Page 71 of Castings & Curses

He had been one of those good-looking but slender kids in high school. It didn’t stop the girls from cooing over his muscles, but it looked like in my years away, those muscles had muscles of their own.

“Are you going to just sit there or come give me a hug?” He teased.

I made a production of getting to my feet, making sure to really push the belly out in front of me. I was playing this for sympathy. It was lost on the man. He leaned over and squeezed. It was a great big bear of a hug, but not so much that he got my middle involved.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he lied.

“Ash Weiss, are you seriously going to look at me in my monstrously pregnant glory and tell me I haven’t changed?”

“You’re still short and round.” He bopped me on the nose.

I rolled my eyes. “I forgot I hated you,” I moaned.

“Yeah, ya do.” He crossed the kitchen and opened a cupboard and pulled out a glass before opening the fridge and filling it with lemonade.

“I can’t believe you still act like this is your place.”

“Your sister doesn’t seem to mind. And besides, Nan sent me over.” He parked himself across the kitchen table from where I had been sitting moments before.

“Does she need anything?”

“She told me that you needed a job.”

I was perplexed. Where had she gotten that idea? She wasn’t wrong, but I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. I didn’t know if I wanted to stick around here or not. And if I was going to stick around, I definitely needed a job.

I was never good at keeping my emotions off my face. I must have had a blank ‘huh?’ all over me.

“Don’t give me that look. Like you could be a fireman. No. Nan said you used to be some kind of graphics designer, and well, I need help.”

“Sure, yeah, I was a designer. I mean, I am a designer. Ah…”

“What?”

“My laptop broke. So unless you have a computer I can use, I’m not going to be much help to you.”

A wide grin spread over Ash’s face. “I have a computer, I have a color printer. I have a project. And I can pay.”

“Well, that’s probably a good thing. Why do you need a designer for the fire department?”

Ash leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of lemonade. “Every year we put out a thematic fundraising calendar. The past few years, the printing company provided design services. They charged us a pretty penny. But we more than make up for it in online sales. They no longer are doing the design part, and told me I needed to hire a designer. We have a huge international following, it’s crazy. I can’t not put out a calendar this year.”

That still didn’t explain why he was trying to hire me, unless…

“Nan put you up to this, didn’t she? She didn’t say I was looking for a job just as you happened to need a designer. I bet she said instead of paying the printer, you pay me. Am I right?”

Ash shrugged. “Well, you aren’t wrong.”

“Tell me about the calendar,” I said with a sigh of resignation. Nan was involved, and that woman always managed to get her way. I didn't have any reason to struggle over it, it would happen either way. Maybe that’s how she did it, created a reputation and expectation, and everyone just resigned themselves to it.

“Does that mean you’ll do the job?” He asked eagerly.

“As long as you can provide a computer, so I can access my programs in the cloud, then yes, I’ll do it.”

“But you don’t even know what it’s about.”

“Seriously Ash?” It was my turn to cross to the fridge for a drink. This time I didn’t play up the barge-ness of my condition. “It’s a fireman's calendar. It’s all beefcake and muscles halfway in your gear. I’m not dumb. You aren’t going to have an international following of your calendar if it was geared toward kids. Pecs and pets are a thing. So do you have a theme for this year? Posing with puppies from an animal shelter?”

He let out a hearty chuckle. “We do that at the annual Chicken Holiday Fest. We have a ninety percent adoption rate.”

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