No Excuses

by Nikky Kaye

  He’d thrown an improvised Festivus party at the office on the twenty-third, and that was the last time I’d seen him. We took turns raising our glasses in celebration in front of the aluminum pole, and were surprisingly restrained in our airing of grievances.

  My personal feat of strength was not attacking him after a glass or two of liberally spiked eggnog. Gage hadn’t made it easy—laughing easily and praising everyone for all the hard work they’d done, since the mountain retreat a few months before.

  When he got down off his high horse, as Aaron put it, and offered to photocopy his own ass for the sake of tradition, I wasn’t the only one who was shocked. Susan was quivering with anticipation and there was a lot of cheering from Nikhil and the IT department. It’s always the quiet ones.

  But he looked over at me as I shook my head, silently discouraging him from doing it—and he recanted. His gaze drove into me like, well, an unadorned aluminum pole. He mouthed, “Okay” at me, and I realized that mine was the only opinion that really mattered to him.

  I fell in love with him all over again. It seemed to happen daily since I’d gone back to work for him, but it wasn’t until after the confrontation with Aaron that the squeezing sensation in my chest felt less painful and more optimistic.

  By the time I got to the office, thinking about him had just made me miss him more keenly. I decided to use my laptop in his office, sitting in the big chair behind his desk. When I sat down, I thought I could smell his scent on the chair, but then I realized it was just the leather. Perhaps Gage smelled more like his chair than anything else.

  The floor was quiet. Everyone else had been only too happy to stay home for the week. I hadn’t bothered turning on the fluorescents overhead, opting instead for the little halogen desk light to cast a sharp circle of light around my computer. I was so busy catching up on some follow-up correspondence that I didn’t notice him standing by the open door.

  “Jesus Christ!” I jumped. “You scared the shit out of me, Gage.” I needed to get him a bell or something; he was always sneaking up on me.

  My heart thumped wildly as he walked toward me. I couldn’t see the exact blue of his eyes as he approached me in the shadows, but the desk lamp carved the line of his clenching jaw as he rounded the desk to where I sat in his big boss chair. It wasn’t until I saw him tracking my movements that I realized I was slightly spinning myself from right to left and back again.

  I blushed, stopping myself with my toes. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be working in here.”

  He tilted his head, looking confused. “Why not?”

  “It’s your office.”

  “So? It’s a comfortable chair. I wasn’t here. Go ahead. I trust you.”

  I looked at him as he began taking his coat off. There wasn’t an ounce of expectation in his expression, or a hint of disingenuousness. He meant it. He trusted me, implicitly. Explicitly. What had I done to deserve that trust?

  “Why?” I blurted out as he tossed his coat over the corner of the desk.

  The zipper clinked and something else in his coat clunked on the glass surface—probably his phone in his pocket. He wore the same faded college hoodie that I’d seen on him in the mountains, and it made him look so much younger and carefree. The sweatshirt I was wearing was from my school as well, but it made me feel older for some reason. We were both teetering, trying to stabilize on the same level in life.

  “Why what?” he asked.

  “Why do you trust me?”

  He hesitated, rubbing his neck. The hem of his hoodie rose to expose the waistband of his jeans. He was actually casual today, not even business casual. “Why do I trust you?” he repeated to himself. “I don’t know if I have a good reason.”

  “Try.” Suddenly it was very important to me.

  “Because you’ve been there for me when I didn’t even know I needed somebody. Because you’ve taken my bullshit over and over again and still have a smile on your face. You took my sister’s side over mine because it was the right thing to do. You saved Aaron’s ass and the resolution campaign, despite being pissed off at me—rightfully, I might add.”

  I stared at him, my mouth dry.

  He leaned over and braced his hands on the armrests of the chair I was sitting in. Because my forearms rested there his fingers wrapped around my wrists. The chair tilted back a little, making him grip a little tighter to prevent it from moving.

