Free The Insides by Jeremy P. Bushnell Page A

don’t know,” she says, and immediately regrets it, because it breaks a rule that she set for herself when she started in this kitchen:
Never look weak
. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I should—I should get back to work.”
    “You should go
home
,” says Angel.
    Home. Her apartment’s in the South Bronx. The thought of sitting on the Pelham Line for half an hour makes her blanch a little, and it must be apparent, more apparent than she wants it to be, because Angel makes a sympathetic noise with his mouth.
    “I’ll tell you what,” he says. He has his key ring out and he’s fussing a key off of it. “My place. It’s only a couple of blocks from here. I can call the doorman, no problem.There’s a bottle of bourbon there if you, if you decide to, uh, stay on that path. No Coke, sorry. I’m pretty sure you can get Mexican Cokes in the bodega on the corner, though. You know? Real glass bottle?”
    He slides the key across the bar toward her. She hesitates. She knows what a man is thinking about, when he gives you a key to his house and invites you to let yourself in and pour yourself a glass of bourbon. She knows there’s been an invitation on the table for a while now, and she still hasn’t quite figured out what she wants to do about it, and she doesn’t want to figure it out right this second because what she wants to be doing right this second is worrying about her son, 150 miles away and looking like the Goddamn
Joker
. But she has to give some kind of answer.
    He lifts her hand and puts it on top of the key. He leaves his hand on top of hers when he’s done. It feels dry, and warm.
    “I don’t know,” she says, for the third time, cringing to hear the words come out of her mouth. “I’m feeling better. I should just—I could just jump back in there, get back to work.”
    “You
can’t
,” Angel says. “We have enough problems with Department of Health as it is, without someone in there, you know,
actively
throwing up.” He offers up a smile, which she doesn’t reciprocate. He looks at her unconvinced face. “Ollie. You can’t. This is me, your boss, telling you no.”
    At the word
boss
he takes his hand off hers. Oh right. ’Cause this isn’t just about whether she’s going to fuck Angel, some guy, this is about whether she’s going to fuck Angel,
her boss
. The biggest possible shit-where-you-eat shecan fathom.
Don’t
, she tells herself. You just don’t. It’s not that hard.
    She straightens her spine and it cracks. “OK,” she says. “If I can’t go back to work I’d better just go home.”
    For just a second, she can see disappointment on his face, and it threatens to become one more Goddamn thing to feel guilty about. But screw it. She can live with his disappointment as an outcome. It’s kinda messed up, anyway, that he’d want to fuck her tonight, after having just watched her get sick on the bar. Who
does
that? What kind of guy takes someone else’s moment of weakness and molds it into an opportunity?
    The kind of guy, she answers herself, who imagines himself as a savior, who wants to have you perform the infamous swoon of gratitude, square into his arms. That’s the kind of guy you don’t need to feel too guilty about disappointing.
    But that look of his is already gone by the time she slides the key back across the counter; he’s returned to wearing his normal expression of scrupulous feline cool, all the appetites in it out of sight for the moment.
    “Feel better soon,” he says.
    She goes back into the kitchen, gathers her stuff. Guychardson draws close to her, hovering at the edge of her personal space, a strong whiff of nonverbal apology coming off him, as though he wants to reach out and touch her on the arm but can’t quite convince himself that it would be OK. Frankly she’s grateful for his restraint. She doesn’t want to talk to Guychardson right now. She doesn’t want to talk to him, she doesn’t want to look at him, and she sure as shitdoesn’t