Page 4 of Just Like You
Sometimes I wished I was actually dealing with something real. Something I could feel.
I felt very little, and that was not me being pathetic and talking out of my arse. Life was as real as bloody cartoons on TV. The ones I’d grown up watching and still sometimes put on. Something to ground me into a reality that wasn’t so fraught with stress.
I laughed out loud like the madman I was, sat in this pathetic excuse for a chair as this stewardess tried to offer me a meal. Chicken or pasta apparently, served on a small plastic tray that supposedly fit on the tray table in front of me. I couldn’t even get the table fully down, sat like this.
I wasn’t overweight. Nor was I unhealthy in any way. I worked out five days a week, ate a diet low in fat and high in protein, allowed myself a healthy dose of carbs on the weekend and attended my yearly medical like clockwork. I was good; it was just, I was a size and a half, and yeah…
I hadn’t travelled in economy since I’d been a lanky teen heading down to the Côte d’Azur with my mother for another ofher adventures.
I shuddered again and dismissed both the tray and the girl attached to it with a swift flick of my wrist.
Like the plonker I was. I did have some self-awareness. I knew full well what it made me into, this entitled behaviour I presented.
It had become the expectation. The norm. Also…kept me safe. Sane and… Fuck.
Kieron Andrieu kept everyone at a distance for a reason. And it was just easier to behave like I did, rather than to make small talk and fool people into thinking I was someone I wasn't. I was just me, like this. Cold, and efficient. Indestructible. Hard. I needed to be hard, because life wasn't always kind. Anyway, here was the gay boy, the manager of some sort. Didn’t look a day older than twenty-five and had dark circles under his eyes. No wonder, having to deal with the public like this.
I tried to avoid other people as much as I could, hence the enclosed business class suite I’d booked and paid for was my travelling companion of choice. Privacy. Space. Perhaps even a movie to relax me.
Instead now I was crammed into this goddamn economy seat, still wearing my jacket with a scowl on my face.
“You’re not eating, Mr Andrieu?” he said softly. Standing there with his blonde curls hanging over his eyes, looking all innocent and… I almost allowed myself to think it. Not a good idea.
“I ate in the lounge,” I grumped. Which was not a lie, but I had quite looked forward to a nice bit of cheese with a red wine. No chance of that down here, sat amongst the chavs in the cesspit of humanity.
“I understand your disappointment…” he started again. What was it with this guy and his inability to understand that I didn’t give a flying fuck about his lame apologies? He was just a worker bee. Disposable and replaceable with the next one in line. Something I kept saying to my interns.Don’t get comfortable, I’d grunt.There are ten more where you came from, lining up to replace you. One mistake? You’re out.
Another of my arsehole traits. Treat people mean, keep them keen. Some of these interns thought they could change me. They’d butter me up and try to make me like them; sometimes they’d even flirt. Others would scurry away faster than I could smell the fear coming off them. Waves of it as soon as I turned a corner.
I didn't work well with others, and when I had to? I'd bark orders and shout and hope they would complain to my boss, which was when she'd have them removed from my tiny, insignificant orbit. Followed by a stern telling off and a sigh. My boss was rather cool, for someone who was one of London's leading financial CEO's. She was important, not only to the company, but also to me.
Sometimes I thought I was important.
For the record? I wasn’t, which had been brutally confirmed by the treatment I’d received today.
Bastards, the lot of them.
Yet he was still here, leaning on the aisle seat in front, with that iPad in his hand. Scrolling up and down, then looking up at me. He was wearing glasses now, dark-rimmed ones that perfectly framed his face.
Clean shaven. A small stain on his sleeve.
“Your shirt is stained,” I said. The smallest of details could sometimes push a man off balance. I liked causing exactly that. Gaining advantage by playing dirty. Just a little. Rocking the boat.
“Smashed a plate full of gravy.” He rolled his eyes and smiled. “Wasn’t the best today. You’re not missing anything. But…” He smiled knowingly. “Glass of Shiraz? It’s rather nice, and if that is not to your taste?” He turned the iPad around, offering me a screengrab of the business class wine list.
See? Buttering me up.
“I’ll have a glass of Shiraz,” came from the idiot next to me, a twenty-something who looked like he’d dressed in the dark and wore a snapback. Backwards.
My eyes must have widened in disgust because this Julian? Just smiled knowingly at me.
“My apologies, Sir, Mr Andrieu has been wildly inconvenienced today. Just trying to make him smile.”
Now I did laugh because no, he wasn’t making me smile. He was making me mildly irritated and quite embarrassed, and I hated being both of those things.
“Just drop it,” I hissed at…Julian. Jules, apparently, according to the steward, who now tapped his arm and tried to whisper something in his ear.
I didn’t envy these kids, running this freakshow. Gravy on their arms or not.
