a cooking comparison made sense. However, slow to warm up means she should eventually warm up to Millie, but I haven’t seen any signs of that. When Millie hip checks her at the island in greeting, Bailey takes a sidestep and eventually comes to stand next to me.
Millie doesn’t seem to notice. “I love that color on you!”
Bailey looks down at her beige pantsuit and then back at Millie.
If I didn’t already understand the concept of opposites, Bailey and Millie would be a great case study. Bailey is white, pale, plain, and virtually colorless except for a smattering of dark freckles across her cheeks. She never wears makeup, her curly hair stays in a bun, and she always has this look on her face like if you cross her, you die.
Millie, on the other hand, is half white, half Korean. Her hair changes color at least once a month. She has two full sleeves of bright, intricate tattoos she designed herself, and she’s always, always smiling. She’s also a glitter bomb. Literally. She leaves glitter everywhere she goes.
“Aren’t you a vegetarian?” Bailey asks her.
Millie nods enthusiastically. “Uh-huh.”
“Then you won’t want this…or this.” Bailey starts stacking containers in her tote bag.
I have to stop her from swiping the second container of clam chowder. “That’s Ryan’s favorite.”
“It’s mine, too,” she argues.
“I eat clams,” Millie says, reaching for the container.
Bailey loses what’s left of her patience. “Did he invite you?”
Millie blinks her huge eyes. “Deacon doesn’t mind when I pop by.”
Bailey looks up at me as if to confirm this, and I shrug. She grabs the clam chowder from my hand. “I’ll save it for Ryan. Vegetarians don’t eat clams.”
“What else do you have?” Millie asks in her bright voice, ignoring Bailey’s overt bitchiness. “I’m more of a pescatarian, I guess. And I eat duck, too. On special occasions. Duck is my favorite.”
“I don’t have anything with duck,” I say, “But this is a vegetable lasagna.”
“Oh! Gimme!”
Millie holds out her hands, and I pass her the container.
Just then, I notice Malcolm coming through the door, his hand looped under Apollo’s collar. “Look who I found at the downstairs door.”
“Oh, shoot!” Millie says. “I left your door open.”
Apollo is Evan’s Great Dane. “Thanks,” I say to Mal. “He would have killed me. Is Ryan with you?”
“No, he had to work. Damn, you beat me,” he says when he sees Bailey.
She snickers. “Came straight from work.”
“If I show up without clam chowder, I won’t have a boyfriend anymore.”
“Sounds like you need to step up your game,” Bailey says.
I grab the clam chowder she’s trying to hide and hand it over to Malcolm. “I have some chili for you guys, too.”
“Awesome. Hey, Mills.”
Millie throws herself at Malcolm, greeting him with a hug. He oofs but accepts her exuberance in stride. I’m a little disappointed not to see Ryan. He lived with me for nearly a year before moving out to live with Malcolm. We weren’t close, but now that he’s with Mal, he and I have gotten to kind of be friends. I’ll need all these people if I’m going to make the fresh start my therapist is insisting I make.
It all starts with this freezer clean out and a blind date tonight.
Dating was my therapist’s idea, which Bailey seconded. They’ve been trying to talk me into doing something like this for months. If it weren’t for my total wreck of a weekend two weeks ago, I might have kept putting it off, but it turns out rock bottom is a real place, and it does, in fact, wake a person the fuck up.
All I know is I can’t sit around the apartment and do nothing between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. My brain would never allow it. Dating, however, might be pushing it. I bottle a lot of shit up during the workweek. Middle management means I take it from both ends five days out of seven. Everybody’s bitching while I just want to sit quietly and code. Being a senior coder at Polytech means I have both a team to manage, and someone to answer to for our work.
Like, I get my own office, but I’m rarely left alone inside it. While I prefer to communicate via email, most of my team likes to get things off their chests in person.
However, the way I’ve been coping with my own stress for as long as I can remember—getting high with my toxic friend group and fucking random men all weekend––has left me exhausted, wound even tighter than normal, and two weeks ago, in the emergency room.
“Lose the crew,” my therapist said because he refuses to call that particular group of people my friends, and he has a strong point about that. But for someone like me who struggles socially, those five people—however unsafe they’ve become—were my original comfort zone. But no amount of “they get me” swayed Gray, because apparently he gets me, too. Or so he says. I am honest with him, though. I learned a long time ago that our sessions are useless if I lie all the time, which, admittedly is what I used to do.
However, staying silent or only giving him the glossy edges while leaving out the dirty details left me stagnant. Still, it wasn’t until recently that I truly opened up and told him what I’ve actually been dealing with. Drugs. Sex. A seemingly unbreakable cycle.
