Where is she?

Ash texted me after the interview and demanded that I come to meet her for lunch. I’m waiting where she told me to go, a small, family owned restaurant, in the oldest part of town.

Fun fact about that: the city’s layout is pretty weird. There’s the original town, it’s cutest, filled with little, family-owned, single-story businesses and tight-nit neighborhoods. There’s a forest, one I own, surrounding half of it. The rest of the original town is surrounded by downtown. It’s a sudden change, but once you get to the city part of town all there is is skyscrapers and businesses with apartment complexes. Nothing downtown, predates thirty years.

Outside of downtown it kind of sprawls out into the cookie-cutter suburbs I hate.

Fun fact number two: the only reason I went into so much detail about the city is because I don’t want to start worrying about why Ash blackmailed me into coming here!!!

The interview was last week, but she still told me to meet her now and I don’t know why. The last time we talked, she was waiting in my car. I had just finished a long day of work and she told me when and where my interview would be. She also said that I had to meet her here, today. When she popped out of the backseat she scared the crap out of me.

What does she want now? I wish she would have just told me when she was in my car. I’ve got better stuff to be doing than this; I am a CEO after all. Why didn’t she just tell me then? Is it because she’s got demands she doesn’t think I’ll agree to, or maybe-

Creak

The front door opens. Once Ash walks in, I relax. She finally made it to the meeting she set up! How kind of her. She scans the restaurant, sees me, and then walks over. She slides into the booth across from me.

She’s too pretty. Her face is perfect, better than any sculpture or painting I’ve seen, and she has the kind of body only models do. I don’t have a problem with curvy people. I don’t have a problem with any body type, they’re all beautiful and perfect just the way they are, but I do have problems with people like her who smirk like they know they’re hotter than everyone else. That, along with the blackmailing, makes me really, and I mean really, dislike her.

“You’re late,” I inform her.

“Yeah, sorry,” she says as she pulls something out of her purse. “Got caught up in something.” She apologized?

“Why did you bring me here?” The quicker this is over with, the better.

“Geez, you don’t cut corners, do you?” She taps my leg with something.

I kick her, totally just because that’s my automatic response, and not because I’ve wanted to do that ever since I first met her.

“Ow,” she exclaims, “I was just trying to hand you something.”

I take the thing from her hand still under the table.

I lift it and take a look at it. A burner phone.

“Why?”

“Just in case someone gets their hands on your phone. They’d have nothing on me.” She pulls a receipt from her purse. “It’s under my name and my number’s the only one you’ll use.” She puts the receipt back. “If someone asks about it, tell them you found a lost phone.” She leans closer. “Once it gets back to me, I’ll say I use it to call my normal phone when I lose it.” She smiles. “Then I’ll get a new burner for you.”

“... Thank you,” I say, hearing the reluctance in my own voice.

“Expecting some dumb floozy?” she says with a smile. Her head is tilted to one side, like a confused dog. It makes the smile cute.

I wasn’t expecting a dumb floozy, but I wasn’t expecting someone this sharp either. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-”

“It’s fine.” She waves it off. “Everyone underestimates people like us.”

“People like us?”

“Pretty girls in positions of power,” she explains, head still tilted, still smiling. “I’m pretty sure it’s why you act so differently all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time I was talking to you, in the middle of our conversation, you switched personalities.” She chuckles. “Am I wrong when I say that you learned to do that because you want people to take you seriously?”

… Really?

The waiter comes over. “What can I get you ladies?” he asks politely.

“A burger with all the fixings.” Ash sends him a big smile.

“And you?” He turns towards me.

I didn’t have anything in mind, so I order the same thing.

“What do you want on it?”

“Just cheese.”

“The burgers will be brought over in no time.” He walks away.

“He was cute,” Ash says as the waiter walks away.

“Um, okay.” How am I supposed to respond to that?

After my one word response we lapse into an uncomfortable silence. It is only broken when Ash starts laughing like a hyena

“You don’t hang out with a lot of people, do you?”

“... I suppose not.” How’d she know that?

“It’s so obvious.” She gestures to me as a whole. “You’ve got no idea how to make small talk.”

I bristle. “I do!”

“Oh really. Why don’t you prove it?” She puts her elbows on the table and rests her head in her hands.

I may not talk to people a lot, but I can’t back down now; I know the basics of casual interactions.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“…What’s your favorite color?”

She snorts. “That is the most obvious icebreaker.”

“It’s still small talk!”

“Barely.”

“If you know so much about it, let’s see how good you are at it.”

“Ha! In comparison to you, anything I do will seem amazing.”

“You don’t know that. I might be really good at making small talk with people who aren’t blackmailing me. You know nothing about me.”

“Oh really?” She raises an eyebrow with a smirk. “Well-”

I have no choice but to cut her off, because she might be about to shout that I’m a supervillain. “That doesn’t count!”

“What doesn’t count?” I can’t tell if she’s confused or just rubbing it in my face that she knows my secret identity.

“The reason that I agreed to be here,” I hiss.

“Relax, that’s not what I was talking about.”

“Then what is it you think you know about me?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“I know that you’re scared of commitment.” She’s smiling like she’s the mobster in an action movie. “You’re scared of letting people down, that you have no faith in humanity, and that you don’t remember what it’s like to not be alone.”

“...” I look down as I try to deny what she’s said, but I can’t. She's right about almost everything. I don’t even want to admit most of those things.

“I’m spot on,” she states.

Maybe my poker face isn’t as good as I thought it was. “How did you figure all that out so quickly?”

“While I was in college, I was a psychology major.”

