Yesterday's Hero by Jonathan Wood Page A

that,” I say.
    Shaw smiles. “I am too. I just wanted to make sure… Relationships aren’t perfect. They’re messy. People aren’t perfect. I know I’m not. I’m messy. And I know you’re not, but that’s not me saying I want you to change. I don’t want you to stop being funny, or good-looking, or decent at a really fundamental level.”
    “OK,” I say. I can feel her elbow weakening.
    Shaw furrows her brow. “Will you say pretty much anything now if you think it’s going to get me into bed?”
    “Not anything,” I say after a moment’s consideration. “But I should warn you that we’re pretty far from where I draw the line.”
    She slaps at my shoulder. A playful rebuke. One that means her hand isn’t between us any more. I close the distance.
    She pulls me closer. She smells sweet and spicy, of far-flung lands, and horseback riders conquering the known world. Her hair falls forward onto my cheek. Her lips brush mine.
    We manage to make it to our feet, she pulls me after her, through the unfamiliar apartment, down a corridor I should surely remember from this morning. Through a doorway. She pushes me onto a bed. Her bed.
    The idea of sex, to me, is always a graceful, nebulous act. Limbs, and pleasure, and afterglow. The act itself always seems to involve more issues about getting my tie over my head, and trying to find the correct moment to take my socks off, and negotiating the mechanics of bra hooks. And then there’s the choreography of where to be when, and there is always more sweat than I remember, and I’m pretty sure it can’t be comfortable with my weight there, but I’m not sure how else to rest it.
    But then, somewhere along the way, I finally lose myself. And there is just Shaw’s body, and mine, and the point where we meet, that tiny spot of pleasure that grows to eclipse the whole world.
    And then shuddering, and gasping, and grinning it’s over. She kisses me. I kiss her. We lie next to each other, panting.
    “I know,” I say, looking up at her ceiling, gripping her hand tight in mine, “that this won’t always be easy. But I believe some things are worth fighting for. The right things. The good things.” I turn, look at her. I want her to see that I am, for once, at least, sincere. No dissembling frivolity. No shield of humor. “I think you’re a good thing, Felicity.”
    “You’ll fight for me?” Her finger plays across my chest, the corners of her lips curl.
    “Well,” I say, “that is basically what you pay me to do.”

ELEVEN

    Once the afterglow has faded
    “F ucking with me. Seriously. You are.”
    Cold war has broken out in conference room B. On one side of the iron curtain, Tabitha sits next to Clyde shooting fiery daggers from her eyes. On the other sits Devon, Clyde’s ex, large, buxom, and red-cheeked, with an expression of unadulterated hatred carved into the soft surface of her face.
    Kayla and I perch in no-man’s land, bathing in the backwash of enmity. Except, for once, it doesn’t seem to be just washing over Kayla. She looks back and forth from woman to woman, slowly chewing her lip.
    I should probably say something, but putting words out right now seems like an invitation to be kicked in the gut so I keep my mouth shut for a change.
    Still, I am going to have to have a word with Shaw. Her, “You head into the meeting, I’ll be along in a minute,” seemed so innocent at the time.
    I keep calling her Shaw in my head. Not Felicity. Surely we’re on a first-name basis at this point.
    And then she opens the conference room door. “Ah.” She smiles warmly at Devon. “Punctual. Excellent. Very happy to have you aboard.”
    “About that,” Tabitha says.
    Shaw… Felicity smiles at Tabitha in much the same way a Great White smiles at a minnow. “If you have a problem with the staffing situation, Tabitha, I suggest you work on being promoted to a position where you actually get a say.”
    Clyde lowers his wooden face to the table. It lands with