Chapter 1 #2
“Ma’am. My partner is bullying me. I think I should be permitted to work alone,” I say.
She frowns, and I realize I’ve broken her happy-go-lucky smile. If I’d known it would be this easy, I would have done it before this.
“He’s not being bullied. He’s a party pooper and doesn’t want to play, so he’s, uh… joking with you. Please ignore anything and everything he says,” Gabriel tells her as I see Michaels rushing over.
“That’s the one I warned you about,” Michaels says.
My eyebrow lifts at this statement. “Oh? Why do I feel delighted that you spoke of me? What did you tell her? That I was magical? Thank you, Sgt. Michaels, but I’m taken,” I say as I stare at the clipboard I’ve been given. The only thing on it is a blank piece of paper with a pen attached.
Alana decides she wants no part of this and turns to address the room.
“So when I hand a picture to partner one, partner two should not turn around and look at it. Partner one will have a picture and partner two will have a blank piece of paper. Partner one will describe what they are seeing on their picture without saying what it is. Then partner two will draw what they think it is. You need to be able to rely on your coworkers and show your listening and comprehension skills. You’ll only have two minutes. Any questions?”
No one has any, which is surprising with Chris’s comprehension skills, so she tells us to begin.
Jesse wastes no time. “Okay, so it’s really long and tall.”
“Okay,” I say as I start to sketch it out. I should get a gold star for immediately participating… and a nap.
“At the top there’s like a lip where people can stand and observe.”
“Got it.”
“At the base you have some landscaping that wraps around it with only a path for people to walk through to enter the… place—”
“You have ten seconds,” Alana announces.
“Okay, uhhh… there are a lot of windows. I feel like I’m making this too easy. Is this too easy? Am I giving away more than I’m supposed to?”
“The moment you told me it was long, I already knew what it was.”
“Of course you did,” Jesse says as she calls the time.
“Now turn around and show your partner what image you were looking at before the other partner shows their artwork. If your partner was extremely far off, think about whether it was a lack of communication or a lack of listening.”
“Definitely not a lack of listening.” I turn around to face Jesse, who shows me a skyscraper with an outlook at the top. “I think I got it spot on,” I say as I display my art to him.
Jesse bites back a noise that makes Gabriel and Matthew look over at us. “I think this was definitely a lack of listening.”
“What the hell did he draw?” Gabriel asks.
“I don’t know, he actually did quite well,” Jesse says as he flashes them his skyscraper before I show them my artwork.
Gabriel’s expression alone pleases me greatly. “Oh my god, Liam! Why? We’re at work!”
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, scrutinizing my skyscraper.
“You drew a dick.”
“Where?” I ask as I eye the very phallic-looking skyscraper.
“I don’t see it. There’s the door. And those are bushes.
He said there was landscaping. How many dicks have a place for people to sightsee?
And that tip style was just like… for the wind.
Skyscrapers are all designed around being able to handle the wind. ”
“Looks like it can handle more than the wind,” Matthew mutters.
“Would anyone like to share their drawing and talk about their process with their partner?” Alana asks.
Weirdly enough, my arm only makes it halfway up before Gabriel pins one arm down and Jesse pins the other.
Like why the hell did they bully me into participating, and then when I beautifully contribute, I’m bullied into staying quiet?
Alana’s eyes are right on us. She sees the bullying. She recognizes all the signs signaling that I need help. Michaels is panicked, and he’s trying to position himself between me and her to break our eye contact and my cry for help.
“Liam, would you like to share?” she asks.
“Thank you, I would absolutely love to. There’s actually nothing I would enjoy more. Jesse, please come. I couldn’t have made this masterpiece without you and insist that you’re by my side. It was your talented words that kept my pen moving.”
“I don’t want to,” Jesse whispers.
“Jesse is a little shy,” I explain as I reach out and interlock his fingers with mine. I am not against physical touch if it means terrorizing the other person. He looks quite concerned now but still not as concerned as Gabriel.
“Liam, don’t you dare,” Gabriel murmurs before deciding that he has to take this into his own hands. “I’d really like to go first!”
“After Liam, we’d love to see yours,” she says as Gabriel gives me imploring eyes.
The problem is… he isn’t aware how much I’m loving this. They torture me, so I shall torture them back. They wanted me here, after all.