In my defense, I’ve tried to create something healthier with the people here now. I throw dinner parties about once a month for Bailey, Malcolm, Ryan and some of their other friends. My new roommate Evan and I talk a lot more than Ryan and I ever did—and that’s mostly because Millie drives him nuts, and she spends a decent amount of time here.
I’ll probably never get a chance to tell him this, but Evan’s got a lot to do with me wanting to be better. His easy smiles and quiet confidence got me thinking that he’s the kind of friend I should have, if not the kind of man I should be. If he knew what I was like on the weekends, he probably would have moved out months ago.
Gray has asked why I never considered dating him, and the answer to that is simple: Ryan. I had a huge crush on my former roommate, and all that did was make me feel awkward and broken when he wound up with Malcolm. Am I attracted to Evan? Of course. He’s attractive. But he’s off limits. He’s a good roommate, I like his dog, and I’m not about to fuck up our living situation, especially when so many other parts of my life are in flux. I need the one stable thing.
Because I’m not superhuman, and my therapist isn’t a sadist who wants me to go cold turkey, he referred me to a psychiatrist to start medicating my anxiety, impulsivity, and cravings once I signed a pledge saying I’d stop doing drugs and drinking hard liquor. It was all very informal, and I’m not technically an addict. I’m more of a substance abuser. A binge user.
He and I talked about rehab–or he did, I mostly shook my head. In the end, we decided to try a medication and therapy approach first. I’m bumping up my sessions with him to twice a week for now, and I’ve started an SSRI for underlying anxiety, another med for ADHD, and an opioid antagonist called naltrexone to take when I’m in high-risk situations. I’ve been taking it every day for a week, and I haven’t even thought about alcohol or drugs. I have a whole note in my phone that’s a letter to the company that made it to tell them how amazing I think it is in case I ever want to give them my compliments.
It's done nothing to curb my sex drive, however, so I’m saving the letter. Fingers crossed this date goes well tonight. With my mind on that and Bailey’s attention on Malcolm, Millie gets a phone call and rushes out, claiming it’s work. She takes the one container of vegetarian lasagna with her.
Bailey visibly relaxes when she leaves. “I don’t know how you guys stand her.”
Malcolm laughs. “You don’t think she’s even a little cute?”
“Are you sure you’re gay?” Bailey asks him. “Do I need to card you?”
“I didn’t say I was attracted to her.”
“I don’t do manic pixie dream girls,” Bailey says.
I frown at the expression, but apparently Malcolm gets it. “Dream girl, huh?”
“Ugh,” she groans. “It’s a trope, Mal. Haven’t you seen Garden State?”
“Are there aliens in it?”
She snorts.
“Then no,” he says.
I’m lost, too. “If I watch it, will I understand what you’re talking about?”
“Definitely.”
“Well, I hate movies,” I say.
Malcolm has his phone out and he’s reading from the screen. He laughs. “This totally fits. Deacon. See if this helps. ‘The manic pixie dream girl or MPDG is a stock character in fiction who’s quirky, eccentric and exists to help a male protagonist overcome his personal issues and embrace life.’”
Bailey laughs out loud. “See? She’s trying to bring you out of your shell, D.”
“Not my type either,” I tell Bailey.
She digs in her tote bag and pulls out a ball covered in cling wrap. “I brought this for Evan.”
I take the cheese ball from her. “Thanks. He lives off these when we have one.”
“Bullshit,” Malcolm says.
Bailey shoots him a glare. “Just because you have texture issues doesn’t mean everyone does.”
“I have pineapple and onion issues.”
“Green onions,” she says.
“Do you like those?” Malcolm asks me, pointing at the cheeseball.
I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. “I think she means my texture issues.”
“It’s a vintage recipe. You guys were raised on buckwheat pancakes and kale smoothies, and it shows.”
Their easy banter continues as I distribute the rest of the leftovers between them. Bailey gets more, but she’s single, so I don’t feel bad about it. Also, she brought the cheeseball. Malcolm doesn’t complain. He’s always been really nice to me. I doubt he would be if he knew the kind of thoughts I used to have about his boyfriend. Despite my impulsivity issues, I’ve managed to keep all those thoughts to myself.
“I need to wrap this up.” I have to get into the shower soon if I want to be on time for this date. “I have plans tonight.”
“What kind of plans?” Bailey asks.
I shake my head and ignore the question. “Did you get enough food?”
She gives my arm a performative pat. “Yes. Thank you. And I hope whatever you’ve got going on is fun.”
