Chapter 6 #2
I sipped more of my black coffee and glanced again at Quinn.
He wasn’t looking at me. His mouth was a precise straight line, and his temple ticked as he flexed his jaw.
I couldn’t read his sculpted features. I had a hunch that I embarrassed him or said something inappropriate.
This was not a new feeling for me—regretting my words—but this time, I felt remorse on his behalf.
I set the cup down and sighed. “I’m sorry.” I tried pulling my fingers through my hair but again abandoned the effort when I encountered unruly knots. “I have a bad habit of saying what I’m thinking and—”
He held his hand up and shook his head. “No—no need to apologize.” He gave me a tight smile that didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes. “You were just being…honest. It’s not the first time I’ve been called a Neanderthal.”
“You’re not a Neanderthal.” I frowned at him. “For one thing, you’re far too tall. And, I was comparing myself to a Neanderthal due to my physical features—you know, the size of my head, for one.”
“So, you’re saying your head is larger than mine?”
“Yes—no—what I mean is, they have big awkward heads, or are believed to have had big awkward heads that were too large for their body. Then, there is also the hair.”
“Hair?”
“Yes, hair. It is hypothesized that red hair…” I gestured to my crazy-town curls, “…comes from the Neanderthals interbreeding with the earliest humans.”
“So, Neanderthals and humans did breed?”
“Yes. Female humans and male Neanderthals may have bred successfully, which, if you think about it, isn’t as far-fetched because bigheaded men and small—er, normal-headed—women still breed quite often today.
But, currently, scientists believe that the male humans who mated with female Neanderthals created sterile offspring.
They believe this because there is a lack of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA present in modern humans.
So, as you can see, and if you reflect on it, awkward headed-females mating with beautifully normal headed-males is a bad idea. ”
He blinked at me once, frowned, then turned his attention to his coffee.
Unbearable silence lay like a thick blanket of fog around us.
I figured he was regretting his decision to invite me to breakfast. I thought about comparing myself to a donkey and him to a horse, but instead bit my lip to keep from speaking.
I noted his cheeks, neck, and the bridge of his nose were tinged with a faint shade of pink, likely due to annoyance with my fumbled conversation.
I searched my brain for anything that would distract him.
An abrupt thought came to me and, for lack of a better strategy, I decided to resort to a parlor trick that usually either amazed people or endeared me to them.
It would also be an excellent demonstration of my freakishness, but I didn’t really have anything to lose.
I licked my lips before speaking. “So, uh, want to see a trick?”
He shrugged his shoulders, his tone unenthusiastic. “Sure.”
I turned in my seat to face him, resting my elbow and arm along the counter. “Give me any two numbers and I can give you their value in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.”
He turned toward me and met my gaze with a disbelieving one of his own. “What—in your giant brain?”
I noted that he sounded interested more than sardonic, which I felt was an improvement, but I chose to ignore his giant brain comment. “Yes, in my brain. No paper.”
His mouth hooked to the side just barely. “Any two numbers?”
I nodded once. “Try me.”
He turned his body to me completely, and I tried to ignore how his legs bumped into me, one of his knees settling between mine as we faced each other. “Hmmm...” his gaze narrowed speculatively. “Ok, four hundred and seven hundred.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Here you go: addition—1100; subtraction—negative 300; multiplication—280,000; division—.57 yada yada yada. Ok, give me a hard one now.”
He blinked at me, his mouth slightly open, then he smiled a small albeit real smile and rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Fine, a hard one then: twenty-one and five-thousand-one-hundred-twenty-four.”
I let out a breath of relief; our earlier unpleasantness seemingly forgotten. “Ok, in the same order as before, the answers are 5145, 5103, 107,604, and .004 yada yada yada. That wasn’t a hard one, either.”
He half-laughed half-sighed. “How do you do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just always been able to. It comes in handy on Thursdays.”
“What happens on Thursdays?”
“I tutor math and science at the Kids’ Club on Thursday afternoons.
Sometimes, if I can’t get them to focus, I distract them with my ‘freakishness.’” I used air quotes for the word freakishness then frowned at myself for doing so.
