by N. R. Walker
But then the bus came to an abrupt stop and he had to hold on to me to stop from falling. Or maybe it was me who was at risk of falling… which was far too late because I’d already fallen for him.
Wait, what?
“What?” I asked. “That’s not at all correct.”
Hennessy looked around us. “What’s not at all correct?”
Shit.
“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking about something totally not related to you at all.”
“Okay, though that doesn’t sound very convincing,” he said with a bit of a laugh.
“Well, it’s just that falling… on the bus…” I put my hand to my forehead, trying to will my stupid mouth to shut up. “What I meant was that falling on the bus could be hazardous to one’s health.”
He stared at me for too long. He knew I was bullshitting. “Okay, yeah sure. I mean, we should think of the children and the elderly.”
“Exactly.”
He was so close. Did he need to be that close? Did he have to smell that good? God, he was so inconsiderate. “Do you really have to be that handsome?” I asked. “Because it’s so unfair on the unsuspecting public. I mean, I’m kinda used to it, but these poor other people…”
He chuckled. “Well, it’s the only face I have, so…”
“Me too.”
He jostled into me again, not looking the least bit sorry. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow night. Despite the nerves and the fear that your friends won’t think I’m good enough, I’m looking forward to spending time with you.”
My heart did that squeezing thing that made my brain unable to brain and my lungs unable to lung. “My friends will think you’re great because I do.”
“You do?”
I could barely even whisper. “Jesus, motherfucker, you are too close, I can’t think straight.”
“Well, I would move, but…,” he said, looking down between us, and there was my traitorous hand, fisting his shirt and pulling him closer.
“Oh.”
“It’s my stop,” he said. “I have to go.”
“That’s generally what happens when it’s your stop, yeah.”
“So, um…” he chuckled. “Did you wanna let go of my shirt, or no?”
“Oh!” I said, having to consciously unpeel my fingers from the fabric. I patted it down. “Sorry about that.”
He glanced up the back, nodding to Mrs Petrovski before kissing my cheek, then he hopped off the bus, grinning with a bounce to his step.
Which was great. He had bouncy legs and I had jelly legs. I had to hang onto the railing, and a pregnant woman offered me her seat. I didn’t take it, of course. But I seriously considered it, not gonna lie.
I held my nerves together pretty well, considering. But as five o’clock drew near on Thursday, I was starting to get that giddy, filterless brain-mouth thing and having trouble standing still.
Then my phone beeped with a message.
I fumbled with my phone when I saw Hennessy’s name. Jesus. He was going to cancel.
I won’t be on the bus.
“Oh God, he’s going to cancel,” I mumbled.
I’m not cancelling.
“Oh.”
Work is crazy and I’ll meet you at the restaurant. Is that okay?
“Yeah, of course,” I said stupidly before I realised I actually needed to text my reply not say it.
Sure. I’m sure I’ll survive the bus ride home, alone. All by myself. By my lonesome. Without you.
LOL The Soup Crew will assist, I’m sure. No taking seats from pregnant ladies.
I won’t need to if you’re not there, I replied. Then mumbled, “Cheeky motherfucker,” only to realise there was a lady at the counter, watching me, hearing me swear. And not just any woman, but the one with the feline buttholitis. “Oh, sweet mother of God,” I said, horrified at the way her lips pursed together like that… and that damn coral-coloured lipstick. What was she thinking? I was fairly certain that hadn’t been on the open market since Avon sold it in 1985.
Merry appeared from nowhere, springing up like the Hobbit she was. She shoved me out of the way. “Hello, Mrs Peterson,” Merry said brightly.
God, Mrs Cat Bum Face had an actual name that wasn’t directly related to feline buttholitis?
“Jordan’s been called out the back and I’ll be helping you today,” Merry said. “Did you find what you were after?”
