Page 25 of Damsel in Defense
Switching my attention back to her, I shake my head.“No problem.”My mouth opens to make a joke, but the words die on my tongue as I scan the battlefield of bolts and boards littered across her bedroom floor.“Wow.This is…aggressive.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, drawing out the word as she gazes at the mess too.“It was winning the war until reinforcements arrived,” she mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.“The instructions might as well be written in Ancient Greek.”
“Well, lucky for you,” I say, clapping my hands together, “I’m fluent in interpreting squiggles and arrows—years of decoding coaching boards.This?This is just strategy with screws…and I’m pretty good with those too.”
Her head snaps up, eyes narrowing.“Was that a double entendre, Mr.Warren?I’m shocked such filth came from the Golden Boy.”
“Watch it,” I warn with a playful growl.God, this woman really knows how to give it back.I lift a shoulder, smirking.“Did it work?”
She rolls her eyes, but the smile tugging at her lips gives her away.“If it gets this damn bed frame built, you can innuendo your way through the whole instruction manual.”
“Is that so?”
She lets out a laugh that feels like sunshine.“Let’s get to work before I lose what’s left of my sanity.”
We sit on the floor side by side, sorting through screws and washers like we’re trying to defuse a bomb.I’m not saying we’re completely incompetent, but we do spend the first twenty minutes accidentally attaching the headboard backward, dropping bolts under the dresser, and arguing about whether “panel B” is actually mislabelled or if we just can’t read.
“This can’t be right,” she says, holding a wooden leg up and squinting at it like it personally insulted her.“There has to be a page missing or something.”
“That’s definitely a side rail.”
“No.It has to be a leg.It’s leg-shaped.”
“It’s horizontal.”
“Maybe it’s a horizontal leg.”
I snort.“Do you hear yourself right now?”
She huffs, throwing the instruction pages up into the air so she can cross her arms.“I don’t know!”she cries.“Nothing is making sense anymore.Up is down.Panel B is really panel G.You’re lucky you’re so cute, or your suggestion to use a drill instead of the provided Allen key would have gotten you banned from the apartment.”
I pause mid-reach and glance up at her, and she realizes what she said at the same time I do.
“Oh my God,” she whispers, horrified.“Did I say that out loud?”
“You did,” I say, fighting the smirk spreading across my face.“And I’m happy you restrained yourself with my banishment.But cute?I don’t think I’ve been called that in a long while.Handsome, dashing, roguishly good-looking—all terms that are in constant rotation when describing me.”
“Annoying.Conceited.Big ego.All terms I would use in constant rotation to describe you.”
“Big…” I pause, looking at her and making my eyebrows dance up and down.“…help, more like.”
“You’re not allowed to be this smug and helpful.”
“Sorry, it’s in my contract.”
That gets a laugh out of her.“Okay, okay, we need to refocus before the hysteria hits.Let’s…try putting these two parts together.”She points to what should be the final joint pieces for the frame.
We manage to reorient the frame after a few more false starts, both of us getting more comfortable and laughing more freely.At one point, she’s bracing the base with her foot while I twist a bolt in place, and our shoulders bump.Her hair brushes my cheek, and I nearly screw the thing into my own hand.
Eventually, by some miracle—or maybe it’s just our stubbornness—we get the last bolt in place.
“Victory!”she announces, throwing her arms up in triumph.
“You doubted us?”I say, tightening the final screw and leaning back on my palms.
“I doubted everything.My life.My choices.Our combined intelligence.”
“You’re hard on yourself,” I say, softer now.“You’re doing better than you think.”