  “I didn’t save—”

  “Yes, you did.” Now that his head was bent toward me I could see that his eyes were currently the color of the late afternoon sky outside—a blue-gray slate that reminded me of the denim cover on his bed. “And you saved me from myself, which is no small task.”

  Heat crawled up my face. The way he looked at me made me feel as though the tiny halogen spotlight was centered directly on me. Could he see the pounding of my heart in my throat? My jeans felt tight, my body ripe and pulsing. Every nerve ending was aware of him, like a force field was closing in around us.

  “Gage, I—”

  “Did you make a New Year’s resolution, Madeline?” he interrupted.

  I’d once wondered what the difference was between a resolution and a wish. Now, looking into his eyes, I understood.

  Only I could make a resolution come true.

  “Do you want to know what mine is?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. There was no rum-laced eggnog to blame this time around.

  “I resolve to make you understand that I love you. I love you, Maddie, and I am not making any excuses for it.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “So to speak. I want every part of you—your brain, your heart, your soul and your funny bone.”

  My lips parted as his gaze narrowed on them. I felt his focus on me like a physical touch, his fingers running across my lower lip and nudging inside. I inhaled deeply, his crisp, masculine scent swimming around my head like a cartoon cloud. Maybe it was all just pheromones. Maybe I didn’t really love him. Maybe I was just grateful for the job and the vote of confidence.

  Maybe I was full of shit, even in my own head.

  “Damn it, Gage.” My voice cracked. “How am I supposed to respond to that?”

  He knelt to the floor in front of me, his hands rubbing up and down my forearms. “You’re the communications expert. You tell me.”

  Tell him what, exactly? Inside, I knew that the truth was a good place to start. I inhaled then blew out a frustrated burst of air. He closed his eyes as my breath hit his face. And he waited. He didn’t push me—just sat before me, ready to accept whatever I said. It was that quiet patience that was my undoing.

  “You want me?”

  He nodded, his lips pressing together. There was a lump in my throat that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  “You forgot something.”

  His eyes widened in panic, then his lips softened at my wobbly smile. “Please.”

  My attempt to hold in a choked sob resulted in an inelegant hiccup. “Oh god, I love you too.”

  “I keep telling you people not to call me God,” he joked weakly. “I have feet of clay.”

  I nodded. “They’re practically play dough.”

  “You love me?”

  I swallowed hard, biting my lip as my chin jerked up and down.

  “Tell me again.”

  “I love you. I don’t know when I didn’t.” An elastic band inside me snapped, and I hadn’t even realized how stretched out it was.

  His relieved smile seemed to expand the circle of light around us far beyond the reach of the little desk lamp. He laid his head on my lap, his arms reaching around my waist.

  “Can you email me that?”

  “Huh?”

  “I want a hard copy for the file.”

  My giggle came out with a sigh attached to it. My hands went to his coal black hair, my fingertips massaging his skull with reverence. I’d missed touching him.

  “I’ll print it out. I’ll text it. I’ll Tweet it. I’ll change my status on Faceboo
k. I’ll send a passenger pigeon if you want.”

  He raised his head along with one eyebrow. “Let’s not get all Jurassic Park here—they’re extinct for a reason.”

  I fucking adored him, this closet geek billio—millionaire. I’d gone from fearing him and being nervous around him to being aroused and enamored by him.

  He was close to being my best friend already, and I trusted him. He was a role model when he wasn’t being an asshole, and thankfully, he was gracious enough to let me tell him when he was.

  “What about my job?” I asked as his hands gripped my hips.

  “We have an excellent benefits package.” He propped his chin on my thighs.

  “I bet.” Although I had the feeling, we were talking about different kinds of benefits.

  “It just so happens that we have an opening in the Marketing department.”

  I gasped. “Is Aaron leaving?”

  “No, but I think he needs some extra support from someone like you.”

  “And I’m not sleeping with him,” I thought out loud. That just might work.

  Gage growled, tugging me closer until I almost fell off the chair into his lap. “Damn right.”

