gaze skated over me, taking in my Zion National Forest t-shirt, old as hell jeans, and hot pink low-top Converse as if he was sorting out the pieces of my puzzle. He was gathering the edges and corners, flipping over the upside-down pieces, planning his path through.
"You'd rather be right and bask in your sanctimonious rightness than announce it," he replied.
"Sanctimonious?" I barked. "I'm the sanctimonious one here? Really? That's a special way of looking at it."
He had the balls—god, those were probably big too—to look smug. Maybe it was the dick. And balls. Oh, shit, I had to stop thinking about his serving of fruit and vegetables. It was not the place for my mind to wander. Aside from the fact he abhorred everything about me, I wanted to get a job with him. I wasn't looking to give him one, not…really. I snickered at that thought, covering my face with my hands to hide it from him.
"Please tell me you're not choking again," he said. "I'm out of water."
"Not choking," I replied, still behind my hands. "Just clearing my head. Finding my center. Spot meditating. It's a Colorado thing. You wouldn't understand."
Ash didn't say anything and after a moment I peeked at him. He was staring at his smartwatch though the screen was blank. I wanted to run my fingers through his ridiculously beautiful hair and trace his eyebrows and fold him into a hug, and I didn't know where the fuck any of it came from. Something about the way he turned that sorrowful gaze toward his watch, his brows pinched and his shoulders slumped, made me want to fix everything for him.
That was another one of my gifts and talents: adopting problems that didn't belong to me. It sat alongside quippy comments and creating order from the most irrational patterns. In the right situations, it made me indispensable. I could be the Girl Friday of whatever the fuck you needed. In the wrong situations, it grew toxic relationships like mushrooms in a shady patch of grass. Some of those mushrooms were innocuous but a few would kill you dead if you ate enough. Some could even kill you with the barest of touches.
I was a hot, messy mess with more problems than solutions. I didn't know where I was going or how I'd get there but a messy life was better than one hundred tidy deaths from that same old patch of toxic mushrooms back in Denver.
"I'm going to assist the shit out of you," I announced. "I hope you're ready for the full force of me and my sanctimonious assisting."
He gave his watch another baleful stare before glancing over at me. "I'm not sure how I could possibly prepare for something like that."
I nodded. "Fair point."
After I announced to Ash that I would be his assistant—carpe that fucking diem, right?—things in row five went from weird to strange.
First, when I asked if he wanted me to start tomorrow, he replied, "Yes."
Just "yes." He didn't even try to dismiss the question. Didn't revisit his original argument that I wasn't qualified to reload the toner in his copy machine or whichever tiny tasks he allowed others to complete.
After that bizarre response, I asked if he was placating me. He shook his head and said, "No."
Then, when the flight attendant stopped at our row with breakfast offerings—served on real plates, no less—he accepted the assortment of fruit, bread, and yogurt, and asked, "Do you have any cookies?"
Cookies. The last thing I'd expected from Fancy-Man Shoes was cookies for breakfast.
Of course, the flight attendant accommodated him. I wasn't sure anyone could look at him with his Please Touch Me hair and I'm Never Satisfied pout and deny him anything. It was second nature to argue with him but denying him cookies was another matter.
I only half liked the guy and I already knew I'd give him the cookies. Every damn time.
The final bridge to strange materialized while Ash housed two saucer-sized chocolate chip cookies in the time it took me to unfold my napkin. He wolfed them down like they were the last cookies he'd ever see and we were there, firmly in the land of strange.
"Okay, so," I started, wagging my spoon in his direction, "let's talk about something. Anything. What's going on with you right now? What do you have on deck for projects or clients or enemy targets?" When he responded with a shrug I could only interpret as irritated indifference, I continued. "Am I interrupting