I didn’t hear any more than that. I took my cue and got the hell out of there. I grabbed my coat and my scarf, and I grabbed Merry’s too. I even washed up her lunch container as thanks for dealing with Mrs Peterson and her dreadful choice of lipstick and lack of lip filler. I mean seriously, would a little Botox have hurt?
Merry met me at the front door, shoving me out it. “Oh my God, Jordan, you owe me big time.”
“I’m sorry you had to look at her face. I’m buying you dinner and drinks tonight. Double shots if you want. God, her mouth looks like she’s been sucking lemons for twenty years. Do you think if she wore a hat with a tall feather in it, it’d look like a cat’s tail to complete her cat’s-arse look?”
“Jordan O’Neill,” Merry said, “you are a terrible human being.” It didn’t help that she laughed as she tried to push me in front of the bus. I took her arm and dragged her on the bus, which was surprisingly empty.
Mrs Petrovski had a terrible frown on her face. “He not on the bus today. I asked the driver to wait but he no-show.”
I took a seat and Merry sat next to me. “Uh, no. He has to work a little later tonight.”
“He still meeting you for dinner?” She really was quite concerned.
“Yes, he is meeting us there. Mrs Petrovski, this is my friend Merry.”
“Are you meeting Hennessy for the first time tonight?” she asked.
“No, I’ve met him before. Only briefly though.” Merry gave me a what-the-hell? kind of look.
So I explained. “Mrs Petrovski is the leader of the Soup Crew.”
“Oh.” Recognition dawned on Merry’s face. “Riiiight.”
“We help the boys fall in love,” Mrs Petrovski said. She looked to Becky, Charles, Ian, and Sandra, who all nodded earnestly. “It’s better than Home and Away or Neighbours.”
Merry gave me a wide-eyed, you-weren’t-exaggerating stare, but before I could speak, Mrs Petrovski took some slips of paper from her handbag. “Oh, before I forget, I wrote these out for you. We all swap recipes now,” she said, and literally fifteen people at the back of the bus nodded.
I read the first. Mayal’s green chicken curry. The next was Richard’s homemade lentil dal. Then Ian’s pork mince dumplings, and there were several more.
Oh my God. They were all swapping recipes. And they were no longer weird, no longer invasive, no longer over-invested in mine and Hennessy’s relationship. Because this was really cool, and sure it was still crazy and a little bit weird, but these people started out as strangers.
Now they were friends.
I was a little surprised at how emotional it made me. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “Wow. This is awesome. Like really freaking cool, guys.”
Mrs Petrovski let out an, “Awww. I just wish Hennessy was here to see your face right now.”
“Me too. I’ll show him these recipes tonight, and maybe we can write a recipe out to you guys.”
“We would love that,” she said. Everyone else nodded.
When we got off the bus at my stop, Merry asked if I was okay. “Sure,” I replied.
“You weren’t kidding about the bus fan club.”
I snorted at that. “No. They’re pretty cool though, yeah?”
“Are you kidding me? Jordan, that was the coolest thing ever! And I think it’s an omen.”
“An omen for what?”
“For tonight, silly. It’s gonna be perfect.”
Except it wasn’t. It was going to be a disaster. Because Angus was late getting home, and apparently he’d spent the entire day in a closed, confined space with in
dustrial glue.
He was as high as a motherfucking kite.
He walked in with the glazed smirk, slits for eyes, and greeted us with a “Heyyyyyyy” that would put Fonzie to shame. “Are we still meeting your bus boy for dinner? Because I have some serious munchies.”
After it took Angus ten excruciating minutes to get his boots off, he moseyed on into the shower, and I practised my Lamaze breathing techniques. “Oh God, Christ on a cracker, this is going to be a disaster. I’m going to call Hennessy and cancel. He’ll understand, I’m sure.”
Merry laughed at me. “Are you kidding? Oh my God, Jordan, it couldn’t be more perfect.”
I gawped at her like she’d lost her mind. Which she had. Obviously.