  “Okay, okay!” I yelped.

  With one arm snaked around my waist and one hand pushing on the bottom castors of the chair, he pulled me onto the floor beside him.

  He covered my mouth with his. His body was warm, no trace of coldness from outside lingering on him, but I shivered nonetheless as his hands roamed over me. He traced the line of my collarbone with his fingertips, brushed his knuckles down my spine, and when he slipped under the hem of my shirt, I gasped.

  God, he could touch me all day and all night long, and I would never complain. How had I gone for even one week without him? How had I gone my whole life without him?

  I kissed him feverishly. He sucked my lower lip between his teeth just long enough to make it swollen and his tongue sought entrance. A low moan escaped me, making him groan in reaction. His need was intoxicating, but his kisses made me dizzy. My regret at not replacing my stash of fresh underwear in my desk was overwhelming.

  “I need you,” I whimpered, a hot blue flame blazing everywhere he touched me. I felt so delicate in his arms that I thought I would see the whorls of his fingerprints imprinted on my skin.

  At the same time, he held me with purpose and passion, lifting me up to meet his hungry mouth and hands. He didn’t treat me as lower than him, fragile or weak. He used me to brace himself, as though he knew that I was stronger than I appeared. And yeah, I was. But he was part of what gave me that strength—the knowledge that I was valuable to someone. I was worth having, worth keeping.

  “Madeline, please.” His plea was not for forgiveness or for understanding. It was simply an entreaty for me.

  And I was only too happy to trade him—my love for his. Tit for tat.

  EPILOGUE

  GAGE

  “This is inexcusable. You can’t just quit. Try harder.”

  Maddie popped her head in the doorway, rolling her eyes. “Gage, she’s two fucking years old,” she chastised me.

  I clapped my hands over my niece’s ears. “Madeline! She can hear you!”

  “She can hear you too. We all can, and you sound ridiculous trying to motivate a toddler.”

  “Ignore Auntie Maddie, Lily. She’s just jealous that she doesn’t have a magic toilet.”

  My girlfriend smirked. “Yes, Lily-bean. He saves all his best technology for you now.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. I’d developed a particularly interesting app that turned Madeline’s smartphone into a kind of pocket rocket, and I didn’t hear her complaining about that. Moaning, yes—but in a good way.

  Lily looked up at me with questioning brown eyes, and I dropped my hands from the silky hair around her ears.

  “What’s going on?” My sister joined Madeline in the doorway to the bathroom, her face flashing into a smile at the sight of her daughter on the floor.

  “He’s Gaging her.”

  What? I was a verb now?

  “Brian, give it a rest. She’ll go when she’s ready. Right, baby?”

  Lily beamed up at her mother, then proudly peed on the floor where I was kneeling. I wanted to bang my head against the tile, but was afraid of getting urine in my hair.

  I’d spent three months creating this program that played peppy music and personal messages when the potty receptacle thing got wet, and the only thing I had to show for it were tears of frustration.

  It was tempting to sob into the damn thing just so I could hear “Great job!”

  “Great job!” Bobbie said indulgently to the trickle monster beside me. Lily clapped her hands and giggled, then sat on my thigh. Ew.

  “What the hell do you mean? She just peed on the floor!”

  “No, she peed on you. That’s awesome.” She high-fived Madeline.

  Maddie nodded in agreement. The two were thick as thieves, which was appropriate since Madeline had stolen my heart nearly three years ago. I gave them a withering look, but they just laughed harder.

  “Savages,” I muttered.

  “Here, I’ll clean her up.” Bobbie came in and I patted Lily on the head awkwardly before leaving the bathroom with a big wet mark on my pants.

  Maddie burst out in giggles again. “You should see the look on your face.”

  “Marry me.”

  “I can’t, you have pee on you.”

  It was an ongoing joke—I asked her to marry me, and she came up with a ridiculous excuse. She still teased me about my stuffiness, even though I was a little more understanding now of the difference between excuses and reasons.

