The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,40
with changing the subject, thinking about my sandwich sitting on the pan waiting for me. “Do you need something?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself, damn it.
Sure enough, Aiden nodded, still standing there in the hallway between the door, and the rest of my place. “You.”
Me.
In another world, with another person, I’d like to think that I would love to hear someone say they needed me. But… this was Aiden. Aiden who thought he “needed” me to marry him; Aiden who had only showed up to my apartment because he needed something from me. In my imagination, I shaped my fingers like a gun, held them up to my forehead and pulled the trigger. In reality, I just stared at him impassively, my eyelids lowering on their own, not amused. “No.”
“Yes.”
Good grief. “No.”
“Yes,” he insisted.
My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything since having breakfast hours ago. Grumpiness started climbing up my shoulders, edging me on to getting an attitude with this delusional human being. Shoving my glasses up so that they rested on the top of my head, I rubbed at my eyes with a sigh; peeking at him with a blurry eye. “I’m honored, really,” if I was being honest with myself, not really, “but I’m the last person you should be asking.”
His nostrils flared, and he tipped his chin up high, his jawline accentuating. This massive man who faced other big men for a living was glowering at me. At me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No—”
“Then there isn’t a problem.”
I rubbed at my eyes with the meaty part of my palms some more, and tried to rein in my frustration. Blowing out a breath, I set my glasses back on my nose, and stared at the behemoth in my hallway. Obviously, we were going to have to go there. “Where would you like me to start?”
When all he did was give me that look that made me want to stick my finger in his nose, I figured that expression was going to be the best answer I would get out of him. If he wanted to be a pain in the ass, I could be a pain in the ass too. What did I have to lose? We weren’t friends, and he hadn’t cared about my feelings before, so I shouldn’t feel guilty for being honest with him.
So I started. “Okay.” I rolled my shoulders for battle, eyeing the canvas piece with one of my favorite hardback covers for moral support. It was a heart made out of multicolored stilettos for a book called Heeling Love. I’d been pretty proud of myself for that one. “One, we don’t know each other.”
“We know each other,” Delusional argued.
I wanted to move on to my next claim, but apparently we weren’t going to be able to until he understood each of the more-than-apparent reasons why me helping him fix his immigration status was a terrible idea. “I know you pretty well, but you don’t know a single thing about me besides my first name. Do you even know my last name?”
“Mazur.”
I knew him. I freaking knew him, so I folded my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes. “You looked up my name, didn’t you?”
He was giving me the same face that drove me nuts. It was so damn smug. There was this one popular shot of him during a press conference after a game with a similar glare aimed at a reporter who had asked him a stupid question. Panties all over the U.S. were dropped that day. Yet the only thing that pointed chin, flat mouth, and cool eyes did to me was frustrate the shit out of me. “I don’t see what the problem is.”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
“I don’t know whether you’re just pretending to be ignorant or if you really are just that hardheaded,” I gritted. “I worked for you for two years, and you didn’t know my last name. You couldn’t even tell me ‘Hi.’ Aiden, this isn’t you asking me to let you borrow twenty bucks or give you a ride to the airport. You don’t know me, and you don’t even like me. And that’s okay, I’m not worried about it, but we can’t ‘get married,’” I busted out the air quotes, “to fix your papers when you don’t like me. You can’t ignore me for years, not give a shit that I’m leaving, treat me like crap, and then expect