“Really?”

“The best-” She pauses to decide what to say. “Private investigators know when people are lying and hiding stuff. That knowledge gives me-”

I cut her off with, “Shh, there’s a waiter.”

I think the waiter is going to walk by us, since it’s a different waiter than the one that took our orders, but no, this waiter pulls up to us with a passive aggressive smile.

“Here’s your food.” She says as she sets a burger in front of each of us before leaning towards Ash and whispering. “If you hit on my boyfriend again, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”

The waiter then turns and leaves. Once the waitress is out of view Ash bursts into laughter.

“Oh-oh my god,” she says through her giggles. Her laugh is as loud as her, but unlike her, it is accompanied with the occasional snort. After the second snort, I start laughing too. I can’t stop myself, not when I imagine her with a pig hidden under the table.

“Okay, okay,” Ash says through the last of her giggles, “What were we talking about?”

It takes a second, but eventually I come back to my senses. “I’m not really sure, but I remember wanting to ask why you’re a private investigator even though you’ve got a psychology degree.”

She deflects. “Why do you ask? Trying to figure out if I’m your type?”

A blush runs across my face. “That’s not what I meant. I was just curious.”

“Chill out,” she says with the cute tilt-head smile. “I’m just messing with you.” She takes a bite of her burger with both hands on the bun, stuffing as much into one bite as possible.

“I know a lot about you, too.”

“What?” she asks, a hand over her mouth.

“You’re scared of what people think of you.”

She guffaws, like I just told her the funniest thing she’s ever heard before saying in a serious tone. “I think you’re projecting.”

I shake my head. “You said, ‘everyone always underestimates people like us’.”

“Nah, I don’t care what people think, it’s just better for business if they treat me as a threat”

“I do the opposite.” I think of Intelegant. “I like to use it against them.” I look at her as I say the next bit, “Regardless of how we deal with it, everyone cares about what people think.”

“Looks like you’ve been in a couple psych classes too.”

“Not really. I just watched a documentary about stuff like that.”

She leans back and a little too loudly, says, “The Jackie Smalls likes documentaries?”

“Quiet.” I glare at her.

“Fine, fine.” She raises her hands in defeat.

“To answer your question.” I continue instead of picking a fight. “A couple of months ago I got really into a documentary about the human mind and was obsessed for a few weeks.”

“What’s it called? Maybe I’ll check it out.”

“A Guide to Psychology.”

She leans closer. “I’ve actually watched that one before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was pretty cool.”

I can’t help myself. I start ranting about how good it is. “Do you remember the parts where they would show you a situation and then give you time to think about it before explaining their reasoning in detail. Those were awesome!”

“You are a giant nerd,” she states.

I blush and look down. This is why I don’t talk to people.

“It’s pretty cute.”

She probably only tacks that on because of how sad I must look. Still, even if she only said it to make me feel better, it's nice to hear someone say something kind to me.

“So.” She draws out the word. “I’ve been meaning to ask, but how do you get the stuff you fight with?”

It’s nice of her to not mention any details. If people overhear us they’ll just think I’m in a self-defense class or something.

“I make them myself.”

“No way! I thought you didn’t have-” She stops herself before mentioning my father’s superpower.

“I don’t. What I have is a lot of resources and an army of research.”

“Still,” she says, “those things are straight out of comics. How do you make them in such a short time?” Before I can respond, she asks some more questions. “Where do you test them and how do you know they’ll work?”

“Um… One question at a time please.” She’s reminding me of those kids I met after stopping Pitfall.

“How do you manage to make such unrealistic things?”

“Each one is different.” I think about stopping there, but she looks so curious that I decide to add more details. “I do a lot of research, look at my dad’s private research, and/or ask my scientists a theoretical question about it.” She looks confused, so I elaborate. “Asking questions like, ‘How would you make a freeze gun?’ is something the company does regularly. We want our employees to think outside the box.”

“Okay, but how do you make them?” She points at me.

“What do you mean?” I’m buying myself time to come up with a response, but she doesn’t call me on it.

“How do you, a regular human being, make such fantastic creations?”

“... I’ve been exposed to high-level science all my life.” I couldn’t think of a lie. “My dad loved to explain his research and I was the only one that would listen so by the time he died I knew things about science and mechanics that no one else in the world did.” Remembering the way my dad would wave his hands and jump around while explaining things makes me smile.

I bring myself back to reality before I add, “It helps that I can still look back on his research and understand his scribbles.”

“It must have been hard losing him so early in life.”

“It was.” I close my eyes as I remember that day. He went into town to get us takeout. Mom and I were sick. He was taking care of us. I was asleep when he left. woke up to my mom’s sobs. The news was on.

It was July first. The town was having the fifth ‘We’re still gay’ parade. After it finished there was supposed to be a festival in town. I remember being sad that I couldn’t go.

Dad had picked up the food but stopped on his way home to pick up something when the bomb hit.

The funny thing is, the bomb was made from his work. It was small, in the trunk of a car, but because of my dad, it still did a lot of damage.

He had worked on nuclear reactors before and he published his research. Whatever homophobic, transphobic person put it together, used that.

It was essentially a mini nuclear bomb. Whoever it was that made it, they managed to get all the supplies necessary to do it and blew everyone up.

That’s why Mom was so crazy about making it impossible to use the stuff our company produces.

The bomb took out a large amount of the town. We stayed up all night waiting to hear if he was alive or not; he died in the explosion. For years I hoped that he would come back. They never found his body, after all, and in the movies when a body isn’t found, the character usually comes back eventually. He never came back.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Ash says.