Updating Dayana

“¿Qué carajo, Robbie!?” Dayana said, jaw hanging open. We were sitting in my office for once, up away from her domain downstairs. I’d booked my flight out to Seattle and then immediately went to bed the previous night, intending to get in early so that I could get everything I needed to do and then cut out early if at all possible.

I’d texted Dayana that morning to come up and meet me when she got in, and she hadn’t even stopped at her own office to drop off her purse and satchel of work notes and stuff before coming to see me. She’d sat across from me at my desk, wearing another tight blouse with maybe one more button undone than usual, a sleek grey sports coat over it and making her look a little like an old school Colombian gangster as she listened to my story about my meeting with Vera Angeloff the night before.

“Everyone reacts the same way,” I said with a little smirk.

“Yeah, because that’s fucking- Dios mio, dude. She just- Titty out, the whole time?”

“Most of it,” I said, shaking my head as I remembered that big, perfect Russian boob practically staring at me.

“And the dark haired one-”

“Mhmm,” I nodded.

“Even the blonde?”

“Not even an ounce of shame in the whole group,” I said.

“Fuck,” Dayana sighed, leaning back in her seat and running her fingers through her silky black hair. “I guess that explains the whole Strip Poker party thing. Rashid can’t know about all of that though, right?”

“I fucking doubt it, but it’s possible,” I shook my head. “Maybe that’s how they met or something, and he thinks when they’re married he’ll just control her or something. Shut it down once the ring is on her finger.”

“He never struck me as the type to- Well, actually, maybe,” Dayana sighed. “But he seemed more like the type to find some disgustingly gorgeous, super conservative Muslim girl, not try to make one out of someone.”

“I know,” I said.

“She really just full on groped your cock through your pants?” Dayana asked after a moment.

“Got the full trip up the elevator,” I snorted.

Dayana rolled her eyes. “What a fucking- She’s lucky you didn’t slap her. I know if she did that in front of me I’d slap her silly.”

“Funnily, I don’t have the same instinct to a beautiful woman groping me,” I said dryly. “And I don’t think ‘she grabbed my crotch to check if I was hard’ would fly very well with the cops if I slapped a woman.”

“Hey, it should,” Dayana said. Then she shrugged and shook her head. “¡Qué puta! Seriously.”

“I know,” I shrugged. “OK, so, I’m going to be trying to get out of here early today, which means I need to try and lock in everything I can this morning. Did you talk to the service staff you had in mind yet?”

“Two of them, they’re in,” Dayana said. “I’m talking to the two bartenders this afternoon, one of them will definitely do it. Why are you leaving early?”

I felt my cheeks flush a little - Dayana knew so much already, but telling her about things with my weird relationship was still a new thing. “I need to fly to Seattle,” I said. “Wanda- I think I mentioned one of the women I got involved with was in an open marriage, right?”

“Among all the other crazy things you got up to, you man whore,” Dayana said with a wry smirk.

“Fair,” I sighed, smirking right back. “Well, Wanda was in an open marriage agreement with her husband for when either of them were travelling for work, but Wanda had barely scratched the surface of doing that. Her husband did more, and she didn’t want to know about it. When she did some experimenting with me and Cass, she let her husband know it had happened and things got weird; he was basically begging for details and wanting her to do more. That turned her off big time, raised some red flags, they had some brutal conversations where it came out he wasn’t just hooking up while he was travelling, he was going to sex dungeons and clubs, and might have been doing it at home as well. She got major ick from all of that, and his lying, and we stopped doing anything on the trip because her and Cass and I got really close really quickly and we wanted to support her - she decided she was going to divorce her husband based on everything she’d found out about him, and realising the type of support she was getting from us and a couple of her friends on the trip was something she didn’t get at all in her marriage. So she’s been home since the trip, and her husband was supposed to be home like three days ago but he just ghosted for a full couple of days before showing up yesterday. They had it out, she’s got my girlfriend Becca with her, but I’m gonna fly out to her this afternoon because she needs more support.”

Dayana was looking at me with her eyebrows raised and sucked in a long breath through her nose before letting it out in a rush. “Jesus, your life is complicated,” she finally said.

“You’re telling me,” I grunted.

“So Cassidy is in Louisiana with this girl Terra, you’re going to Seattle. Cattie is in… Portland? You also have a girlfriend in Seattle already? But that’s all the official girlfriends, right?”

“Uh, nooo,” I said. “I’m also official with Leia, who’s in southern California.”

