side, her eyes wide. I still couldn't make out the colors with certainty and I wasn't about to ask. "No, Ash, it's not going to change the fact you're a bit of a micromanaging tyrant. I could've invented pivot tables and you'd insist on hoarding the work."
She looked away and that was a blessing. I went through life without anyone dismantling my entire existence piece by piece. Sitting here with my head soft on whiskey and my skin tight and sensitive under her gaze wasn't an experience I relished.
"I might be a micromanaging tyrant," I muttered.
"With a hoarding problem," she muttered back.
"And yet somehow, you still want to work for me."
Zelda unzipped the small bag she wore across her chest and set to unpacking the items inside. Wallet, gum, lip balm, rubber bands, keys, woven coin purse, and a napkin-wrapped breakfast sandwich. She piled everything back into the bag, save for the sandwich.
"What the…" My voice trailed off as she lifted the sandwich to her mouth. I reached out, closed my hand around her wrist. "Where did you get that? Better yet, when did you get that?"
She glanced at the sandwich, then back at me. "Of course. Mmhmm. You're also a food tyrant. Should've seen that coming. Is it all food or just purse food?"
"I don't even know what purse food is but I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned about how long you've been carrying around scrambled eggs and bacon."
"Unreasonable? No." She considered my hold on her wrist. "On brand? Absolutely."
"Are you really going to eat that?"
Shrugging, she said, "I mean, I'm not building a spreadsheet so…what else am I going to do?"
A slow, distant part of my brain registered the beat of her pulse under my fingertips. I forced myself to release her. "Do you know how to read a cash flow statement? What about a general ledger? P-and-L?"
She set the sandwich down on its grease-spotted napkin. "Give me one and find out."
Since a few companies still reveled in killing trees, I had two glossy annual statements in my bag. I dropped both in her lap. "Find the cash flow statement. Then, talk to me about it."
She laced her fingers together over the reports. "Allow me to save you the suspense and tell you what is going to happen, Ash."
As she spoke, that desire to look at Zelda—to drink in her olive skin, her mermaid tail eyes, her shoulder-length black and blue hair—condensed itself down to a better-but-so-much-worse solution as I found myself gazing at her lips. This was far more acceptable than studying the way her t-shirt stretched across her breasts or the exact specifications of the tattoo at her waist but it was like falling through the devil's trapdoor because now I was thinking about her lips, her mouth. Her taste.
And that was unacceptable. I didn't know whether her heart-shaped lips were naturally that shade of soft, pale pink, but I knew this wasn't normal for me. I was more intoxicated than I'd been in years, slowly dying from the pain in my shoulder, and busy resenting seventeen different things. She was nothing more than a novelty and I was nothing more than preoccupied with her.
"And furthermore," she continued, "I think we both know you're going to hate anyone with all the knowledge and experience you claim to want. Since they'll arrive on your door with an armload of competence, they'll labor under the belief that you'll allow them to perform competently. Since we both know what you want—"
"You have no clue what I want, Miss Besh," I interrupted.
She gave me another one of those you're an idiot nods. "You keep on thinking that, sweetie. It's nice to believe your moods don't precede you." Another nod. "Anyway. We both know you want someone who is competent enough to stand back and allow you to do everything. I believe it's clear you're not looking for someone with all this experience and education and whatever. You'll struggle to tolerate them. You'll drive them away because you'll keep them on the bench." She paused, squinted at me. "That's why you have this opening, right? Someone left because you wouldn't put them in the game."
It happened again. The growling. This time, Zelda grinned.
"There were a number of factors," I replied. "Small firms don't offer much in the way of upward mobility so—"
"Okay, sweetie. We don't have to talk about that either. We'll file it away with your egomaniacal management style and your aversion to purse sandwiches."