Page 9 of She Likes It, Hey Micah
He swallows, his eyes dipping back down to our hands. I left only a few inches of space between us, which he clearly doesn’t like if his furrowed brow means anything. “Fine,” he says eventually. “I still think this is going to end up in disaster, but you’re right. There isn’t time to seek out another company. I hope you prove me wrong, Miss Taylor.”
That’s not exactly a glowing recommendation, but I’ll take it. “Micah,” I remind him, finally letting go of his hand.
He immediately takes a wide step back, which I try not to find offensive. “Shall we get this over with?”
“We’ll need to go to my computer so I can pull up our calendar.” Even if I can technically do it on my phone too. As I suspected, Fischer cringes but follows me out anyway. I like to think I’m friendly and kind, but I grew up with eight older half siblings, most of whom only interacted with me when I forced them to. I know exactly when someone is frustrated by me, and I can’t help but want to exacerbate the problem by being extra cheerful and friendly.
Kill them with kindness has always been my life motto.
And Fischer? He seems grumpy enough that he probably doesn’t get a lot of kindness in his life. Assuming I have the chance to pull off this event, I’m going to make sure he is with me every step of the way, if only to disrupt his life and see what it takes to get a smile out of him.
Whether he wants it or not, for the next two and a half weeks, this guy is stuck with me.
Chapter Three
Fischer
This might be hell.
Okay, that’s an overstatement. Hell would have fewer flowers and wouldn’t smell like a garden on a spring day after rain. But that doesn’t mean this situation is much better than hell would be, which has me wondering if maybe I died on the way to Ember Events.
It’s probably the caffeine that’s making me dramatic. As I sit on a hard metal chair, squished into Micah’s cubicle which is literally full of flower bouquets, I rub my chest and try to ignore the way my heart is racing while she goes on and on about the schedule for planning the Greenwood opening. I should be listening, but my pounding heart is taking most of my focus.
I told her I don’t drink caffeine. That is true. But I also don’t drink coffee in general, which has me wondering why I drank the coffee that was meant for Grant.
I’m not actually wondering. I drank it because she handed it to me.
As I’ve done multiple times since sitting down, I massage the palm of my right hand, trying to remove the feel of her hand in mine. It started with the handshake, which doesn’t usually bother me. I shake hands with people all the time, and those touches never linger. But the way Micah held my hand was different. Intentional. Especially in the conference room.
And that has me on edge.
“It’ll be tight,” she says, “but we should be able to get everything done by the 26th.”
“You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence,” I mutter to myself, though I don’t think I say it quietly enough for her not to hear. I really need to work on that.
Then again, she’s been nothing but smiles since the moment I stepped off the elevator, and it’s completely unnerving. Pretty much everything she’s done feels worrisome, so I can’t really explain why I let her convince me to not recommend Grant pick a different company.
I guess she surprised me with her own confidence.
“You’re the ones who waited until now to hire an event planner,” she says with a smile.
“We didn’t.” I don’t have to explain anything to her, but I do it anyway. “We had a planner up until last week, when they told us they had to back out for, uh, personal reasons.” Otherwise known as they found out that I was working with Grant, and they got spooked.
That’s why this event has to go well. Grant took a chance on me—a huge one—and I can’t let him down.
Twisting her bright red lips, which I have been trying to ignore for the last twenty minutes, Micah studies me for longer than I would like. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but she has this way of looking at me like no one ever has. Like she’s digging beneath the surface to find the juicier tells. She can’t be older than her early twenties—fresh out of college, maybe even an intern—but she seems to think she has some sort of control over what is happening around her.
Yes, assistants like me do a lot more behind the scenes than people think, but not everyone is as incompetent as Grant is right now. Micah probably does nothing but answer the phone and send emails. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway, because so far she’s made me feel like I’m doing something wrong. She seems to actuallylikeher job. She seems to likeeverything, like nothing will ever bother her.
It’s unnatural.
“Give me your email,” she says, holding out her hand as if it’s a physical thing I can give her.
My hand itches to wrap around hers again, which is ridiculous. I don’t like being touched, so I shouldn’t want to be touched by her.
I also don’t like coffee, but I’ve been sipping the mug of decaf since she gave it to me. It’s like there’s a part of me that took my attraction to her and set up a whole bunch of rules to follow, likedo anything she says.
Wait. Nope. I wasn’t supposed to think that word.Attraction. It already made me play a stupid joke pretending to be Grant, and I don’t need to let anything else distract me from doing my job to the best of my ability. Besides, I would guess she’sat mosttwenty-five. I’m thirty-two. There’s seven reasons alone why I shouldn’t be contemplating why her touch didn’t bother me the way What’s-Her-Name, Grant’s neighbor, did yesterday.
