Sebastian pinched a puzzle piece away from me. "The perimeter is the priority."
"There can be multiple, simultaneous priorities." Without meeting his gaze, I snatched the piece back.
Still winning. I had to win. After the stairwell, I needed this win. I'd strangle him before I let him take this round.
…said the nearly forty-year-old woman who'd once possessed interests and hobbies separate from hating a man purely because he bothered her.
"It would be more efficient to focus on the perimeter and then work our way in," he countered.
He sounded more exasperated than usual. I had to fight off a grin. His exasperation was like candy. It was terrible for me but that in no way minimized the fun of it.
I didn't respond, instead trying to make progress with a small group of pieces and steadily feeding myself nuts and dried fruit.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Milana shift on her stool every few minutes. Clasping and unclasping her hands. She didn't know what to do with us when we weren't trying to kill each other with soft toys.
"It would be faster if you cooperated with me," he said.
I shrugged. "It would be faster if you stopped interrupting to tell me how to go faster."
He dropped the piece he'd been walking between his thumb and index finger. I couldn't be sure since I was still doing the averted eyes thing but it felt like he was staring at me. He could stare all he wanted. I had plenty of nondescript gray pieces to occupy me, their ins and outs blurring into an unending monologue of "Do you fit? What about you? Does this work? Does anything fit? Do you even belong in the same box or is that the gag here—that nothing goes together?"
I could do this all day. If I dissociated from the setting and the large, growly man across from me, the one who'd abandoned all pretense of working on the puzzle since I wouldn't follow his rules, I could find some zen in the repetitive motion of putting it all together. It was like those adult coloring books I'd hoarded a few years ago in the hopes of chasing away the constant squabbling in my head. My perfectionism had really struggled with getting the coloringjustrightand I'd realized I didn't like coloring but, for a brief time, the act was enough to draw me away from my stress and my worries.
A growl sounded from the other side of the table. "Could you—"
"Probably not, no."
"If you'd just listen to—"
"But I'm not going to," I replied. "Accept that I am doing it this way, even if your way is better, quicker, more nutrient dense, peer reviewed, and morally righteous. I've made my choice."
I joined several pieces together and tapped the gray surface to congratulate myself on making progress under these conditions. But then I noticed Sebastian had most of the perimeter complete.
Because I couldn't help myself, I gestured to the shell he'd constructed. "What's the point of harassing me into helping you when you don't need any help? Is it about compliance for you? You're hell-bent on getting me to obey?"
Sebastian sucked in a breath and I countered that with a petulant shrug-head-shake combo that I never would've risked as a teenager. He resumed his silent staring and I continued hunting for pieces to fit somewhere on the segment I'd started.
I figured we were running out the clock on this session—which was perfectly acceptable—but then he crossed his arms over his chest. In such close quarters, I couldn't help but hear the rustle of crisp fabric against warm skin and it threw me back to that night. To him stretched over me. To clothes and sheets everywhere. To his beard on my skin, his mouth all over me. To his sounds. His words.
I blinked down at my pieces. My pulse was hammering and I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. My earlobes were hot. All I could do was dive into my snack bag and cram three almonds into my mouth. It would take me an age to chew them up into the tiny, tiny pieces necessary for me to digest them without disaster and that process would be more than enough to sap me of all sexy thoughts. Nothing was less sexy than the threat of triggering an irritable bowel.
I would've gotten away with my memories and the hammering of my heart if he hadn't been watching me, waiting for me to trip up and forget the game.
"Shap," he said knowingly, "what the hell are you eating?"
Since I was very consumed with my almonds, I held up the bag by way of explanation. He snatched it away, his scowl all plucked and offended by my unconventional trail mix.
"What…what thehell, Shap? Nuts,cereal, what are these things? What is this? Dried pineapple?" He helped himself to a chunk of crystallized ginger and, if the disgust on his face was any indicator, immediately regretted it. "Fuckin' ginger, my god, why?" He reached for the bottle of water I'd abandoned on the sofa and chugged half the contents. "Oh, that's fucking awful." He peered into the bag again. "M&Ms, dried cranberries of all the god-awful things, raisins—"
"Help yourself to the raisins," I said, a hand over my mouth as I chewed the last bits of almond. "I don't do raisins."
Only when Sebastian leveled me with a steady gaze did I realize I'd forgotten the game. It had only required some perverse amusement over his reaction to the ginger and—poof. A round surrendered.
"Then why is this full of raisins?" He shook the bag.
"Because that's how the trail mix comes from the store and I don't have the patience to separate them out."
I'd bought the biggest bag available and then dumped it all into a storage container. Store packaging and nutrition labels made me twitchy, and I always wanted to add extra bits like cereal and ginger, or pretzels when I needed to keep it on the bland side.
