“Do you come here often because of your brother?” she asked.
I shook my head and hugged myself. “I haven’t been here since before Halloween.”
“No shit, they still have The Widow,” a passing teen enthused.
Acid tickled the back of my throat. However Ash felt about Janice, it was nothing compared to the dread of facing my biggest failure: the spider mech by Theater Six.
12
Glitch
Teens ran up and posed for pics with that temperamental, eight-legged bitch. Instead of dangling above the stairway, she perched on a throne of cheap webbing, a photo op hawking the Hot Contra accessories littering her table. Bristling, I turned away.
She was supposed to be a mech queen, my magnum opus, the ‘fuck you’ to every asshole on my robotics team. Instead, she swung into early retirement as an oversized, tacky figurine. She broke my heart…and fractured more than just my relationship with my brother.
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
“What’s up? Are you afraid of spiders?” Ash asked.
“No, I hate them.” That one in particular.
“Okay.” Her inflection indicated I was being weird. And maybe I was. What did a woman like Ash do in the face of failure?
Silent judgment pricked my neck. My brother lurked on the other side of the lobby, observing everyone. Ominous. Efficient. He’d been a nice buffer in college.
I raised my hand in a quick, awkward wave.
He jerked his chin. ‘These people again?’
‘Yes.’ I sneered so only he could see. I pulled my fleece higher and gestured to Ash. “Let’s head to our seats.”
Sal and Janice were grabbing napkins, so they wouldn’t be too far behind. I paused at the aisle to let Ash go ahead of me. She hesitated. “Did you want to sit in the middle?” she asked.
“You wanted to keep your distance from Janice,” I reasoned.
“Yep. The end will be fine for me.” She plopped into her seat.
I furrowed my brow at the entrance and joined her. What was taking them so long to get a damned snack?
She crossed her ankles and scrolled through her phone. “Sal’s been talking you up all week.”
“Really?” My brain whirred with possibilities. “What was he saying?”
She rolled her head from side to side as if shaking free the memory. “You’re smart, funny, pretty–”
“He said I was pretty?” That didn’t make sense. I furrowed my brow and craned my neck at the entrance. “He has a girlfriend.”
“Yeah, I don’t think he was pining, just stating it objectively.”
Objectively? My gears ground to a halt. “Wait, so you also think I’m pretty?”
She laughed hard enough to prick my ego.
I wasn’t that bad. Sure, I didn’t use makeup or do my hair, but my eyebrows were separated and clean. Hygiene went a long way. I tugged my cap and compacted myself into the chair.
“I probably shouldn’t answer that either way,” she said, wiping her tears.
“You are my boss,” I grumbled.
