Page 6 of All Superheroes Need PR
“Are you all insane? He was rude, a scoundrel. I didn’t like him one bit,” Jem says.
“Is that a line fromThe Mummy?” I mumble.
Jem winks at me. “Of course. But I’m serious. Did you see his clothes? They had holes all over them, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved his beard in three weeks.” Her perfectly coiffed curls bounce around her cheeks as she shakes her head in disgust. “He was exactly as expected. Boring and full of himself—as all the Forty-Eight are. I’m glad we didn’t get the contract. We’ve gotten dozens of other proposals that Jeremy andI have been weeding through since our bid was accepted by the COE and the press had a field day dogging us—good proposals. I’m excited to get back to the office and have a look. What do you say?”
I realize she’s talking to me and wrinkle my nose, drain my day red, and then roll my shoulders back. “You’re right.”But you didn’t feel what I felt. Not the energy. Not the humiliation.“You’re right. I just hope you all aren’t too disappointed ...”
A collective groan goes up from the team members gathered around me. Embarrassed, I look away and find the waiter, order another round, and distract myself with day red when the waiter returns with full, fresh glasses.
“It’s not like we had real hope of convincing him to the good side. Chances are he’s working with the VNA anyway,” Dan adds.
Nodding all around helps ease my humiliation. “Probably,” I whisper.
“And after how he treated you, we wouldn’t want to work with him anyway,” Margerie adds.
“Well ...” Dan starts.
I feel my cheeks heat and watch as Vanya and Dan exchange a few words in Arabic. I can tell Vanya is admonishing him in her standard Arabic mixed with the Egyptian she learned studying abroad, while Dan replies in his Syrian dialect. She rolls her eyes at whatever he says, but I don’t want to hear the translation. I just want the day to be over.
Jeremy—who’s been learning Arabic for Dan, his partner—asks Vanya, “Did you just call him an ass?”
“Yes. I told him he has a red ass, like a baboon.”
Everyone laughs at that—except me. “I just ... don’t know what I did so wrong,” I say, my voice a little slurred. Very slurred? I’m not totally sure. How many glasses have I had now? The waiter keeps coming back with more. How long has it been since we got here?
I glance at my wristwatch, but my wrist is bare because I’ve never worn a watch in my entire life. We’ve been here an hour so far? Maybe fifteen minutes? My team shushes me with docile platitudes, Margerieand Garrison leaning in from either side to give me one-armed hugs. I shrug them off and try to shrug out of my jacket, but I’m not wearing a jacket. Was I wearing one when I started the day? Such a hopeful girl I was back then. Back before I fell and the entire room fell apart around me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You guys haven’t even let me talk about me falling,” I all but wail. “That was an insane domino effect.”
“Because it wasn’t a big deal,” Margerie says, squeezing me tighter and trying to shush me at the same time.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Garrison adds, but he’s hiding his smile in his glass, and when I elbow him in the ribs, he chokes and red wine dribbles down his chin and onto his tie.
Even though Garrison moved from Tokyo three years ago, he hasn’t adapted to the more relaxed corporate culture of our office. I don’t mind what anybody wears, so long as they are actually serious when they say that losing the contract won’t cause them to run shrieking from our offices Monday morning.
“I think even Mrs. Morales ended up on the floor,” Jem grumbles. “You got coffee in my hair,” she accuses.
She and Jeremy start bickering back and forth while my head continues to swim. I think I ... drank too much. Not wanting to be seen completely plastered in front of my team, I excuse myself and make it to the bathroom. Hiccuping on my way back, I come to a stop, debating ...
What’s the worse option?
Be seen completely sloshed by all my team members I just made a total idiot of myself in front of earlier today? Or take a chance at potentially having to talk to someone I don’t know at the bar as I get a water?
I glance at the daylight streaming in all the way at the other end of the bar.I can do this,I think, taking a deep breath and veering away from the restaurant area into the bar. Spring has sprung early this year.It’s only barely April, but I still haven’t needed a proper coat for two weeks now. That also means the darkest evenings are behind us.
Someone bumps into me from behind. They apologize at the same time I do, and I quickly duck and make my way forward, squeezing myself through a crowd made up of folks off work early on a Friday until I finally reach the bar’s sleek black concrete countertop.
Call it luck of the day red, but as soon as my fingers touch down onto the bar, the couple sitting to my right slides off their stools. With a meek smile, I quickly take one of them at the same time that a my age-ish man takes the other. Our eyes meet as we take our seats, and he winks at me. I force my face to form a small, awkward smile, which he returns in a much more natural way.
He’s got brown hair and perfectly clear white skin with a blush in his cheeks that would make most women envious. He’s wearing a badge of some kind clipped between two of the buttons of his shirt. I don’t get a good look at it, distracted and startled when he asks me what I’m drinking.
“I, uh, um—it’s day red.” I flush. “But I was going to get a wa—”
“Day red?” He smirks at me, cutting me off, his blue eyes bright.
“I ...” I swallow hard, nervous that I might be sweating again. “My friends got the first round—” The first three—four? Good grief. “I’m not sure what it’s called.”
