Impress Me Not: The Writer

Chapter 14

"This was a bad idea!" Benny paced the breakroom. His tie was already loosened on him from all the times he tugged at it. He had given will the file with the newly found papers so that he wouldn't ruin them with his nervously sweating hands.

"It's not that bad," Will assured.

"You know, Will," Benny chuckled, still pacing. "I like to believe you – I really would – but you don't even sound so sure of that statement yourself!"

Oh, had Benny messed up! He had this whole notion that he could trust his gut and had such a good feeling looking at Damien's file. Truth be told, he was probably the best person to get through the blackmailing. That was Jasper's signature move when he couldn't get his way. His father had taught him to do it for business' sake sometimes, but he adopted the idea when he started messing around with whatever guy he wanted.

He would have been the perfect person, just enough push to pull Jasper closer to maybe realizing that he was headed in a bad direction. But those papers were something that Benny didn't look at before he chose him. He already cursed his own clumsiness for not being able to notice papers drop from a file.

This was his first time choosing the person for a Lost Chance case, and he was already failing!

"It can still work itself out, Benny," Will tried. They were all watching the man as he ruined his fluffy hair by grabbing it with his hands and running them through it.

"Oh, we screwed up, Will," Benny shook his head. "We screwed up big time."

"I still don't see what the big deal is," Larry shouted from over by the couch. "Those papers can't have that important of information on them."

"It's...pretty important, Larry," Will gave a shy smile.

"I'm going to personally beat this guy up myself," Justin shook his head. "He got jealous of the damn waiter just because he could speak German!"

"Jealousy isn't a good trait," Suzy sighed and shook her head. "Jasper is one tough cookie. It's going to take quite a lot to get him to realize the bad in all of this."

"No!" Justin yelled at the screen. "Don't go in the house, you idiot! You know what he's going to plan, you write this stuff all the time!"

"He writes what?" Larry asked, immediately curious.

"He writes," Justin sighed and rubbed his eyes. "He writes romance stories, let's put it at that." He looked it up while they were waiting for the date to start. He wasn't that bad of a writer, although he wrote some really out there stories. Some were sweet and had fluff in them.

Most were the opposite.

"Ah," Larry looked back towards the screen. "He's not thinking about that here, though. All he's thinking is that this guy is his only ride home at the moment."

"That would explain why he's so bull-headed about keeping his penname a secret," Suzy pondered.

Oh, there were so many things that Benny and Will messed up on, but this had to be the top of the list. The pages had the most important things that he needed to know on the file. And all of them were red flags for matching him with this guy. He should have been matched with someone softer probably, a little sweeter. Not this guy that they were still trying to weed out all the toxicities in.

"Okay," Benny said, stopping in the middle of his pacing to face all of them. "We can still fix this," he looked at Will with determination. "We'll just get him out of that house, and make Jasper forget that he even existed."

Cupids usually didn't do that, but this was a special occasion, and Benny wasn't willing to screw up this bad just yet and ruin their streak.

"But Benny," Will said. "We'd have to go through a whole ten-page form for that, and there wouldn't be time for that. Besides the fact that we'd still have to wait for a reply from the higher ups. And you know what that means."