Page 2 of Eight Steps to Alpha

She shook her head, grabbed her glass of water, but her eyes took on an analytical edge. “You’re right. It’s silly.” She set down her glass, and laid her napkin in her lap. “Be yourself, Elli. When the right girl comes along, she’ll love you just the way you are.”

Glancing back at the TV, he took in the score for the baseball game, but something about her words bothered him. “I don’t like that answer,” he muttered.

Because at twenty-four, Elliot was sick of waiting around. He’d put in his time, paid his dues, and moved half way across the US to unbury himself from the shadow which kept everyone from seeing him. “Do you—" But he stopped himself, trying to form the sentence just right. “And what I mean by you,” he corrected, “is the entire female species—want men like that?” He tilted his head toward her e-reader, where the cover to her latest romance novel stared up at him. “Like the guys in your romance novels?” He snatched the tablet away from her fingers, pulled up her library, and began swiping through the content of her device. “Finding Dominic? Chasing Fin?” He laughed. “Do you really get off on this stuff?”

She seized the e-reader away from him and tucked it quickly back in her purse. “They’re fun, that’s all. An escape from reality. I’d probably throat punch half of them in person.”

He actually chuckled, because he had no doubt she spoke the truth. Fe may have been a slight in stature, but she was a girl fitting of her name. Fe, the element for iron. His little iron woman.

He pushed forward in his seat, bracing his forearms on the table. “You could help me you know.” His eyes narrowed with a sense of determination. “Help me to be more like them.”

Her eyebrows pinched together, and she shook her head. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, and trust me, you’ve had a lot of them.”

Holding her stare, he didn’t let up. “Mary will be out of the office for four weeks.”

“So?”

“I thought while she was gone…” But he stopped. Because that familiar voice filled his ears again. That awful echo of a voice he’d been trying to run away from his whole life. That he wasn’t good enough. That he was kidding himself. He let out a breath. “Never-mind.” He took a long gulp of sweet tea, then glanced back to the TV in the corner of the room. But when he met Fe’s eyes again, there was a funny look on her face.

“Why?” she asked suddenly. “Why do you want her so badly if she doesn’t notice you?”

He scrunched up this face. “Does there have to be a reason?”

“I guess not.” She shrugged. “Not for most men anyway, but we’re talking about you.”

Suddenly hating the fact she knew him so well, he leaned forward. “Fine. I guess if I’m honest with myself, I’m tired of being the nice guy. Maybe for once in my life, I want to be noticed.”

Her jaw tightened, and he wondered what she was thinking. If she was jealous, or hurt, or cared at all that he was interested in another girl.

He stared down at the table and shook his head. “But you know what? I don’t just want to be not noticed. I want that girl to want me too. To think I’m so irresistible, she has fantasies about me, to be so affected by my presence, she can’t think straight when I sit too close her. I want to be that guy. Just once.”

He let out a breath and tossed a garlic fry into his mouth. “Or maybe I’ve just had a bad day. It could also be that” He buried his face in his hands and chuckled, even though nothing he’d said was amusing to him in the slightest. He raked his hands over his scalp and glanced up at Fe again.

Like an emotional knee jerk, he suddenly regretted everything he’d said. Fe, who was the least emotional girl he’d ever met, was now staring back at him with a look on her face like she might cry.

Before he could say another word, she pushed herself from her seat and tore her headphones from around her neck. She stood with her legs braced apart, like she had something important to say, and then suddenly, both of her hands were fondling his chin length hair. “We could cut it.” She urged. “Mess it up a little.” She ran her fingers through his hair, moving it away from his face. “Can you grow a beard?” Her eyes narrowed. “How about contacts?” She plucked his black framed glasses from his nose and tossed them on the table.

He wasn’t sure what to make of this, or what to say for that matter. She continued to turn his face this way and that, studying him in a way one would a ripe watermelon at the grocery store.

He pushed her hands away, finally having had enough. “What’s gotten into you? Of course, I can grow a beard. I’m a man, Fe. Men grow beards. That’s what we do.” He anchored his black-framed-glasses back on his nose, but his voice cracked a little. “Do chicks really dig beards? I thought they hated that stuff?”

She tilted her head, continuing to examine him, and proceeded to sit down in her seat. “Not beards per se… Stubble. A five o’clock shadow. It makes men ten times hotter.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded with a grin. “It’s science.”

He shook his head, slightly amused by her impish expression. Everything was science to Fe. Everything.

Pulling a legal pad of paper from her bag, she started to write. “First things first, we need a list.”

“A list?” He laughed, “Like the ones plastered all over our refrigerator door?”

She nodded, moving her tablet out of his line of sight.

“And what will this list say?” he asked, leaning forward.

She bit the cap off the pen and spit it on the center of the table. “Number one.” She wrote in bold letters. “Learn. How. To. Cuss.”

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