Free Sick Day by Morgan Parker Page B

time in forever, the sight of Riley’s naked body did nothing to arouse me. Normally, her beauty alone had an insta-hard-on effect that lasted hours. Not tonight.
    I chuckled and tried to step past her, but she stopped me.
    “So? Where were you, Cam?” She bit her fingernail.
    “In the basement,” I lied. “Where the fuck does it look like I was?”
    My tone offended her enough that she stepped back and tightened the robe. I moved into the kitchen for some food because that was what a normal person would do.
    “How was the ham?” I asked.
    “It was a roasted chicken,” Riley answered. “And I’m going to bed.”
    “Goodnight,” I breathed once she was gone, then found the roasted chicken and dumped a bit onto my plate. How could I have forgotten that it was chicken? Damn, seeing Hope had seriously messed with my head.
    I walked to the table with my plate. Seeing as tonight had been the first time that I spent time with Hope in roughly seven years, it made sense why I was a little disoriented, confused, whatever. The loss of appetite surprised me, though, as I toyed with my dinner—two thin slices off the breast along with a spoonful of vegetables—and wondered why I had dumped so much on my plate. I wasn’t hungry. At all.
    Yet upstairs, Riley was probably waiting for me to come and kiss her ass, apologize for the tone and the words and sarcasm. Then start sucking on her toes while holding her ankle with one hand and massaging her clit with the other, exactly what she had been expecting before dinner.
    I moved my eyes from the plate to the stairwell leading to that clit-massage, then back to the plate. This wasn’t the type of decision that should confuse someone who wasn’t even married yet, but I couldn’t decide whether I wanted the chicken or my fiancée’s nipples in my mouth.
    I settled on the chicken. It was just a little easier that way.
     
    } i {

Chapter 20
     
    T he first time I told Gordo about Hope was that Monday morning after dry humping her on the grass outside the community center in the pouring rain. Both Gordo and I had great jobs at Harris—he as an Executive VP, me as a Senior Manager. We had no idea what awaited us in the coming week. So in the most general terms, we absolutely loved life at this bank. A lot.
    That Monday morning, I stopped at Gordo’s office en route to mine, and he knew right away that something fantastic had happened.
    “No fucking way,” he said, stepping away from the mini-putting green and dropping onto his leather sofa overlooking the Chicago River. “You tried anal, didn’t you? Jeez, man, what did you think?” He made a fucking motion with his hips and wiggled his eyebrows at me.
    “It wasn’t anal,” I said, the smile melting off my face courtesy of the bile rising up my throat. “That’s fucking gross this early in the morning; why would you think that? Of all things, Gordo…”
    Laughing, Gordon completely ignored the severity of my mood and sat straighter on the sofa. Keeping his back rigid, he ran his hands down the sides of his mouth. “This looks serious, Cam.”
    I nodded.
    “Are you leaving Harris? You know there’s nothing better out there right now. These banks are just getting back into hiring. And even then…”
    I shook my head, grinning at the ridiculousness of his suggestion. “No, nothing like that. I can’t leave this job. You know that. I love this place.”
    “Then what is it?” he asked. “If it’s not anal and it’s not the career, then I fucking give up.”
    Deep breath. “Well, when I was high school, I promised this girl that we’d be together forever.”
    Gordon howled, clapping his hands. “Are you serious? This is turning out to be a pretty awesome Monday! Let me guess, you gave this girl a promise ring, didn’t you?” He laughed some more.
    “Well, we obviously didn’t end up together. Because I hooked up with Riley after that first semester at Northwestern.”
    He became serious again at the