I wasn’t sure what to do with it yet.
The shower helped.
Not emotionally, exactly, but physically. The water pressure in my apartment was probably shit compared to the sleek, ridiculously expensive-looking shower attached to the office Tobias had given me, but it was still hot enough to ease some of the stiffness from my shoulders. I stood under the spray longer than I meant to, eyes closed, letting water run over my face while my brain tried and failed to arrange the day into something predictable.
Work.
It was work.
That was all.
I had a job. A real one. A wildly improbable one, sure, but still a job. People got picked up for jobs all the time, didn’t they? Maybe not by the personal assistant of a billionaire because of vague security concerns, but that was probably just what normal looked like in Tobias’s life.
Normal for him, anyway.
I washed quickly after that, scrubbing sea salt-scented shampoo through my hair and rinsing until the water ran clear. By the time I stepped out, the mirror had fogged over, blurring my reflection into something soft-edged and unfamiliar.
I wiped a circle clean with the side of my hand.
I looked as gangly as usual, just a mess of long, thin body parts and bony hips with divots that made me want to be able to inject fat only into that area so that it’d look less odd and more like a normal body.
I brushed my teeth, then stood in front of the sink for too long trying to decide what to do with my hair.
Leaving it down was easier, but it got in the way around tanks. A bun was nice, but always called for a hundred and one bobby pins and a potentially toxic amount of hairspray. I didn’t love repeating hairstyles back to back, but eventually I decided my mind was too busy already to think about it any longer. Braid it was.
So I combed through the damp strands, carefully untangling them before drawing everything over one shoulder. My hair was long enough that braiding it took actual concentration, and I had to restart twice when the sections came loose between my fingers.
By the third try, it behaved.
Mostly.
A few coppery pieces slipped free around my face, too short or too stubborn to stay tucked in, but I decided that was fine. I wasn’t going to a meeting. I was going to spend the day checking filtration systems and feeding dangerous marine animals.
Which, honestly, I still couldn’t believe was my job now. Just a month ago, I’d been preparing myself to pack everything up and retreat back home to my parents’ place in San Diego, and now I was a highly paid private aquarist for one of the richest men in Australia.
It was insane, but I knew when to quietly and happily take what I’ve been given.
I dressed in a fitted black shirt and olive shorts, then changed the shorts because I looked a little too close to cosplaying KimPossible, then changed back into them because the other pair made me look like I was trying too hard.
I stood there afterward, staring at myself in the mirror with the intense discomfort of someone who had become too aware of his own body only recently.
Sure, I’d sometimes wished it were easier to put on muscles or just weight in general, but it’d never been athing, really. It was a passing thought that quickly took a backseat to the more important things going on in my life.
It hadn’t become athinguntil after the move.
And I know that noticing my body and moving don’t seem to correlate, but when you move to a whole other country, you suddenly become insecure.
Not only because I had to learn thatarvomeans afternoon andservomeans a gas station, but also because I was completely alone.
I’d gone from living at my parents’ house to living in a dorm at university, always having friends or family around, always having someone available to answer “adult” questions about insurance, car payments, and the next best step to take.
And then I was here.
And honestly, it’d been terrifying at first.
But after a month or two, things had started settling down, and I’d been able to finally get my footing in this new place.
Just to go into panic mode when I’d begun to realize the aquarium wasn’t going to keep me on.