“When did that happen?” she asked. “Last time it was Cass plus Two, wasn’t it?”

“Last night,” I said. “We were playing video games, trying to do the ‘dude bro’ stuff and not be relationshipy, but she called me her boyfriend offhand and then got all cute about being embarrassed, so we hopped on a video call so I could officially ask her, and she said yes.”

Dayana blew out another breath, this time through her pursed lips as she closed her eyes. She blew an air kiss at nothing, shaking her head, and opened her eyes to glare at me. “So your brand new, kinda-crazy Therapist says you should take the weekend to yourself for ‘man time’ or whatever, and you immediately play video games with a girlfriend and make plans to fly out to see two other girls? And Cassidy says I don’t count as proper man time.”

“I’m going to have to figure out another time to do that particular homework,” I grimaced. Realistically, that was going to be tough with Terra coming to stay with us. Unless Cass and Terra went to visit someone else without me, or to a convention, taking an entire block of days just avoiding them both would suck.

“Tonto,” she sighed, giving me another look. “OK, sure, this woman getting divorced needs you. What about everything else going on, Robbie? And that’s not even including your weekend of personal time. You have this insane party to deal with and the big proposal Vanessa brought you, plus next week you’re on regular hours again with all the event management stuff.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “But you can’t tell me that if things had really fallen apart between me and Cass when she told me everything, you wouldn’t have jumped on a plane ASAP.”

She opened her mouth and then clicked it shut, and I knew I’d said something wrong. I’d hurt her somehow. She didn’t start crying, she didn’t even really start tearing up, but there was just this thing in her eyes that told me I’d fucked up.

“Dayana,” I said cautiously. “I-”

“She means that much to you, hmm?” she asked me. “You’re as close to her as you and me, pandejo, after the last few years? After you’ve known her, what, a week? A married woman you fucked on a crazy trip means as much to you as I do?”

I gulped. Yeah, OK, I put my foot in my mouth all by myself there.

“That’s not the comparison I was making,” I said. “But-”

“But it’s the one you made, Robbie,” Dayana said stiffly. “You just said that you dropping important things to get on a plane when she called for you would be the same as me dropping things to get on a plane if you needed me. That is what you said.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing my face with both hands. “That’s- I’m not- It’s different, Dayana, but yes. I care about Wanda deeply.”

“So all it takes to get as close as I thought we were is to fuck you,” she said sharply. “Great. Good to know.”

I dropped my hands at that and grit my teeth. “No,” I said sternly. “Like I said, it’s different, Dayana. You mean the world to me - we have years of friendship, and working together, supporting each other through everything this place threw at us. I don’t have that relationship with Wanda. I care for her. Deeply. I love her. I hurt for her and the situation she’s in. Cass loves her for who she is, too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t fucking care about you, or love you. You are my best friend outside of Cass, and honestly? Right now probably more than Cass because I still love her but we’ve still got plenty of shit to work out and unpack.’

She was glaring at me, and I glared right back.

“Are you seriously-” I stared, but she cut me off.

“You love me, huh?”

That caught me up. Had I said that?

Yeah, I did.

“Of course I do,” I sighed. “How could I not, Dayana? On top of being my best friend, you’re amazing in every way I can think of. You might be my fucking hero, sometimes, just to add that in. You’ve done things I don’t think I could think of doing - moving away from your country to the UAE for a job, then again to here? Alone? Tackling every shitty thing guys try to pull on your staff before they realise they should either be thankful for you or scared of you? In the scheme of my life, Dayana, you’re in the top five of most important people in my life, and the other four are my parents, my sister, and my fiancee.”

She sniffed hard. Not dismissively, but making sure she was keeping her emotions in check, still glaring at me. Then she stood up and gave me a firm look before heading to the door of my office, but stopped with her hand on the handle without opening it. When she turned back to look at me that hurt in her eyes was gone, but she was still glaring at me. “Let me know if I can help with anything else to get you out of here faster today,” she said. “And I’ll make sure Tan has just enough rope tonight to sink or swim without blowing up on us. I’m assuming you won’t be around for lunch, I’ll text you if anything comes up.”

“Thank you,” I sighed, feeling a weight drop from wherever I was carrying it in my gut.

She hesitated a moment longer, staring me down. “Top three,” she said.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“You’re top three for me, Robbie,” she said softly. “But I don’t have a sibling or a fiancee.”

She left, shutting the door behind her.

I closed my eyes, leaning forward and planting my elbows on my desk as I held my face. Why did I still feel like I’d fucked up that conversation some how?

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