Page 33 of Neat
Logan
The hot coffee in my left hand did little to sooth the pounding of my head as I walked through the distillery halls the next morning. I sipped it anyway, hoping it could somehow erase the absurd amount of whiskey I’d consumed the night before. Going to Buck’s to drown out what had happened with Mac seemed logical when I’d decided to do it, but hindsight reminded me that a Thursday night wasnota Friday night, and reporting for work the day after drinking wasn’t as easy as it had been when I was twenty-two.
The hot coffee in myrighthand was for Mallory, but just like the one in my left, it did little to soothe my anxiety as I made my way toward the office. I knew she’d be there — even though I was early and she wasn’t expected to be in for another hour. I knew, because I saw it on her face when I’d stormed out the day before.
She was sorry, and she felt bad for what had happened.
Which in turn mademefeel like a bag of shit, because it wasn’t her fault. What happened could have happened to any new tour guide, and in reality, it was more a reflection ofmethan it was of her. I’d been giving tours for years. I was the Lead Tour Guide. If anyone should have realized we didn’t tell that group that there were no photos allowed, it should have been me.
And I didn’t.
Because I was distracted.
I sighed, shaking my head at my own stupidity as I pushed through the door that led to the guide lobby. No one was in yet, not even Mac, so the lobby was empty.
But there was a blonde mess of hair in my office.
Her back was to me as she waited in the same chair she’d been in yesterday when Mac rushed into the office, her attention fixed on the swinging Newton’s Cradle on my desk. I wondered if she’d left at all, if she’d slept, if she’d let go of what happened or if she’d simmered on it all night like I did.
When I rounded my desk and saw the bags under her eyes, I got my answer.
Mallory looked up at me like a little girl who got caught eating a cookie before dinner. She sat on her hands, her brows furrowed, eyes watching mine as I took a seat in my chair across from her. I could tell she wanted to speak, she wanted to apologize again, but I spoke before she had the chance.
“Mallory, I’m sorry for how I acted yesterday.”
“No,” she said, immediately shaking her head. “It was my fault. And you had every right to be pissed — tostillbe pissed. I am so sorry I fucked up…again.”
I smirked. “You didn’t fuck up. It could have happened to any new guide, and truthfully, it was onmeto point that out if you missed it. I knew better — you didn’t.”
“But Idid,” she argued, shaking her head. “I asked you to start over last week, and then the first chance I get to show you that I’m serious now, that I care, I go and make the worst mistake I possibly could have.”
I chuckled at that. “Mallory, it was a video of some stupid barrels being made — not a terrorist attack.”
She smiled as much as she could, but it fell quickly, her eyes on my desk.
“It’s okay — really. Mac made a bigger deal out of it than necessary. The video is down, and nothing proprietary was leaked. If it was reallythattop secret, they wouldn’t let us take tours through there at all. Right?”
She tilted her head a bit at that. “I guess that’s a good point.”
I nodded, sliding the coffee I’d brought for her across the desk. “Here. A peace offering. So we can stop arguing about who was wrong and whose fault it is and focus on today’s tasks. Deal?”
Mallory sighed, like she wanted to keep arguing and apologizing rather than accept my offer. It was kind of adorable, seeing the woman who’d given me so much hell look so upset that she’d let me down. And truthfully —shehadn’t. It’d been my own damn self that had let me down.
Regardless of whose fault it was, the whole thing was in our past — and that’s where I wanted to keep it. The sooner we got the storage closet cleaned out, the sooner we could both get back to tours.
I edged the coffee a little closer, waggling my brows. “It’s mochaaa,” I sang.
After a long pause, she reached forward for the cup with a long sigh, wrapping her hands around it. She nodded once, smiling a little more genuinely now, her shoulders visibly relaxing.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Deal.”
“Where do we even start?” Mallory asked, squinting through the dusty fluorescent light of the oversized storage closet. She hung her hands on her hips, surveying the mountainous stacks of file boxes and plastic storage containers that lined every single wall and filled three rows in the middle.
I followed her gaze with my own sigh. “I guess we pick a corner and go from there.”
“And we’re supposed to decide what’s worth keeping and archiving, and what we can pitch?” She wrinkled her nose. “I feel like this is a job for a secretary who’s been here for a long time and knows more about this stuff.”
I tapped the printed list on top of my clipboard. “Lucy gave us a guide to go by, with a list of what to keep and what to pitch,” I said, referencing the closest thing to a secretary the distillery had. Lucy sat in the front lobby, greeting guests and getting them ready for their tours, as well as handling all the admin tasks for our officers in her down time. “She said if we had any questions to call her or stop by the front desk.”
