Page 12 of Regret Me Not
“As in no longer suicidal?” Derrick asked sharply.
Pierce flushed. “I wasn’t that bad,” he mumbled. “It was just… I was an asshole. I didn’t want to expose her to me being an asshole to her in her own house. Wasn’t her fault. How’s Miranda?”
Derrick’s wife, bless her, should have divorced Pierce’s best friend a long time ago, because she was way too damned good for him. “She’s fine. Or she will be when she recovers from the humiliation. Apparently she forgot to put enough sugar in one of the damned pies. Her family won’t let her live it down. If one more jackass calls me with an offer to bring over a cup of sugar, I’m gonna go fuckin’ ballistic.”
Pierce grimaced. “Ouch. Family.”
“What a fuckin’ bag of dicks.”
Pierce had to laugh. “Yeah, well, witness.”
“Shut up. You and Sasha give me hope. None of these assholes would have let a thing like that slow them down.”
Well, there was a reason Derrick was his best friend. That and— “How’s work?” Pierce asked before he could stop himself.
Derrick cackled. “Missing the hell out of you, that’s for sure. Speaking of assholes….” Well, layoffs had been coming, and Pierce had the bad luck to crash his truck about a week before they arrived. He’d been pretty sure he hadn’t been on the list before he’d been taken out of commission, but who could prove what?
Pierce gusted out a breath. “Yeah, well, sadly it’s mutual.” He’d liked his job designing graphics chips for video game players—he and his team, Derrick included, had worked really well together.
“Well, I know you’re doing okay for money,” Derrick said frankly, because he’d gotten a year’s worth of severance at the layoff—and both Pierce and the guy who’d hit him had good insurance that had paid out. “But I also know you, and that’s the whole reason I called.”
“Besides making sure I wasn’t dead,” Pierce said dryly.
“Well, that too. Anyway—there’s a smaller company out here putting out feelers. Young, hot, fresh—willing to blow you if you promise to come, that sort of thing. Anyway, I gave them your card. They’re going to be emailing you in a couple of days. Try not to fuck this up.”
Pierce gasped, suddenly almost tearful. “A job? You got me a job?”
“No, I dropped your name. Don’t be dramatic. And I told them you wouldn’t be back until March of next year too, so don’t blow the first vacation you’ve had in years.”
Pierce gave a rusty laugh. “I’m still rehabilitating,” he reminded his friend. “No promises I’ll be 100 percent ever, you know that.”
“Can you walk?” Derrick demanded. “Can you use a computer?”
“Yes and yes,” Pierce told him promptly, thinking about the range of motion he could feel in his legs after two days of decent aqua therapy.
“Then the rest is improvement. Anyway—you’ll have time.”
“I will.” Pierce felt his throat get thick again. “Thank you. Just, seriously, thank you. That’s… that’s awesome.”
“Just tell me you aren’t rotting at my beach condo eating canned soup and trying to die alone.”
“No.” Pierce felt the corners of his mouth turn up without meaning to make that happen. “In fact, I think I made a friend.”
“Hm… promising.” Derrick was sort of a midsize man with a thatch of blond hair and a goatee, and Pierce could picture him stroking his goatee. “Would this be a friend with tits that you can sleep with?”
Pierce grunted. “Doesn’t need breasts—you know that.”
Derrick grunted back. “I forget. I’m a straight white male who tries not to have entitlement issues—pity me.”
Oh God. Derrick and Miranda probably gave 10 percent of their income to liberal causes. “I refuse to pity you now that I’ve been repressed,” Pierce told him grandly. “But seriously, a friend. That’s all I could ask for, and I’m calling it a win.”
“But is it a cute friend? That’s all I’m asking,” Derrick needled, and Pierce gave in.
“He’s really sort of adorable.”
Derrick’s cackle was all he ever wanted in a buddy. “Excellent! I see good things in your future, my man. I shall leave you alone so I can go impregnate my wife!”
Pierce blinked. “Was that, uh, something you’d planned on doing?”