She sighed. “A stoned Angus is a happy, placid, agreeable, hungry Angus. If at any point before now he was thinking he could interrogate Hennessy, you certainly don’t have to worry about that any more. Just keep a plate of fries or corn chips in front of him, and you won’t hear a word out of him.”
I let out a long exhale. “Well, we could hope so. If he calls him Bus Boy, I will die, just so you know. And in the unfortunate event of my untimely demise, please delete my browser history.”
She snorted. “What for? It’s not like you have some kinky, nasty pig porn to delete. I don’t think anyone is going to consider seventeenth-century French poetry as some kind of debauchery.”
I gasped, my hand to my heart. “Don’t underestimate the comedic brilliance of Voltaire.”
“Please, for the sake of my sanity, do not quote him.”
“‘It is difficult to free fools of the chains they revere.’”
Merry sighed, long and loud. “You are relentless.”
“Thanks.”
Angus appeared from his room wearing underpants and a brightly coloured Hawaiian shirt that looked like it had gone twelve rounds with a packet of Skittles. “Okay, I am ready for food.”
Merry squinted at him. “Aren’t you forgetting something, dear?”
Angus shot me a look. “Oh, yeah, sorry. And I’m totally ready to meet the bus boy guy.”
“You’re missing something else,” Merry deadpanned. “Like maybe some pants?”
Angus looked down at himself and laughed while being genuinely surprised, like we’d somehow made his pants disappear. He toddled back into his room, and I had to steady myself against the wall while I did Lamaze breathing again.
“Disaster,” I wheezed.
Merry gave me a sympathetic nod and patted my shoulder. “Breathe, Jordan. It’ll be fine.”
Chapter Twelve
Hennessy
I looked across the table at the man sitting opposite me, wondering what on earth I’d ever seen in him. Rob was conceited, self-absorbed, and arrogant. He took himself far too seriously and assumed he was better than everyone else in the room. Maybe it was his confidence that originally attracted me; there was always something about a guy who carried himself well. But I’d soon learnt that he expected perfection not only from himself, but also from everyone around him. And that had included me, in and out of the bedroom.
Yes, he was wealthy and successful, but he was also an absolute jerk.
He viewed people as a means to an end. If he couldn’t benefit from them, he simply walked away. Much like he’d done with me. At the time I’d been devastated, but with the view of hindsight—and now that I’d met Jordan—breaking up with Rob was the best thing to have ever happened to me.
I’d finally found someone who accepted me. The real me. And speaking of which, if this meeting didn’t wrap up soon, I was going to be late for dinner.
As Michael and Rob discussed business, I checked my watch for the tenth time.
“Am I keeping you from something?” Rob asked.
I’d stopped listening to his droning on, and his question caught me by surprise. “Oh, um. Actually, yes.”
Michael looked at me in a way that was almost as effective as a kick under the table, so I amended with, “If you’ll both excuse me for just a moment, I’ll just make alternative arrangements and I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait for a reply. I wasn’t asking permission. So I slipped out of the room and out of sight and pulled out my phone. I was already going to miss the bus, that was obvious, and I knew Jordan would assume the worst.
I won’t be on the bus. I hit Send without really thinking it through. He would assume I was bailing on him, so I quickly thumbed out another. I’m not cancelling. Work is crazy and I’ll meet you at the restaurant. Is that okay?
I could see his reply text bubble and let out a relieved sigh.
Sure. I’m sure I’ll survive the bus ride home, alone. All by myself. By my lonesome. Without you.
I laughed at my phone. LOL The Soup Crew will assist, I’m sure. No taking seats from pregnant ladies.
I won’t need to if you’re not there.
“Hennessy?” Rachel asked from the hallway. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I was just…”
“Laughing at your phone? Skipping out on a meeting with Mr Sleazebag to text your new guy?”
I chuckled, totally busted. “Guilty as charged. I’m meeting him for dinner and didn’t want him to think I was gonna be a no-show if I’m not on the bus.” I sighed. “I better get back in there.”
