Page 20 of All Superheroes Need PR
He looks ... angrier than he did a second before and huffs, “Let’s do this quickly. I’m ready for lunch.”
Jeremy wraps up at warp speed, and as the two teams break for lunch and everybody disperses, I remain seated. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d have grabbed a sandwich and eaten it sitting on the toilet in the women’s bathroom, but lunch isn’t sandwiches—it’s sushi—and trying to juggle soy sauce, wasabi, and chopsticks on my lap in the bathroom doesn’t sound particularly appealing.
Also unfortunate? The moment the group breaks for lunch and gets up from the table, Roland stands and starts to come around the conference table. He all but runs Garrison over in his effort to steal hisseat, the one directly to my right. He drops into it, his knees pointed toward me, and stunned silly as I am, when he grabs the underside of my chair and swivels me to face him, I don’t do anything but let him.
His thighs move to bracket the outsides of my knees, and he cocks his chin at my feet. “What are you hiding under the table?”
“Oh! I, um ...” Flounder. “This is for you. A, uh ... hoodie to replace what I ...” threw up on. “ ... ruined. I bought you pants, too, because I, um ... well ...” I make a frantic hand gesture while my body cooks to a simmering boil. “I didn’t get shoes, though I would like to. I don’t know your size. If you could tell me your size, that would be helpful.”
I kick the bags under the table inelegantly toward him, the crinkle paper crunching inside as I do. I’ve been using work as a distraction from thinking about the images splattered across social media like blood from the jugular, but right now, hearing that paper crinkling ... thinking about his sweats and what I did to the old ones on Friday ... those pictures start to batter their way in. The moat is dry, the drawbridge is lowered, and when I lift my gaze and catch his profile—because for once he isn’t staring straight at me but is giving the bags some apathetic consideration—I can see those shaky cell phone photos and videos clearly.
“You look like a Black Fay Wray,” Jem said when I caught her scrolling socials Sunday evening before we all dragged ourselves out of the office to bed. Jem was the only one who still seemed alert despite the fact we’d been working for ten hours straight.
“Jem! Close that shit,” Jeremy chided her, and she had the indecency to look incensed.
“What? She looks gorgeous draped over his arms like that. A proper Ann Darrow to his King Kong, don’t you think? The 1933 version, of course.” She’s a monster movie fanatic and does not discriminate against a film’s age—or its quality. She really fits all of those typical second-generation Ethiopian, Mezcal-slinging, monster-loving, shrewd lawyer stereotypes.
Jeremy slammed his hand down on Jem’s computer, but the damage was done. When I later looked up the movie poster that Jem had been talking about, I almost passed out. Because it wasn’t the fact that I was draped like a beach towel between Roland’s strong arms, or the fact that his sweats were covered in splotchy patches of throw up; it was the way he was looking at my face. He’d had and held an expression all the way through the bar, up until the point that he curled me into his chest and rocketed into the sky, caught by so many different camera angles. He looked ... not angry. Very, very not angry. I swallow hard. He almost looked ... intrigued.
“There are two of them.” He turns back to face me, but I don’t let his pink eyes hook me or reel me in.
“I ... yeah.” I tuck my hair behind my ear and smile abruptly down at the boxes for reasons fully passing understanding. There’s just something strange about the question. It’s the kind of question I’d ask, so boldly random. “I got two different size sweat sets. Large and extra-large. I wasn’t sure what would fit you best. They’re navy blue and charcoal, though. I couldn’t find light gray to replace the ones I threw up on.” It’s a lie. I found gray. There were tons of gray. But humiliation prevented me from buying the identical shade; if I ever even see him in light-gray anything ever again, there’s a strong chance I’ll simply perish.
“The receipts are in there too. I bought them at that store in Sundale—Westwood—in case you want to exchange them. The address is on the receipt in case you don’t know where it is. Also I, um ... I’m not sure how to say this, but I ...” I choke, wondering why he still hasn’t taken the bags yet. “My brothers ... I don’t think you ... If we’re going to be working together in the long term ...” Does he hate the sweats? He hasn’t even looked at them yet. “I just wanted to say ... fighting them ... it wasn’t ...” I can’t take this anymore. “Do you not like the sweatpants?”
He grunts. “Your brothers fought me first.”
“Right, but ...”
“I won’t do it again.”
Air punches out of me in a shallow burst. “Oh, okay, thanks. I ... the pants ...”
“They’re fine.”
“Oh ...” Fine. I feel my cheeks heat anew. I tuck my hair behind my ear and then immediately untuck it, wanting to make the shrub of my hair large enough to disappear behind. “And I, um ... Margerie and I could have gotten a cab, you didn’t need to fly with me. It ... that’s ... I didn’t agree ...”
“She wouldn’t give me your home address. Only your family’s.” His gaze blazesorangethis time, and his softness is gone. Back is the monster I met in the boardroom. I jump at the sudden severity of his tone. “And I wasn’t about to send two drunk women in a cab home alone at night.”
I try to keep my shoulders rolled back, try to push my toes into the floor and get some space between us, but his knees clamp around mine, holding me in place. “Jeremy and Dan could have taken us.”
“I wasn’t about to let your drunk ass take a cab with two men I don’t know.”
“Iknow them ...” I start, but he leans in toward me, grabs the arms of my chair, and yanks me in until my knees meet the edge of his seat.
He lowers his head and speaks very quietly, his voice taking on the cadence of faraway thunder. “And I know that this is really fu—really new,” he says, censoring himself for inexplicable reasons, “but you’re going to have to get used to talking to me if you’re going to go through with this contract for the long term.”
I inhale, hold it, and then ... nothing. The breath doesn’t come out. I shake my head, feeling slightly incensed. “I ... you ...” I can’t get anything I want to say out, and I feel like a freaking fool.
You’re such a dumb little slut, Vanessa.
“I ... you are going to have to learn to be less ...” I wave at him frantically, trying to get my point across, because there are no words to accurately summarize how he’s being right now. No one haseverbeen like this to me before.
“Less what?”
“Lessintense.”
Brow furrowed, he starts to stand and, fully towering over me, offers me his hand. He exhales, and I realize he’d been holding his breath too. I wonder ... why.
