Page 7 of All Superheroes Need PR
I feel a blush rush to my cheeks as his gaze drops to my outfit. I’m wearing my clothes from the meeting. They’re all rumpled now. His gaze lingers on my legs, and I get that uncomfortable feeling that he’s judging me and place my hands awkwardly over my knees.
The bartender fortunately interrupts us then, and my stool neighbor orders me a glass of merlot—not day red, sadly, and not a water, even more tragically—and himself a rum and Coke. Then he sticks out his hand. I take it automatically, unsure of how to get myself out of this, and let him shake my arm like it’s jelly while he says, “I’m Jeremy.”
“Jeremy? That’s funny. My coworker’s name is Jeremy. He’s right over there in the restaurant area.”
Jeremy—new Jeremy—looks over my shoulder, trying to root him out. His eyebrows furrow a little. The bartender slides our drinks across the table. “Your coworker waiting on you?” I don’t know why he says the word with such sudden hostility.
“Uhh ... they might be?” I want to get back to them, but the heat in my face and chest has melted me to my seat. My stomach is a bundle of nerves. This is why I should have chosen the awkwardness of being drunk around my colleagues. At least I know them. Now I have to somehow get myself out of this. Panic!
My brain fires in every direction, anxiety making my stomach lurch, but I focus on my breath, on counting up to three, and then ten, and then finally on his next question.
“You’re with a group?” I feel like he’s accusing me of something, and I wrinkle my nose.
“Yeah, I should, uhh ... probably get back,” I say brittlely.
But he perks up. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Vanessa. Sorry.” I wince as I apologize again.
“No worries. You okay to stay and chat? At least until you finish your day red?”
I shuffle on my stool and give him a tight, nervous nod. Jeremy smiles and swivels on his seat until his knees point toward me. “What do you do, Miss Vanessa?” I notice him glance at my left hand and feel my fingers tingle. I’m not wearing any jewelry at all, so there’s nothing to mistake there for a wedding ring.
“Marketing.” My voice is soft. I’d meant for it to be louder. I drink my merlot even though I shouldn’t. The world is tilting sideways, and my words are coming out syrupier than they should. I should get back to my coworkers, but he’s already bought me a wine ... and I don’t know how to extract myself from this. You’d think with five brothers I might have developed a better sense of men in general, but they might have actually been a hindrance given how obnoxiously overprotective they are of me.
I love them for it deeply.
“Marketing?” He leans in closer. “Like an associate or an intern or something like that?”
I nod quickly and drink more of my wine. “Yes.” And then I clear my throat, eager to divert his focus anywhere but toward me. “What do you do?”
He points at his name tag, a confusing action. He seems proud to be wearing his name badge at happy hour, pointing at it like I’ve asked him for his name and he’s forgotten but is proud at least to have written it down.
QNTEQis what it reads, though I have no idea how to pronounce it. I smile and say, “Wow. Sounds fancy.” I wrinkle my nose, hoping I don’t sound too dismissive, but I don’t want to pronounce it wrong, and I’m guessing by the way he shows off his badge so proudly that he assumes I should be excited about Centech? Cue-en-tech? Q-and-tech?
“I like to think so.” He seems satisfied by my reaction and slides his hand across the bar closer to mine. “You know, you’re really cute.” My eyes widen. I feel totally unprepared for this level of flirtation and wonder if I’ve misheard him through the haze of day red. His hand edges a little closer, fingers brushing mine, and I jerk, lifting my glass too forcefully and sloshing red wine over the lip of the glass and onto my shirt.
“Ohmigosh, I’m so sorry. I’ve really had too much ... day red ...” I scramble for a napkin, but I haven’t released my glass and end up spilling more of it onto the bar counter. He chuckles, and with the ease of someone to which everything in life comes easily, he reaches behind the bar and grabs a wad of napkins from a holder.
“Oh, thanks,” I say, stuttering wildly, but he doesn’t hand them to me and instead moves them toward my chest where red wine seeps through my shirt over my bra.
“It’s all right,” he says in a deeper voice than he’d been using. “I can tell you’re shy.” I’m shocked stiff, stunned in disbelief and far, far too gone to stop this train smash. I just watch, my jaw hinged open asthis strange man reaches for myboob—myactualbreast—and says, “I like shy girls ...”
He touches my chest—the upper curve of my boob where the bones of my chest soften out into full D cups—and the glass I’d been drunkenly wielding like a baton tumbles toward the floor. I watch it happen in slow motion, breath gathering in my mouth as I wait for everyone in the bar to turn at the sound of smashing glass and see me sitting here, white shirt covered in red, a random guy who can’t remember his own name and has to keep it written down on his lapel pawing at me in a way that would have made all five of my brothers smash chairs and beat their chests.
But my brothers aren’t here, and even though I manage multimillion-dollar advertising budgets for some of the country’s biggest brands, I suddenly can’t remember a damn thing my therapist has been telling me the past two years I’ve been seeing her to tackle situations like this.
I can even hear that boundaries song they make little kids learn playing on a broken loop in my head. Because being touched without permission, and by a stranger no less? It’s triggering something deeper than that. As if my social anxiety is just the Band-Aid covering wounds too deep to stitch. And trust me, I’ve tried, but every time I do, I end up bleeding all over the place.
Stop crying, and get up off the floor. I didn’t even hit you that hard. You’re such a little shit, Vanessa.
“Vanessa.” The word washes over me in a whispered hush. No breeze off the sea ever felt so lovely or so warm. The strange thing is, I’m not sure the word was said aloud. My ears cock, but all I hear are the sounds from the bar. But that breeze? That decadent rush of heat followed by cool? My spine arches as I suck in a breath, and my whole body sways toward it. I open my eyes ... and would have jumped out of my own skin if I weren’t attached to it.
The Pyro is standing there. Right there. Head lowered, nose only a foot away from mine. He’s staring into my eyes, and as I register their pretty shape, I notice the same miraculous thing I did earlier when hehad me in a position not utterly unlike this one, seated on the tabletop in that boardroom.
“Pink.” It takes me a moment to realize the word belongs to me.
The Pyro has the same medium-dark-brown skin and jet-black hair I recognize from every photo of him ever taken, the same full lips, pretty mouth, high cheekbones decorated by thick scruff rolling down a brutal jaw, but his eyes ... There’s no doubting it this time. His eyes are a deep, striated pink. Fuchsia toward his pupils, darker and wine colored on the outsides.