  It had started about a year before, when I was tired of pinning her down only to the mattress. Or the floor. Or the kitchen counter. Or my desk. I wanted to pin her down permanently, legally.

  But the joke was becoming less funny and more awkward. Her rejection was coming slower these days, which meant she was either getting ready to say yes, or getting ready to move out. I was praying it was the former rather than the latter.

  Persuading her to move in with me had been easy. All I had to do was give her a book of paint chips. Getting her to marry me was like… eating spaghetti with a whisk while blindfolded.

  One of these days, I wouldn’t accept her lame excuse for refusing my proposal. I leaned in to kiss her, the slight tension in her shoulders easing under my hands.

  “I need fresh pants,” I announced.

  To her credit, she didn’t make a dirty joke. “Ask Aaron.”

  My best friend slash brother-in-law was out back tending the grill with the single-minded determination of, well, me. When I found him, he was trying searing the steak with his eyes.

  “A watched steak never grills, man.”

  “Meat on fire, bro—that’s all you need. I was just brainstorming a new slogan.”

  “Such as?” I handed him one of the two bottles of beer I’d grabbed from the fridge on my way out, taking a drink from the other.

  “Come try our poles?”

  I spit out my beer. “What?”

  “You know, ski poles, hiking poles.”

  “That’s terrible. Jesus, what happened to you?”

  Aaron lifted the steak to look at the underside. “Have you heard of Mommy brain? I think I have Daddy brain.”

  I snorted. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Yeah, true dat.” His grin stretched into a blinding smile when Bobbie came out the back door with Lily in her arms.

  It hadn’t always been peaceful for them. Bobbie went back to work at the lodge at four months pregnant, when the ski season really got underway. The manager promised she’d be working strictly indoors, low-key guest services stuff. Aaron drove up on the weekends to be with her, but after two months, I took him to a bar on a Tuesday night and got him wasted.

  It was Maddie’s idea but I wasn’t blind. I could see that he was totally exhausted, physically and mentally. He was driving four hours to the mou
ntains on Friday nights, then four hours back on Sundays after dinner.

  The boss in me was pissed off that he wasn’t committing to his work for Apptitude, but the friend in me knew that something had to give—and it was probably going to be me.

  “She says sh’okay, but I think she’s scared,” Aaron slurred. “Shit man, I’m scared. I don’t know nothing ‘bout babies.”

  When we were younger, I’d envied Aaron his only child status. Now I saw the downside. He didn’t even have any cousins. By the end of the night, I was trying to lug his sauced, six foot five, linebacker ass out to a cab, and formulating a plan to help them out.

  In the end, I let him stay a week at the lodge, virtually commuting from there, as long as he could be in the city the next week. So he rotated and lived out of a suitcase. But it was good for him, good for Bobbie, and not totally disastrous for the company—thanks to Madeline, who took over a lot of Aaron’s work at the office.

  They made it through the winter like deliriously happy but busy squirrels, while Maddie and I did our best to hibernate, until Bobbie’s water broke a month early. Thankfully, the village down the mountain from the lodge had more amenities than just a wood-burning pizza place—it also had a decent hospital. Or so, I heard.

  Lily Charlotte was small but scrappy, and Maddie told me that she was a beautiful mix of both her parents, with strong fingers and the vocal range to match after she visited one weekend.

  She and my mother car-pooled once or twice to go see them, which freaked me out. I was sure they talked about me the entire way, but I didn’t have the guts to ask what was said.

  But in an immature fit of passive-aggressive avoidance, I didn’t go see Bobbie and Aaron or the baby for two months. My mother left messages for me every day. My girlfriend didn’t go down on me for six weeks and four days.

  It was a fucking nightmare.

  But it was my nightmare, and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did when Aaron announced he wasn’t coming back.

  “What do you mean, you’re not coming back? It’s a fancy hotel, it’s not fucking Mordor!”