Page 42 of Love Expert

I lock my phone with slow, deliberate movements, then I sit up taller and burn him with a glare. “What the fuck?”

“What?” He drops into his chair opposite mine, our desks pushed up against each other, and jiggles his computer mouse to get the screen to fire up. “Why are you so mad, bruh?”

“Why are you so fuckin’ annoying?”

“I’m not.” He sets his elbows on his desk and flashes an obnoxious smile. “It’s called charm. You ought to head out to the shops after work and see if you can buy some of your own. It’s a game changer with the ladies.”

“I don’t need help with the ladies.” I toss my phone down so it lands on my desk with a noisy clatter, even as it continues to vibrate with Maggie’s lecturing texts.. “I have a date tonight.”

“Oh yeah? With Maggie?” Teasing, he bounces his brows. “She was cute as hell way back in second grade, ya know? Especially with those bucky teeth of hers. But now…?” He whistles under his breath. “Yowza. She went and dunked herself in a vat of stunning.”

“No,” I grit out. “Not with Maggie. And shut the fuck up about how pretty she is. Why didn’t you tell me about thatmomentyou two shared back in elementary school, huh?”

“Because it was in elementary school,” he laughs. “Jesus. I didn’t realize I was supposed to keep a detailed report of every single interaction I ever had with a person in my life. Aria and I saidheyonce or twice back in the day, too. You want me to add those to my report?”

Fuck you. And fuck your momma, too.

“Well?” He looks to my vibrating phone, the incessant buzz-buzz-buzz only adding more fuel to his smug fire. “Things are going well?”

“Things arenotgoing well. Because every time we talk, she picks a fight with me.”

“Right. And I bet that’s completely on her, huh? Absolutely nothing to do with you and your crappy attitude?”

“I don’t have a crappy attitude! I have areactiveattitude, and she knows that, so she picks, picks, picks at me. She’s still setting me up with these broads, by the way. Tonight’s will be the third this week! She’s so fucking determined to maintain that perfect success rate of hers, she won’t even listen to me when I tell her I’m not interested in them.”

“Right. You don’t want them; you want her.”

“Exactly!” I shove away from my desk and snatch up the vibrating phone before it sends me mad. “I still have a fucking crush on an eight-year-old girl, okay? I wanther. I even told her so, but every time I try to suggestwego out on a date, she picks a fight and tosses someone else at me.”

Tania, our front desk receptionist, stops by our desks with wide eyes, raised brows, and an odd side eye pointed my way.

“He means hehada crush on an eight-year-old,” Ramone guffaws. “Back when he was eight. He isn’t attracted to eight-year-oldscurrently.”

“Ohhhkay.” She curls bubble gum around the tip of her finger. “But if this ends up in court or whatever, I’m gonna have to testify and tell the judge what I heard. It would be illegal not to.”

“You gotta be more careful with the things you say.” Ramone swings dancing eyes back my way. “You’re a grown-ass man, Caster! You can’t talk like that about eight-year-old girls without context, bro. You wanna go to prison?”

I fist my hair and stalk toward the single boardroom our small station boasts, shoving the door open and stepping inside before our captain comes out and destroys my day… and my career. Turning to lock up behind myself, to buy ten minutes alone before I completely step over the edge, I grab the handle, only for Ramone to bound through like the Kool-Aid man and charge toward the smart board mounted to the wall.

“Okay. So things are the Q word in town.” He picks up the stylus pen and taps the board to power it up. “All the folks of Plainview are currently behaving, but if we say the Q word, we’ll jinx it. So instead, we won’t say it, but we will work on this while we have time.” He writes “Billy” in bold letters at the top left of the screen. “Billy Caster is a prick. Middle-aged, undersexed, over-stressed, and comes with a chronic inability to talk to the ladies.”

I pull out a chair and drop onto the cheap, cracked leather with a pained grunt.

Icouldcarry myselfandmy chair to the roof of our station and lob bothoff. If I’m lucky, I might land on the flagpole outside and do away with this day completely. But that would mean not making it out of work on time to get my son from school, and I’ve missed the bell a time too many to risk another.

Striding six feet to the right, Ramone writes “Maggie” in bold letters. “Magnolia Sava. Beautiful, witty, hugely successful businesswoman, smokin’ hot body, and if we wanna get romantic and shit, some might even call herthe one who got away.”

Kill me. Kill me now.

“Now, we’ve got Maggie all the way over here.” He draws an arrow to her name, then he drags the tailalllllllthe way back to mine. “And we’ve got you six hundred miles over here in Timbuktu. Treat it like a murder, Billy Boy. How do we connect these lines?”

“You’re an idiot,” I sigh. “I swear to God.”

“Excellent suggestion!” He doesn’t give a single damn about me or my mental health, because he stops in the middle of the board and draws two poor excuses for houses, side by side. “Distance connects our subjects, since their houses are literally next door to one another.” He draws a stick figure boy between the two, adds a smile, but omits a few teeth. “Jeremy also connects our subjects, since he’s the son of,” he draws an arrow back to me. “And he’s infatuated with,” an arrow to Maggie. “Like father, like son.” He glances over his shoulder and grins. “Kid’s got smoother moves than his daddy, that’s for damn sure. If you’re not careful, he’s gonna grow the hell up and ask her out himself. He’s already eight, which is basically halfway to adulthood.” He draws a heart beneath the houses, and inside, the initials MS. “Magnolia Sava, the Love Expert.” He adds an arrow from the heart to me, then another from the heart to Maggie. “She’s literally tasked with helping you date, you dumb sonofabitch. She’s giving you the industry secrets, which is basically code for howshewants to be treated in her dating life.” He turns and pegs the stylus straight toward my head. “Are you fucking stupid?!”

“Dude!” I dodge his weapon.Barely.“What the fuck?!”

“She’s giving you the cheat codes!” He stalks across to the table and snatches up my phone. Unlocking the screen, he shakes his head with disgust and reads our text messages. “Consider asking her about her childhood career dreams. What did she want to be when she grew up?” He goes back to the board and uses the tip of his finger now that he’s lost his stylus. “Childhood dreams.”