The next instant, he lifts his chin. “Two shots.”
I breathe an inward sigh of relief. “Two shots,” I repeat, writing it down as Jay watches, proud of himself.
Yeah. He’s about to be really proud of himself.
Thirty very long minutes later, I’m on my way up the elevator from the first floor with a foam tray of four coffee orders. Every second I spent in the coffee line, my finger tapped against my pocket, feeling the tiny, innocent bump.
Who knew such a tiny, innocent bump could be capable of such impending chaos?
With a slip of my hand in and out of a pocket, the pill sits in my palm.
I swallow hard. My heart pounds. My throat is tight. Do this for all the people he’s hurt. Do it, Connor.
Hand shaking, I lift it over his drink, trembling.
Then, with a breath, I tilt my hand.
Plunk!
The elevator doors open too soon, startling me, and Brenda steps on from a lower floor. “Oh,” she says for a greeting, then frowns at my tray. “You’re being sent on coffee runs? We have interns for that downstairs, you know.”
I meet her eyes darkly. “I know.”
“Hmm.” She folds her hands over her waist, then takes a position at the back of the elevator as the doors slide shut and carry us up.
Nothing more is said. But with every floor we ascend, I swear I see my heartbeats rippling across the surface of the dark liquid of Jay’s coffee.
It’s the telltale heart of a boner pill.
Ripples across coffee.
Two shots of espresso.
And a secret ingredient.
The doors slide open. Brenda politely gestures for me to make my way first, surprisingly, and so I do. With each step down the hall, my heart crashes with mounting terror against my ribcage. It is a possibility I may pass out before getting there.
The next instant, I’m sitting down at the table doling out the coffees. When I set Jay’s in front of him, my eyes are glued to its surface with a sudden fear I hadn’t once given a thought to until just now: is the heat enough for that pill to dissolve, or could it suddenly float up to the surface, revealing itself?
What would I say?
What would I do?
“Are you quite alright?” asks Jay in a tone that suggests the haughty guy couldn’t care less if I was having a stroke right now.
And I very well might be. “Yeah,” I manage to reply, then sit down in my seat and pull my own laptop toward me.
Jay doesn’t sip it at first. He just takes the stick and slowly, slowly, slowly stirs his cup. For a wild instant, I have to wonder if he knows.
I don’t feel guilt-free anymore.
I’m terrified. I made a mistake. This is wrong. I shouldn’t have listened to Lex.
Jay licks his lips, studies his tablet lazily, and continues to stir, stir, stir with that tiny little stick.
I can’t stop staring, watching the fluid swirl.
Fuck me, I shouldn’t have done it.
“Would you use this photo for the layout,” he asks Dave, “or this one? I find his eyes to look … somewhat vague. Don’t we need a guiltier shot?”
“Yeah,” Dave agrees, since he’ll agree to any stupid thing Jay says. “Guiltier shot, definitely.”
“He looks absolutely guilty of nothing in this photo. It suggests nothing,” Jay decides, nodding at the photo on his layout—and still stirring, stirring, stirring that fucking cup of fucking coffee, two tiny shots of espresso, one big boner pill. For fuck’s sake.
I swallow—or try to, but my mouth has gone completely dry. I’m not breathing properly.
“What do you think, Connor?” asks Jay.
My eyes are twice the size of my face when I look at him. There’s sweat on my brow. “Sorry?”
“You’re the one with the eye among us, aren’t you? You find errors. You see things. So look.” He gestures at his tablet. “Is this shot of Ivan Dupree guilty enough, or should I make Dave dig more?”
Dave blinks, startled.
I overcome my initial moment of shock at Jay actually consulting with me and give my unblinking eyes a moment’s glance at the photo. “Could find a guiltier shot,” I quickly note, speaking too fast.
“Something the matter with you, Connor?” His short-lived respectful tone is quickly replaced with his usual one. “You look like you swallowed bees.”
He takes the cup and lifts it to his lips.
The next instant, I snatch that cup straight out of his hands.
Jay is on his feet, aghast. “What has gotten in to you?? You spilled it on the cuff of my shirt,” he snaps, lifting his wrist demonstratively to show me, like evidence in a courtroom. “Now give me my coffee back.”
It quakes in my hand. “No,” I state.
“I said give it to me.”
He reaches for it.
I press it to my mouth, tilt it back at once, and down every last drop of it right in front of him.