Page 15 of She Likes It, Hey Micah
He’s starting to catch on, his eyebrows slowly softening as he looks at me. “Maybe.”
I can’t help but smile wider. “Lila has been having me call vendors for two years. When she asks me to arrange something, she doesn’t question if I’ve done it. Sometimes she questions her memory when something is different, but I’m good enough at what I do that it always works out for her in the end. The only reason she hasn’t put me on the planning team is because I’m impossible to replace as an assistant.”
At least, I hope that’s the only reason. It’s not a great reason, but it’s the only one that doesn’t keep me up at night.
“And what about Grant?” Fischer asks.
I shrug. “Who’s going to be the one signing off on things? Grant? Or you?”
Though he opens his mouth to respond, no words come out, and I know I’ve got him convinced. At least for now.
“Look,” I say and reach out for his arm, even though he immediately goes tense at my touch. I can’t decide if he doesn’t like being touched in general or if it’s just me, but this is the only way I know how to emphasize a point. I’m sure he’s the sort of guy who will tell me to stop touching him if he really doesn’t like it. He hasn’t been afraid to tell me anything else. “I know I’m just an assistant, but I’m good at what I do. I don’t usually go over Lila’s head like this, and if I had more time I would slowly steer her in the right direction instead of going against orders like this. But since I don’t have time, and the Greenwood Lodge means too much to me for me to let this fail, we’re going to have to take some risks. Okay?”
He blinks slowly, his eyes falling to my fingers for a few seconds before he looks back up at me. He’s so deliberate in everything he does, which should feel foreign to me considering I fly by the seat of my pants most of the time, but I really like this about him. I won’t get to interact with him much after this event is over, but a large part of me wants to figure out what makes him tick because it’s so different from me.
I want that almost as much as I want to get him to smile. I don’t have a lot of triumphs in life, but seeing his smile would be a big one.
“This is certainly risky,” he says after a long while.
“There’s a ‘but’ in there,” I reply.
His lips twitch. “But I think you’re on the right track. Grant and Lila both want flair, but the Greenwood needs revival. More of what used to make it great.”
“Like mashed potatoes.” I gesture to the food in front of us.
He halfway rolls his eyes. “Yes, like mashed potatoes.”
“Does this mean you actually trust me to do this job?”
Taking a slow breath, he waits so long before answering that question that a part of me thinks he’s going to say no. Then again, I’m not sure his answer is all that much better than no. “It means you have a chance of making this work. If—”
“I hate that word.”
If I had to give words to his expression, it would be something along the lines of, “Lord, give me strength.” I have no idea if Fischer is religious, but he seems to be praying for patience anyway. Maybe I could ease up a bit before I completely scare him away.
“Sorry,” I say, pulling my hand back. “I know I can get a little overenthusiastic. It’s my curse.”
“It’s not a curse,” Debbie says, shaking her head. “It’s who you are, Half-pint. Embrace it.”
“Oh, I do. I’m just not sure if Fischer is as capable of embracing my energy as I am.”
I pop a potato in my mouth before I end up saying anything else to add to the look Fischer is giving me, like he’s never seen anyone like me. Of course he hasn’t; I’m awesomely unique. Uniquely awesome. But I do know that most people prefer me in small doses, and that’s fine by me. If I can handle myself all the time, that just makes me way cooler than everyone else.
“You seem to have formed an opinion of me after knowing me less than an hour,” Fischer says, surprising me when he raises his eyebrows. It’s so different from the scowl that it seems to transform his whole face into something new. Unfortunately for him, this display of a new emotion only fuels my need to see him smile.
I tilt my head to one side. “You’re not that hard to figure out, Fischer.”
“Hmm.” That’s all he says to my lie, as if he knows that it was total BS. It’s not even an actual word! Just a little hum that could mean anything.
This is what I get for lying. “Okay,” I admit, “so you’re pretty much unreadable. But you probably like it that way, right?”
One eyebrow drops below the other, revealing another new expression. “Maybe you find that strange, when you let everyone see everything.” I honestly can’t tell if that’s an insult or not, so I take it as a compliment.
“I think being genuine is a great quality to have,” I say brightly. “It means I’m living life to the fullest.”
“As an assistant.”
“For now. I don’t think you should be trashing my job when you’re no better off than I am.”