“Jesse, stand tall… I mean…” I grimace a little at his lack of height and he glowers at me.
“Ha,” he mumbles before holding up the picture. “I had a picture of a skyscraper which I recited perfectly to Liam who knew just what to draw. And what he drew does not reflect on me at all. Please don’t fire me.”
“With Jesse’s clear communication and my superior listening skills, I was able to draw a perfect rendition of a skyscraper,” I say. Michaels hovers near me like he’s prepared to throw his body in front of my artwork as I hold it up high for all to see.
Alana looks at it and smiles. “That’s fantastic. You both did a wonderful job,” she praises while she looks at the second skyscraper I’d done on the back of the sheet of paper.
Jesse whips around to see what’s so fantastic about my phallusscraper and is likely disappointed I didn’t show it off.
“You’re so proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Jesse mutters.
“Very. Thank you for asking.”
Once that atrocity is done, I assume we should be good to receive our lunch and call it a day, but no. She informs us this is just the first of five hell-filled activities.
“I want you to get in groups of ten!” she directs.
The four of us group up, which I really think is close enough to ten, but then Chris comes trotting over with a smile on his face like he thinks we’re going to give him a warm welcome. It isn’t long before Penny joins us, and right on her heels is Donna, which makes me grimace.
If one asked me why I dislike Donna, I would simply have to explain that she took a bite of Gabriel’s pie.
If one asked if she took a bite without permission, I would refuse to answer.
It’s not the fact that she was allowed to eat his pie; it’s that the pie was only for Gabriel and me and she tainted it.
She will never be forgiven.
Before long, we have ten people, some of whom I’ve worked with for years but haven’t bothered to remember their names.
And when Donna first settles in beside me, Gabriel does this strange move where he places himself between me and Donna and forces Matthew to my right, as though he thinks I can’t work well with others.
He really is so cute.
“I’m going to set a rope in the middle, and I want everyone to blindfold yourselves,” Alana says.
“We did this last night, didn’t we, Gabriel?” I ask.
Matthew and Jesse start laughing but Gabriel gives me a look, although he can’t hide the amused expression on his face.
Honestly, he loves me.
“Blindfolds on!” Alana calls, and I pull mine on, as does everyone else.
“Now when I say go, you’re going to grab your rope and make it into a square shape which you’ll set on the ground.
I want to see you relying on each other even when you can’t see.
You have to have faith in each other. You have two minutes, starting now! ”
Someone must dive down to grab the rope because Gabriel is suddenly feeding it to me. I pull it toward me and reach out to smack around on Matthew’s face for a second before I begin to wrap it around his neck.
“That’s my throat!”
“I’m sorry, the moment I lost my vision and this rope was fed into my hands, my hands started working automatically. Strangling you was all I could think about,” I say.
Matthew rudely grabs it before I can wrap it around his neck, and when I try to gently wrap it around his wrists, I’m told that it won’t make a square at the rate I’m going.
Even so, we end up with our perfect square on the ground well before the two-minute mark is up, telling me that I would have had plenty of time to choke Matthew just a little bit.
When we take our blindfolds off, everyone gets to witness how beautiful Gabriel made his line and how crooked Donna made hers. Like did she come into work inebriated?
After a few more shapes, none of which involve wrapping it around Matthew’s neck, we are finally free of our blindfold and rope as I question what exactly this taught us—that Donna wouldn’t know what a straight line was even if it bit her in the ass?
“Are we done?” I whisper to Gabriel. “Please. Gabriel. I can’t take much more. My body… it hurts.”
“You’re going to survive.”
“I touched Matthew.”
“Yeah because you were trying to fucking off me when you thought no one was looking!” Matthew complains. “Do I have rope burns on my neck?”
“Has your neck always been so long?” I ask.
“What the fuck is wrong with my neck?” he cries as he clasps his hands around his neck.
Jesse pulls Matthew’s hands down. “Your neck is perfect the way it is.”
I offer my sweets a smile. “Look at me. Wingman of the year. It only took some minor near-death situations not at all caused by me,” I say, proud of myself.
Jesse, who is trying to play the “I’ve never been with a man so I can’t be with Matthew even though he makes me feel tingly inside” card, scowls at me. I merely smile back at him. You’d think after working with me for this many years, these people would recognize that their misery fuels me.