Results May Vary by Bethany Chase

wine, paused in the hallway outside Gregor’s door.
    “Adam!” I giggled. “What are you doing?”
    “I just want to know why,” he stage-whispered back to me, raising his arm to knock. “It’s eating me alive.”
    “Don’t!” I squeaked, tugging his arm, but he swayed toward the door, chest puffing with laughter.
    “Gregor,” he called, in a wheedling sing-song. “Oh, Gregor…”
    “Stop!” I said as a sliver of light showed under the door. “Seriously, let’s go!”
    “Gregor!”
    Finally I got my arm over his shoulder and clapped my hand over his mouth, while he struggled, bellowing incoherently into my palm. And that is how Gregor found us when he swung open the door of his apartment: freeze-framed in guilty surprise, like teenagers caught toilet-papering a mailbox.
    “Can I help you?” he said, looking from Adam to me and back again.
    Any responses I might have been able to summon were popping like soap bubbles over my head, but Adam rallied and shoved my limp hand away from his mouth.
    “The ladder,” he said. “We wanted to advise you that we will return it on the morrow. You have our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.” Then he clipped his arm to his waist and sketched a solemn little half bow.
    Gregor blinked, then did the same. “Good evening.”
    “And to you, sir,” said Adam.
    When the door clicked shut, we gaped at each other for a moment until I spotted the mirth quivering in his lips. “Go!” I hissed, shoving him toward the staircase before the laughter erupted, but he barely made it to the second floor landing before it was rolling out of him, deep and generous like Adam’s laughter always was. When we shut our door behind us, he was wiping moisture from his eyes.
    “On the morrow,” I mimicked in a quasi-British falsetto. “Kind sir, we shall return it to thee anon, before the setting of the sun….”
    Still chuckling, he cupped my face and kissed me. “I still have so many questions!” he whispered. “Is it part of his religion? Is he a ladder worshipper? Does he rise at dawn every day and pray to the ladder? Does he—”
    I cut him off with a kiss.
    Like I said: an easy person to love. But falling in love was the easy part; the work was in staying there. Feeding it and renewing it, even in the moments when his childishness or self-absorption drove me to the edge of my very last nerve. Digging in to keep our sights trained on forever—that was
my
job.
    •
    At work, I’d been avoiding thinking about my doomed-to-fail Diana Ramirez mission, but all of a sudden I was running into Neil Crenshaw constantly. Of course, he’d always been around; but as I grew itchily aware that I had devoted precisely zero consideration to how I might approach, let alone secure money from, this busy and in-demand woman I was fairly certain detested me, I swear to god I saw the man everywhere. Always with the same friendly, encouraging smile on his face.
    “How’s it going, Caroline?” he said, strolling into the kitchenette a few days later, while I was waiting for my burritos to finish in the microwave. (Like most of the food Ruby had gotten me hooked on over the past week and a half, they were disgusting yet delicious.) “Any thoughts on how to tackle Diana?”
    Thankfully, the microwave timer chose that exact moment to ding, so I occupied myself with retrieving my freshly unthawed lunch rather than meeting his eyes. “Um, it’s going okay. I’ve been tossing around a couple of ideas, but they’re not quite ready yet.”
    “I’m looking forward to hearing them,” he said.
    I angled a quick look at him. Was that the faintest current of arch humor I caught in his voice? As if he suspected the only ideas I’d been tossing concerned how best to bounce Diana lightly but firmly back into the development office’s court?
    But his face was interested, so I bobbed my head briskly to demonstrate my seriousness. “Great. Let me chew on it a little more and then I’ll touch