Not that it was hard. I hardly had anything left to wreck.
Smart Mouth sucked in a breath when he realized who the man in the suit was staring at. His face turned a shade of red reserved for raw meat. Maybe because of my reaction to Smart Mouth giving me a death stare, the man in the suit looked between us.
“I apologize, sir,” Smart Mouth said. “I’m about to get—”
The man in the suit lifted his hand and silenced Smart Mouth before he could utter another word. I couldn’t stand the intense way the man in the suit studied me from behind his glasses. I knew he was studying me by the way my body reacted. It had been years since I felt…small in the presence of someone.
Judged. Sentenced. Ridiculed. Banished.
I looked down, playing with the straps of my backpack, feeling even worse when my eyes caught sight of my tennis shoes. They were two sizes too small. My toes pressed against the fabric, close to breaking through, and some days I thought,what a relief that will be, because they hurt. Blood stained them in spots from the wear and tear on my flesh. Then again, if I didn’t have these shoes, I had close to nothing. I didn’t have the money to buy a used pair, much less a new set.
I am thankful to have shoes that fit—an entire closet full.
I’d fill in the details later, once I was home and could put some thought into the ones I liked the best.
I am also thankful that this baseball jersey matches the damned shoes. I’m not mismatched today.
It was all I had to hold on to in the moment, something completely mine and true.
Oh, right,back to the guy in the suit.I wanted to lift my eyes, to defy him, daring him to judge me so I could give him the “see how much I care about your opinion”look—zilch—but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes again. My cheeks felt hotter than the pits of Hades. A bead of sweat rolled down my chest, between my breasts, and I was suddenly highly aware of my body. How anxious I felt.
Spur of the moment, I lifted my eyes, pretending like the way he looked at me didn’t make me feel like running and keeping still at the same time. Even a little of that went a long way, so I turned then, preparing to walk away.
I stopped after two steps, turning back. “Who needs your crappy restaurant anyway?” I shouted. “The steak is probably not even worth the kidney!” Then I sent them both an aggressive chin flick.
At first the man’s dark eyebrows drew down, but then...was that a grin tugging at his lips? It was hard to tell. It seemed foreign. Like he hadn’t used the muscles in a while. It didn’t matter. I disappeared into the bustling crowd before I could get another look. I was just another body in the midst of millions.
3
Mariposa
“Come on, Caspar! Give me another chance! Cut me some slack.”
“You’re late again. Fired. Fired.Fired.”
“You don’t mean that! You really don’t.”
“I do. And if you’d like me to lend you my dictionary so you can truly understand the meaning behind the word, I have one in my office for days like this one.”
“Today is the wrong day to fire me! I have my shit together. I really do this time. I made some changes. Thought some things out. It won’t happen again!”
He slapped the rag he was using to polish the counter down. “You want me to cut you some slack?”
I nodded, eager, biting my bottom lip.Shit!Why did I spend so much time contemplating trading kidneys for steaks and staring at a man who was probably a trust-fund baby? His biggest worry was probably what car he should drive to match his tie.
And what about thoseeyes? He hadn’t even revealed those mysterious eyes… A multitude of colors played across my mind—green, hazel, brown, blue? Light like the ocean in Greece when the sun hits the surface, or dark like the sea during a reckless storm? I mentally tried them on his face, one after another.
“Listen carefully to the word of the day, Mari.”
I blinked, bringing Caspar back to central focus.
“Are you listening, Mariposa?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to be snarky but hating it whenever anyone called me by my full name. Caspar was privy to that information because he had hired me. “Ya—Yeah, I am.”
“Fired.Definition: dismiss (an employee) from a job. Let me use it in a sentence. MariposaFloresis fired.” He said fired like FI-YERED. “Got it?”
“How is that cutting me some slack, Caspar?”
