Page 37 of Obey

My boss, and probably the closest thing I have to a friend, Slade, asked who I was eating with, and I said no one. Realistically, she isn’t anyone. I’ve known her for less than forty eight hours, I’ve had meals last longer than my interaction with this woman. Why’s she so crushed?

Is she so starved for attention she fixates on anyone who shows it to her? She can’t be attracted to my winning personality. What the hell is this woman’s damage? What did he do to her?

The more I pay attention to her, her gaze falling to the floor, her quivering chin, her trembling fingers as she picks up her food, the more I realize she’s probably been hurt before. She’s clearly upset. And I don’t like that maybe I had something to do with that. Itwaskind of a jerkish thing to call her no one. But that slight rejection from a damn near stranger derailed her.

That fucker. Flexing my fingers under the table, I want to destroy him. The rage surging through my veins like a live wiremakes my knee jump. I want to pound on his face with my fist until he’s unrecognizable.

He’s not a murderer, at least not that I know of, but he’s such a scumbag it wouldn’t surprise me if he was. He’d deserve whatever punishment I could bestow on him. I know that for damn sure.

Talia seems to be pure hearted, and kind; sure, she talks too much and she is irritatingly upbeat and positive, but she’s a good person. And watching her wilt in front of me revives my determination to destroy her ex.

I make light work of ending the call with Slade before trying to come up with something to draw her back into my space. “Would you rather have skin that changes color based on your emotions, or tattoos that appear all over your body depicting what you did yesterday?”

Her head snaps up. “Excuse me?”

“I said, would you rather have skin that changes color based on your emotions, or tattoos that appear all over your body depicting what you did yesterday?”

She tilts her head. “You don’t have to do that.”

The sigh that comes out of my body is so heavy it makes the table cloth and napkin flutter. “I don’t have to, I want to. Yes, you heard me tell my boss you’re no one. After knowing people for a day, that’s a pretty normal reaction.”

She flinches.

“That’s not to say you’re a bad person. Or I don’t like you. I don’t know you.” I shrug, hoping to convey my nonchalance. It’s not personal, it’s no big deal, it’s just I don’t know her from Adam.

She holds my stare for a long moment, and I’ll be damned if I don’t want to kiss her. She licks her lower lip like she’s thinking the same thing. “Color changing skin. I’ve never been allowed to get tattoos, my parents always forbade them so I made dowith glittery temporary tattoos where they wouldn’t see. I don’t think I’d want my whole body covered in tattoos of what I did yesterday. That would be terribly boring.”

Her eyes flit to my arms where she’s seen pieces of my ink before. “Would you choose tattoos?” Her tongue curls her bottom lip back. It’s like she’s deliberately drawing my attention to her mouth.

“Nah. You’re right. Too boring. I’d go with the color changing skin but since I don’t have many emotions, that would be boring, too.”

She shakes her head before taking a giant bite of her sandwich. She may be small, but she sure can fit a lot in that mouth.

Oh, fuck.

I swallow a groan with a mouthful of bacon.

We eat in silence. I pretend to ignore when she squirts ketchup all over her sweatshirt, even if she looks like she might cry. “I’m definitely going to need to do laundry.” She balls up the shirt like it did her dirty.

“I’ve got an extra.” It takes a beat before it hits me. “Okay, so it’ll probably come down to your knees, but I’ve got a hoodie upstairs you can borrow.”

That settles her back into silence. When a notification disrupts the quiet, I pull out my phone and start tracking orders for work. There's a shipping update for parts that have been delayed. The snowstorm is going to put me behind schedule, even with my scheduled trip out of town. Weather reports say it’s due to start clearing tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll tack on another day to be sure and hope the car parts start to arrive at the shop by then.

When we finish up, Talia opts to stick around for a while reading her book and drinking the world’s biggest hot cocoa I’veever seen. I don’t want to disturb her by making calls, so I step into the lobby.

Chasing down car parts and rescheduling customers isn’t my job, but my front of house person is out on her honeymoon, so I’ve got to run the gauntlet of talking to people. It’s an exhausting twenty minutes. My clients are all very nice people, but talking to this many of them is a lot for one day.

Hell, talking to even a single one of them is a lot for one day.

I’m going to head upstairs to shower. I need to wash off all the ‘being social’ from my skin. I should tell Half-Pint where I’m going so she doesn’t believe I braved the elements to get away from her. Going by what little I know of her, she would probably think just that.

She’s not at the table where we were. A quick scan of the room leaves me unsurprised to find her at the table of old ladies who are all knitting or crocheting shit.

She’s not sitting down, at least not yet. She’s helping the server clear the table of all the afternoon tea remnants. She’s chattering away to the server, who seems only too happy to have an extra set of hands. I bet the weather has left them somewhat shorthanded here.

It’s sweet of Talia to be so considerate. Midwesterners are nice, but there’s certainly something to be said for Southern hospitality. Has she done this before? She’s carrying so many plates, and other than her face being screwed up in intense concentration, she looks wholly at ease.

When she emerges from the door to the kitchen, one of the old ladies, with hair as blue as Talia’s, beckons her to sit with them. She hesitates for a moment before smoothing down the front of her shirt and taking a seat.

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