Page 8 of Puck to the Heart
“Mm… and what, pray tell, do you do withindustrial lubricants?” I lowered my voice, leaning forward as if we shared a scandalous secret.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it. Industrial lubricants are formachines.”
“It’s like the jokes write themselves.” I tried not to laugh at the angry way she handled her butter knife. “Seriously, though, tell me about it.”
“No more jokes?”
“This is the most entertained I’ve been in months, so I can’t promise to stop with the jokes. But I promise not to laughatyou. If that helps.”
“Whatever. It is pretty funny.” Quirking her lips as she hid a smile made her kind of… cute. “Okay, so the stuff I work on is called, no shit, SlipSlide 3000.”
“No!”
“Yes. The names for this stuff are way worse than like… Swiss Navy or KY. Anyway, I do research and testing. Our lab is contract-based, so if a company doesn’t have space or manpower, they send us their stuff.”
“Does it come in a handy squeeze tube?” The visual nearly had me doubled over. Olivia in an official-looking lab coat and goggles, pumping out precise amounts of slippery fluid.
“It comes in fuckingbarrels.”
I leaned forward so hard I knocked into the table. “It doesnot.”
The quirk of her lips let another half-smile escape. “Okay, not when they sell it, no. But if you’re amused now, that’s not even the best part.”
“It cannot get better than machine lube called SlipSlide 3000?”
“The instrument I use most…” she leaned in, mirroring my posture. “Is the penetrometer.” Olivia coughed, disguising a laugh. Clearly, the wine was getting to her, loosening her nerves and her lips, but there was a sense of humor hiding underneath her icy ‘you don’t want to know me’ exterior.
“Explain. Immediately.”How do you even get into that industry?
“Well, we do a lot of temperature testing. Some of the company’s clients are in extreme climates, so their product has to stand up to… rigorous use.”
I waited for her to go on after she took a sip of water. Seriously, this was way more interesting than I anticipated.
“We put samples in the ultra-low freezer, then apply friction to test performance, and we use the penetrometer to be sure they still withstand all those extremes.”
“Wow.” I set my wine glass down with a clink, accidentally drawing the attention of the server.
“My sentiments exactly when I took the job. And my boss is about a million years old, so imaginehimexplaining my job description.”
“Barnes, you went from the best job to the worst job in point three seconds flat.”
“Barnes?” One brown eyebrow flicked upward at my use of her last name.
“Is your name?”
“No one has called me Barnes since middle school gym class. And it was hell.”
“If I call you Barnes, it’ll erase those memories. It’s settled.”
Olivia considered my proclamation long enough for me to wonder if she’d retreated back into her silent self again. “Fine,” she said, then she muttered low enough I probably wasn’t meant to hear, “Better than sweetcheeks.”
After that, our food arrived, so we didn’t talk much. I did have the pleasure of seeing Olivia enjoy her meal. The expressions she’d shut down on meeting me slowly expanded across her face with her single-minded, methodical attack on her food. Each bite seemed to be a little burst of ecstasy on her tongue, and her face reflected that. Joyful rolls of her eyes that were so at odds with the sardonic expression she had no trouble directing at me, though she stifled the expression when our eyes met across the pristine white tablecloth.
The silence at our table was no longer tense and awkward, but companionable and… short lived.
Miranda, the PR rep for the Knights, materialized. With no warning, she took a photo of Olivia and me, the flash so bright it’d leave an imprint in my lids for the next five minutes.
“Hi!” she sang, rearranging the table without asking. “Okay, now lean in and smile this time!” Another flash.