“Good luck,” she said with a wink.
I went back into the room, and the report I’d given Rob still sat on the desk, untouched. “Did you sort out your personal life on my time?” he asked, smug and smiling.
“Your time?” I questioned. “No, what I did was waste my time when I wrote you a full, extensive report that you didn’t even read.”
He didn’t even flinch, but his tone took a cruel turn. “How’ve you been, Hennessy? You settling into your new life okay?”
I smiled at him. “Perfectly, thank you. It’s almost like minimal living, getting rid of the useless shit that cluttered your life. Does wonders for the soul.”
His gaze hardened and he shifted in his seat. “I’m not paying you a fortune to be insulted.”
“No,” I replied flatly. “You’re paying me to evaluate the security of your website, your brand, your livelihood, and identify vulnerabilities in your system, networks, and system infrastructure. You wanted me to run extensive penetration measures to find security exposures within your system configurations, hardware and software vulnerabilities, as well as operation witnesses in process for technical countermeasures.” I shrugged. “If you had read the report, you would know this.”
“The report was eighty-two pages of scripting, coding, and hardware engineering jargon.”
“There was a detailed summary on page seventy-nine.”
He smiled like he was enjoying this. “I hired you to give me a report from the fundamental understanding of our network vulnerabilities.”
If he thought challenging me to be some kind of game, I wasn’t here to play. “Then let me dumb it down for you,” I said, not breaking eye contact. “I skimmed ports to find vulnerabilities, scrutinised patch installation processes, performed detailed traffic analysis, and fixed your intrusion detection and prevention systems. What I found were eight bugs spread across four main access ports on your site. One was a clickjacking vulnerability, which could easily become a sitejacking if not stopped. Several others were cross-site scripting liabilities, an especially flexible and malicious type of attack in which hackers inject their own code into the domain web application, gaining access to not only your staff’s personal information but that of your clients as well. The staff login portal was susceptible to infiltration, making it relatively easy for hackers with malicious intent to steal data from other visitors’ browsers and possibly even impersonate them. And all the usual phishing scams.”
Rob stared at me and it took him a second for what I’d just said to register. “Did you fix it? Oh my God. Tell me you fixed it!”
“Of course I did.”
“And we’re still right to transfer and go live n
ext week? We have so much depending on this—”
“Of course, everything is fine. You wanted the best and you got it.”
Michael smirked before he schooled his features. “Thanks Hennessy. Did you, uh…” He smiled. “Didn’t you have somewhere to be tonight? We’re almost done here.”
I shot to my feet, unable to keep the grin from my face. “I do, thanks.” I walked out without even pausing, grabbed my laptop, my messenger bag, only pausing at the elevator to say goodbye to Rachel. “Bye!”
“You could cab it,” she called. “Or Uber it! It’s the twenty-first century, you know?”
But I was already in the elevator, and as soon as the doors opened, I ran for the next bus.
I raced home, dumped my gear, changed my shirt, freshened up, and not knowing much about Newtown, I booked an Uber. I got to the restaurant barely two minutes late, feeling a rush of relief when I saw Jordan sitting at a table with Merry.
Merry nodded pointedly at me and Jordan turned around, and his whole face lit up when he saw me. He stood just as I got to his table, and I couldn’t resist putting my hand to his back and kissing him hello. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Oh,” he said with a little laugh, blushing beautifully. “Hi.”
I nodded to Merry and said, “Nice to see you again.”
She smiled cheerfully. “Same.”
Jordan pulled out a seat at the table for me. “And not to worry, you had a crazy day at work, huh?”
I nodded as we sat down. I sat next to Jordan, Merry sat across from him, and I had an empty chair across from me. “Yes, busy with demanding, obnoxious clients.” Then I noted the vacancy at the table. “I thought I was meeting Angus? Did he not come with you?”
“He’s in the bathroom,” Jordan said, “and before he comes back, I would like to apologise in advance for anything he may say or do.”