This was just some advanced negotiation procedure, right? Absolutely no sensual subtext. People having sexually charged incidents while haggling to buy a smartphone was also not something that happened in the real world.
But, that being as it was, I was still incredibly uncomfortable and wanted to be as far away from the whole thing as possible.
Lucas glanced at me. It was nice to see he wasn’t so stuck gazing at her he couldn’t remember I existed. Not that I would have been jealous—well, who was I kidding, even if I didn’t want him eyeing me flirtatiously most women would feel something to be on the edge of that scene. “Well, Callie here needs a new phone, and all we’ve established so far is she’s not an Apple… so other than that detail, we are open to suggestions.”
I was ‘Callie here’. Not a friend or a girlfriend. I wondered if she’d made a note of that. I wondered why I was making a note of that.
“There’s something new that’s just come out that I’ve been recommending to everyone,” the girl said. “It’s what I’ll be buying once I need a new phone.” She led us over to a display of devices so big they could surely not be meant to be actual phones, spouting a few numbers that didn’t mean anything to me and I knew I wouldn’t remember. “It comes in a really tasteful selection of colours, too: rose pink, sky blue, and metallic gold.”
“What do you think, Callie?” Lucas asked. “Entirely up to you, just let us know what you like or don’t like.”
I sort of wanted to select something else, just because it felt weird somehow to have my new phone chosen by this stranger under Lucas’s direction, but with what I knew about them I’d just end up selecting myself a garage remote or something. I didn’t even realise that phones were supposed to say something.
So I said the only thing I could think of to say. “Metallic gold sounds like a really great colour.”
And then Lucas got a discount so big it would probably have paid for my entire phone if I had been selecting one according to my own usual budget.
“Is that normal?” I asked as I trotted out of the store after him, almost hugging the little bag containing an alarmingly large box and not caring in the slightest if I looked like some dumb girlfriend getting everything paid for by my boyfriend.
It wasn’t like I needed to be spoiled like this by anyone, but yeah, after the way he’d behaved towards me, I was owed a little something to smooth things over. And I didn’t intend to let him think he could get away with that sort of behaviour by buying me things after, either. It was a penalty, that was what I would see it as. Something he was doing in addition to making amends for his behaviour by not behaving the same way in the future. And I’d really needed a new phone anyway, I’d had my old one for years and it would have broken one way or another soon enough. If I was careful, I would be able to hold on to this one until I was able to get a pay increase and not care so much about buying things like new phones.
I realised I was trying to talk myself into being okay with the situation on a conscious level, and I really hoped I would succeed.
“Is what normal?” Lucas asked, with a little smile that suggested he wasn’t so clueless about what I was asking as he was playing it. “Having the staff recommend to you what to buy?”
“No,” I said, “that kind of discount. In the hundreds.”
“Oh,” said Lucas. “No, that is a really cracking discount. I impressed myself that time around.” I swear he puffed his chest out a little. “She must have really liked the look of me.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Callie, mark my words,” Lucas said as we stopped next to his sister’s car. “Now, my details will be in their store system, on the paperwork for that phone. That girl is going to go in and get my phone number, even though she knows she could get fired for it, and call me. She’ll find an excuse.”
“You’re fooling yourself,” I said, mostly automatically. It was the sort of retort I’d shoot at guy acquaintances who were mouthing off like that, because it would be true… but I did not think it necessarily was true for Lucas. He was an entirely different beast who operated on different rules.
“It’ll happen,” he insisted. “She’ll make out like she wanted to clarify some detail of the sale with me or make sure I knew to take advantage of some dumb special offer, but she’ll be trying to get me to launch into small talk so she can grab onto any handle to charm me and then have me say, well I don’t normally do this, but… and ask her out.”
He was grinning, but I was pretty sure he was serious. “Are you going to ask her out?” I asked.
Lucas swung himself into his side of the car. “Do you want me to?”
I hadn’t expected that answer. I didn’t know how to respond. “Let’s put this another way,” he said. “Do you not want me to?”
“You should do whatever you want to,” I said. “I mean, do you like her?”
“Won’t know until I spend some time getting to know her better, will I?” Lucas said. “I mean, all I’ve got to go by right now is she’s cute and she can hold down a job.”
“Well, if those are your standards…” I stopped myself from continuing wherever that was going.
He was fucking lying, anyway. I could see damn well there was more to it than it. There was a quality to that girl that made me go, yes, that is the kind of girl someone like Lucas would want to have an excuse to pick up. She was the kind of girl someone like him would end up marrying. As for me… I guess I was good enough for a bit of fun.
I had to start being more careful.
Lucas was smirking. I didn’t think I had stopped talking fast enough.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get you home before anything happens to you or that new phone.”
Chapter Seven