I hated it when people used air quotes. It was like when someone says ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’ As in, ‘We would be so delighted… we just did the laundry… we have a yeast infection.’
“Why did they downsize you? It seems like you would make an incredible accountant.”
“I don’t know that either. My friend Kat—she still works there—she was going to try to find out but hasn’t been able to for some reason.”
He took a sip of his coffee and said, “Has anyone else been let go?”
“No. I’m the only one. But you have to admit, I’m pretty strange.
Maybe they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me.
I have a tendency to make people uncomfortable with—you know— the plethora of trivial facts.
” I was about to air quote ‘freakishness’ again but successfully suppressed the urge to do so.
“Hmm.” His clear blue eyes narrowed as they studied me. “Are you…?” He set his cup down and leaned a little closer. “Do you have a photographic memory?”
I laughed despite myself, mostly from nervousness due to his proximity.
“No—God, no. I’d forget my name if it weren’t on my driver’s license.
” Then I frowned at the inaccuracy of my statement.
“Actually, I don’t have a driver’s license since I moved to the city, but my name is on my credit card and my state ID, so that helps. ”
He continued to survey me for a long minute, and then he asked, “Have you found a job yet?”
I shook my head and rolled my lips between my teeth. Even though it had only been a week and a half, and I was eligible for unemployment, I felt anxiety about being out of work.
He reached for his coffee and watched me over the rim of the cup as though he were considering something, or more specifically, considering me for something.
When he put his cup down, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card and a pen.
“I think I might be able to help you.” He wrote a name and number on the back of the business card.
“What? Do you think I should get into the security business? I am pretty tall for a girl. And I can be fierce when I need to be.”
He tilted his head to the side in a gesture that I was becoming used to, and then he handed me the card.
“I don’t doubt it, but my company always needs someone good in the business office.
” He closed his pen and set it on the counter.
“I’ve written down the name and number of our director of business operations.
You should call him; send him your resume.
I can get you the interview if you want, but you’ll have to get the job on your own. ”
Viki returned with our food as I studied the card. I turned it between my fingers and read the front:
Quinn Sullivan
Cypher Systems, Inc.
Under his name was his phone number and business email address.
I flipped the card to the back and stared at his handwriting rather than the name and number he’d written.
His letters were all capitals, severe and precise; he put little dashes through his sevens but not through his zeros; his words were in a straight line rather than drifting up or down in the absence of lined paper.
I liked his handwriting. I imagined reading a handwritten letter from him. I thought about him writing it—about taking the time to think of me enough to want to sit and write something to me. It made a volcano of warmth erupt in my stomach.
When I looked up, he was frowning at me, his gaze guarded. “Of course you don’t have to apply if you don’t want to.”
I placed my hand on his arm without thinking.
“Oh, no, I’m going to apply. Really, thank you.
Thank you for thinking of me.” His eyes moved to my fingers, and I withdrew my hand quickly and tried to tuck my hair behind my ears as I turned to the plate of greasy food left by Viki.
I stared at the plate for a moment before I spoke.
“I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me, last night and this morning, and now this.
” I gestured to the card on the counter.
I met and held his gaze as I added with a thankful smile, “You’re a really nice guy. ”
His frown deepened as though I’d just insulted him. His attention moved over my face, hair, and neck, and then he sighed and looked upward in an almost stealthy eye-roll.
He mostly mumbled, “I’m not that nice.”
Despite one more extremely awkward moment when Quinn wanted to give me a ride home on his motorcycle and I somewhat freaked out, stubbornly refused, and insisted on taking a cab, the rest of our morning together was actually really nice.
Rather, more precisely, it was as nice as it could be considering I spent most of the time distracted, attempting to think of a way to get him shirtless again.
During one weak moment, I contemplated throwing my coffee at him.
Later that night, as I lay on the couch in Elizabeth’s apartment trying to concentrate on reading my book and failing miserably, I thought about my debate with Quinn about the motorcycle. If he’d offered to drive me home in a car I likely would have said yes.
As it was, he owned a motorcycle.