Page 8 of All Superheroes Need PR
I open my mouth and ... burp. The cold hand of humiliation is valiantly trying to creep up my spine, but it’s having a hard time getting past that lingering warmth. It doesn’t seem squashable, not even when the Pyro’s lips flatten and a muscle underneath his left eye twitches.
And that’s when it finally hits me, what’s so off about his expression and demeanor and hard-cut countenance: he’spissed.
He slams the glass—my glass—down onto the bar top beside me, bracketing me within the cage of his arms and chest. My back presses against the bar top as I try to make space between us, and my strange, treacherous body doesn’t know what to do with the closeness. I flounder and repeat, “Your eyes are pink.”
“I fucking know that. Why was that dead man groping your chest?”
“Dead ... dead man?” I glance to my left where Jeremy was sitting a second before, only to find the barstool empty and Jeremy motionless on the floor. The people who were standing behind us have cleared out a small space, but not a soul has reached out to help him.
“Is he ...” I gasp, horror flooding my veins. I reach up, touch my mouth, and whisper through the gaps between my fingers, “Did you kill him?”
“No. Why was he touching you?” He fires his words like bullets, and I’m struck by every one.
I reach for a shield, but my hands come up empty, so I carry on. “I ... spilled.”
“You wanted his hands on you? You know him?”
“I ...” I shake my head in a very small gesture.
The Pyro curses and makes a lunging gesture toward the motionless man on the floor that almost makes me fall off my stool. His hand shoots out. He catches my elbow.
I hiccup. “D-don’t ...” I start, wanting to tell him not to hurt the guy on the floor any more than he has already, but his eyes have narrowed even further. He lets me go like touching me pains him, flexing his hands as he draws them back toward his pockets, and my voice trails off.
“You pissed?” he hisses.
It takes me way too long to understand the question. I point at him first, then at me. “You ...you’repissed,” I answer, distracted when two random guys, also wearing name tags with the same Q symbol printed on them in huge block letters, scuttle forward and grab Jeremy by the arms. They drag him away, throwing cautious and curious glances back at the Pyro while Jeremy’s hair collects the red wine I spilled all over the floor. I wonder if those men recognize the Pyro. For the sake of whoever lands his PR contract later, I certainly hope they don’t—and for my sake, I pray. I do not want to be caught on camera beside him, especially in my current not-so-sober state.
“I meant, are you drunk?” Though he’s speaking at a normal volume and the room is loud, he feels louder. His cheek ticks, and that vein in his forehead is standing out. I realize too late that every single part of him is impossibly tightly clenched ... and he’s a dangerous male. No, he’s a male capable of incredible violence. And I’m just ...
Drunk. “Yes.” I hiccup, as if to accentuate the point. I could have told him I’m tipsy or notthatdrunk really, because if I’m being honest, I have been drunker than this a few times before.
The first time, my brother David added vodka to the house orange juice, trying to get back at my other brother Vinny for some reason nobody can remember now. I’d been fourteen and hadn’t had alcohol before, and I just thought the OJ was off. Unfortunately, I threw up allover Vinny, so David’s revenge plan sort of worked. Fortunately, I hadn’t yet made it out of the house.
The memory triggers my gag reflex, and my stomach clenches with force. I meet and hold the Pyro’s stare with a boldness that’s only fueled by a desperation to keep the vomitdown.
The Pyro looks down, his nostrils flaring for a moment, then, just as quickly, he wrenches back like he senses what’s about to happen. I burp again and slap my palm over my mouth. The Pyro glares at me.
“You let him call you an intern.” Orange blazes in his pink irises so brightly, it expels light onto his cheeks.
The taste of wine crawls up the back of my throat, and I fight itdown. I nod. I don’t need to explain to this supernatural maniac that I can create pivot tables with conditional formatting encompassing decades of data in just a few minutes just as easily as I can illustrate short animated videos for ads but can’t tell a guy at a bar no.
He makes that same rumbling sound he did four hours ago, right before he kicked my sorry ass out of the building, and this time I know I’m not imagining it. I can see movement past his impossibly broad shoulders. People are starting to stare and point at him, sure, but also atme. My stomach clenches. No no no no no no no. This can’t be happening ...
He doesn’t seem to realize how close we are to doom because he doesn’t back up. He doesn’t even cast a cursory glance over his shoulder. His intensity is just as brutal and fixed to me as it was earlier. “Why aren’t you with your people? Why are you over here by yourself?”
I reach up and hold my left temple. My adrenaline is peaking. I need some air.
“Hey.” His voice is hard as brick and so is his hand as it shackles my upper arm. I cringe away from the violent touch, extracting myself from it while my stomach completes another revolution around a dark sun. “Hey.” He lets me go immediately, and when he speaks next, his voice is a little softer than it was. “Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head. “I have ... anxiety,” I say simply, hoping that’s enough. I certainly have no intention of giving him my full medical history here or ever. I just need him to give me grace, and I’m shocked as hell when he does.
“Fuck.” He takes a step away from me and curses under his breath twice more in quick succession. “I’m sorry, okay?”
The words are such a shock, I get a pang in the left side of my neck with how fast I whip my head up to look at him. His expression hasn’t changedmuch. He’s still glaring at me like I stole his ice cream, only now there’s a crease between his thick eyebrows, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes are white instead of pink or orange.
“Okay?” he repeats more angrily this time.
“Oh ... kay.”
