“Motherfucker . . .” I hiss before I take off too. With the possibility of a phone call with Zoey urging me on, I do manage to catch up, but he still beats me to our cars.

Egg white omelets are on me, I guess. Although the way I’m feeling, I could go for some bacon, too.

* * *

I love my office. It’s big enough that I’m not bumping into the walls without rattling around like a marble in a shoebox, and while centrally located, it’s still on a side street that’s not too busy. I was overjoyed when I found this place. It’s luxurious without going overboard, giving off an aura of success, and best of all, it has a coffee shop on the first floor that makes the best brew I’ve ever had.

The only downside is my neighbors. On my right is Meredith, a psychologist who specializes in depressed teens. So on almost a daily basis, there’s a kid who barely grunts if I say hello, and once, one of them actually barked when I said excuse me as we passed in the hall. The parents can be even worse.

And Meredith’s the more normal of my neighbors because on the left is Margaret, a voiceover actress in her sixties who, despite the soundproofing she’s done, I can hear quite clearly through the air vents.

The first time I heard her, I thought she was a phone sex operator. And yeah, I listened closely after that. Like, literally standing on a spare chair with an ear pressed to the vent when I realized she was doing audio for a romance book. I’d been shocked and then intrigued. And hell yeah, I read that book. It was good too.

But I didn’t listen to it because it would’ve been weird to visualize someone like my grandmother talking like that as I listened.

And when she gets jobs for certain kinds of ‘adult animation’, I have to pull my headphones on.

I don’t need the nightmares.

Coming in this morning, I see Margaret fumbling with her purse as she tries to juggle her morning coffee. Hurrying over, I offer my free hand. “Hey, Margaret . . . can I help? Need me to hold your rocket fuel?”

Oh, God. I did not just say that, I think, mentally slapping myself. Rockets and rocket fuel probably mean something very different in her line of work. And now I’m blushing, which is not an attractive look on a grown man.

“Vanilla rooibos,” Margaret corrects me, handing me the cup, and luckily, blissfully unaware of my embarrassing attempt to eat those words back down. “Coffee’s bad for the vocal cords. But thanks.”