Going Up! Read Online Free PDF

yet?” he asked fuzzily. “Isn’t there some sort of rule about when two people can snuggle?”
    “Yes. We’ve known each other for three years. We’ve met the requirements.” She poked him in the ribs with fingernails that had recently undergone a bright-red manicure. “Answer the question.”
    “Because I don’t do anything,” he said after a moment. “I work and I come home. And when I get lonely I pay for sex.”
    “Ew,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
    “And you’re the only person alive who knows that,” he told her grumpily. “So if that gets around the office—”
    “I’ll hire the assassin myself.”
    He didn’t believe she’d do that, but he was, at this moment, too hungover and too heartbroken to care. “Anyway, I don’t do anything. I wouldn’t be a lot of fun at a party, because all I’ve got is work, and a lot of that is confidential.”
    She dug her flat little chin into his bicep until he looked at her.
    “What?”
    “Well, for starters, you do a good impression of big, bad boss—I never knew you were an overgrown eighth grader. I’m proud of you for that, by the way, because it’s a lot more likable than big, bad boss. And for finishers, Jenn and I are going to Golden Gate Park next weekend to play Frisbee and visit the Exploratorium. Do you want to come with us?”
    He was planning to say no. It was absolutely on the tip of his tongue. And then he thought about that look on Sean’s face, the utter disappointment in the person he’d thought he’d been talking to.
    Maybe Zach could be a better person.
    “Yeah, okay,” he mumbled.
    Leah took pity on him then and pressed play on the remote. He fell asleep in the middle of Con Air and didn’t wake up until Ghost Rider, and after that Leah bid him a reluctant good-bye.
    Yeah, he could have given her a raise, but it wouldn’t have been enough. Frisbee in Golden Gate Park was a much better payback for a day spent teaching him how to nurse a broken heart.

Two Elevators, Passing in the Night
     
    Z ACH MADE a concentrated effort to leave early after that, and to take the express elevator all the way down. He had to leave early to get his secretary and one friend her coffee in the morning and still get to work on time. It was the only way. It was a conscious decision, made fully aware of the consequences, but still, that didn’t stop him from flinching every time the car passed the fourteenth floor.
    One of the plusses of leaving early was that he found himself in the elevator with Jace and Quent a lot. He hadn’t known their names until then, but they were the day-traders who shared the penthouse floor with him. Jace was the obsessive one who left early and apparently made them power walk through the San Francisco streets, and Quent, his goateed partner with the warm brown eyes, was the talker. Apparently, poker was their religion, and after they’d met for nearly three weeks, Zach was even invited to worship.
    “Seriously, Jace—we could always use another man!” Quent said as the elevator began its descent.
    Jace flicked steel-blue eyes over Zach’s face and dismissed the idea. “He’ll get eaten alive. He’s got a worse poker face than you. Look at those eyes.”
    Quent shrugged apologetically, but Zach didn’t mind if his partner was an ass. They were better company than no one on the long trip down, and they were so obviously in love with each other he didn’t have to worry about stupid, heartbreaking attachments finding purchase in thin air.
    Frisbee in Golden Gate Park turned out to be wonderful. Jenn was a chubby girl with waist-length blonde hair and an absolutely filthy mouth. Zach wasn’t sure what to do with her at first—he hadn’t even told dirty jokes in the eighth grade, but he liked watching Leah laugh, so eventually he stopped clenching every time she said something like “that old fucktard can go eat a bag of dicks!”
    About three weeks after the benefit, right when he was getting used to living