I nod as my nerves kick in.
While they gather their things to leave, Malcolm offers to carry Bailey’s tote bag, but she assures him she’s capable of carrying it herself.
He rolls his eyes for my benefit and thanks me again for the food. “We should do a dinner soon,” he says.
“I’m planning to go to the farmer’s market next weekend. So maybe next Saturday? Here?” I offer. Because I need to make plans for next weekend, too, if this whole life change is going to have a chance of working out.
“Ryan and I are out of town next weekend, but we could do the one after. Bails?”
“Will Millie be here?” she asks.
“Bailey,” Malcolm says. His tone makes her frown at him.
“Fine. Yes, I’m always free. Just warn me if she’s coming, and I’ll put extra tequila in the margaritas.”
“She probably will be,” I tell her. Millie can smell when people are here, I swear.
I walk them to the door and make sure Apollo is on his bed so he doesn’t get out again. He’s sound asleep. Once they’re gone, I go back to the freezer and reorganize what’s left.
It’s only a minute later when I hear the door open and close again.
“Cleaning out the fridge?” Evan asks.
I grunt a yes and stand up straight. When I turn to face him, he’s grabbing Apollo’s leash from the hook on the wall.
“I already walked him,” I say.
“You did?”
“Yeah. It looked like it was gonna rain.”
“Thank you.”
Evan seems like he might want to say something else, but he doesn’t.
I point at the kitchen island. “Want some of this cheeseball before I put it up?”
He grins easily and walks into the kitchen. “Yes, please.”
I open a cabinet and prepare Evan a dish with a hunk of the cheeseball and some Wheat Thins. “Thirsty?”
He holds up his water bottle. “I’m good.”
I hand him the plate, and he takes it.
“Plans tonight?” he asks.
“Uh…yeah.” I clear my throat. “You?”
His averts his eyes. “Maybe. Will you be around at all this weekend?”
He’s never asked me about my weekend plans before. “Why?”
He jerks slightly like I shouted the question. Then he seems to recover. “I thought maybe if you had some free time, we could try out this new place I saw on Steiner. It’s Lebanese, and they’re supposed to have the best baba ganouj in the city.”
I make the slight mistake of making eye contact with him. I don’t usually do that because he has beautiful eyes. Bright blue and heavily lashed. They’re sort of mesmerizing.
“For like—lunch or something?” he asks, when I get a little stuck. “Sunday?”
“Just you and me?”
He takes a shaky breath. Is he upset? “Me, you, Apollo…Millie…whoever you want.”
“Oh, I…you just never…I’m not sure.”
His laugh is short and unnatural. “What are you not sure about?”
“Sunday.” I mean, I don’t have any plans for Sunday as of now, but something about the way he’s acting is making me uneasy. Like bad news is coming.
“It doesn’t have to be Sunday,” he says.
I frown, trying to puzzle out where he’s going with this. It almost feels like he’s asking me out, but that can’t be right. He’s never done that before. I must take too long to answer because he waves his hand between us and says, “Forget it. I’ll see if Sam wants to try it with me. I hope you have a great weekend.”
Oh. Sam is his friend. He just meant having dinner together as friends. Now I feel like a jerk. I wish I could articulate everything that’s wrong with me in a way he could understand so we wouldn’t have to have awkward moments like this, but I can’t even articulate it to my therapist. I swear Evan and I wind up like this a few times a month with me totally misunderstanding something and him giving up on my awkward ass.
“I have plans tonight,” I say, circling back to where we started. “But I might be around on Sunday. I probably will be.”
“Yeah?” Evan looks surprised, which I guess is fair because I’m usually gone all weekend.
“Yeah, so maybe.”
“I’ll take maybe.” He scans the kitchen. “I’m assuming you don’t want any help in here?”
“No, I’ve got it.” The kitchen is kind of my space. Evan might have had his way with the living room, more or less forcing me to sell half my gym equipment so he could have a functional sitting area, but other than washing his dishes, he leaves the kitchen to me.
Lifting his cheese plate and water bottle in a show of thanks, he says, “All right. Well, have a great night.”
Before he’s fully gone, I try to make a better effort at communicating with him. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Just working on the software,” he says.
Working for the same tech company means Evan and I have this one thing in common—a love of computers and programming, so I know the story of his entrepreneurial journey from the beginning. I’m the superior programmer between us, and I’ve given him a few assists along the way, but he’s learning a lot and getting better at troubleshooting the software on his own. I miss helping him, though. We work well together. If his boss ever does promote him, I hope he winds up on my team.
