Chapter 6
six
. . .
She’s supposed to delete it when she opens her phone to doom scroll instead of finishing her timesheet. But the text seems familiar. As if someone with lush brown eyes and a permanent scowl had written it under torture.
Unknown: Do you know if brown walls and green couches will look stupid?
Tanner: Good morning, Akilah
Tanner: I’m well, thank you! How are you
Unknown: Tanner.
Tanner: Yes
Unknown: I need your help.
Tanner frowns, goes to call.
Unknown: Don’t call me.
Tanner: Are you going to tell me what you want?
Unknown: Are you free?
Tanner: For what?
Akilah: To do it. The whole design is because she keeps glaring at me, but not in the way you glare at me.
Akilah: She’s not listening to a word I say.
Akilah: I’m trying to be nice.
Akilah: I’ve been smiling with every word to make her like me, but she doesn’t like me.
Akilah: I know it’s late, and I’m difficult, but we can negotiate a different fee.
Tanner: You don’t want me to do it.
It’s a little petty, but she can’t drop everything because she likes the way Akilah looks at her.
It takes her a moment to note the entire message.
Does Akilah think she’s difficult, or has people made her feel that way?
So far, Tanner knows she needs direct questions and for people not to stare at her. A child could do that.
Akilah: I wanted it to be you the moment I saw you.
Tanner: Will I get a drink this time?
Akilah: Put it in your contract.
Tanner smiles. She’s not sure if Akilah is flirting with her, or if they’re just going to be friends. Either way, she doesn’t hate the idea of spending the day with her.
Tanner: I’m putting cake into it, too
Tanner: And I’m joining the union
Akilah: Anything else?
Tanner: I’m on my way
With an extra spritz of perfume, Tanner walks into Akilah’s office.
“You’re fucking joking,” she mutters. Akilah is sitting on the edge of her desk, the same place Tanner was a few weeks ago.
Head tilted as she reads a book on colour theory.
Fitted black trousers that flare in all the right places, and a shirt that is somehow remaining closed as it lies unbuttoned against her bare chest. The sliver of skin is going to haunt her dreams.
Tanner is here on official business. Nothing more. Certainly nothing less. Nothing that justifies the way she’s imagining sliding the shirt to the ground. She’s not sure she wants to think about it, knowing that Akilah wouldn’t want that.
“Morning.”
Akilah shoots her head up, snaps her book closed in her palm.
“Hey.”
She must follow Tanner’s gaze to her bare skin, and her eyes widen.
“Oh.” She closes a few of the bottom buttons.
“Sorry. I got distracted.” Tanner could believe her.
Or she could enjoy the way this could have all been a way to seduce her, and it’s working terribly well.
She doubts that’s true because Akilah has had her number for a whole week and hasn’t texted her beyond this morning.
“Should we start, or is there another level to you being half-naked?” Tanner asks. Akilah walks behind her desk. The furrow in her brow isn’t displeased — just there, open and plain.
“Are you upset?” Akilah asks.
“No.”
She nods. “Okay.” She reaches for something beneath her desk and pulls out a cold can of Coke and a cupcake from the cafe they were at last week.
They don’t deliver, so Tanner is going to imagine Akilah running out to get it for her.
Possibly red velvet. God, she’s practically proposing.
She places it on a coaster in front of her.
Tanner has spent the past week trying and failing to think about anything else. She went to yoga, went for a run that almost killed her, and cooked a roast. It was a whole lot of nothing. But still she found Akilah in the back of her mind, as if poised to strike.
Tanner reaches for the drink, and her fingers graze Akilah’s as she attempts to pull back. Little sparks of electricity shoot up her arm where she’s been touched. They root themselves hard and fast to her bones, her stomach, her legs.
Akilah blushes as she sits down. “You’re not wearing glasses today.”
Tanner reaches for them in her hair, finds they’re not there. Rats. Blinks a few times. Oh.
“I have contacts in.”
“Mh-hmm.”
Tanner gets her tablet, her notebook, and two pens. Smooths down the front of her shirt and counts to ten in her head as Akilah watches her movements.
“Do you want me to put them on?”
Akilah blushes furiously, frowns like she knows Tanner is doing it on purpose.
“I think my concentration would be better if you didn’t.”
Oh, this is going to be fun.
--
“Akilah,” Tanner says as softly as she can. “I can’t break it down anymore. Can you tell me what’s stopping you from making a decision?”
“They’re both nice.”
“Okay. Then let’s go with this one,” she replies, circling the option she thinks Akilah dislikes the most. Akilah’s nose scrunches up. She’s not difficult. She’s delightfully easy, wrapped up in a body that doesn’t know how to see herself as anything but.
Akilah chews on her lip. “I’m – I like the other one more.”
Tanner hums. “I knew it. We’re nailing this. Aren’t you glad you picked me! I can’t believe you prefer my glares to everyone else.”
“You’re the only person that I knew would say yes.”
“Oh.” The admission hits Tanner in the chest, but she doesn’t show it. She swallows it; lets it simmer through her bones. Doesn’t speak until it’s a slight ache tucked beneath her ribs. She holds her jaw tight, breathes through the nonchalance and moves past it.
“With this design, we could take the wall out next to the bar. It would open it up enough that the darkness of the walls wouldn’t feel oppressive.”
“I don’t know,” Akilah replies, eyes downturned but pretty. Though the truth is, Akilah is always pretty. Tanner knows this because she has eyes, and she finds women pretty. And she likes pretty women like Akilah, even when she looks like she’s about to dash out of here and never see her again.
“Okay.” Tanner can figure it out without her. Akilah frowns. Not at her, it’s never at her.
Because sure, Akilah is all sharp cheekbones and piercing eyes and an ever-present air of mild exasperation, but it works for her. Really works for her.
“I can’t read your mind,” Tanner says as she rubs her forehead, an hour later, when Akilah reorganises her pens again.
Something has changed. Akilah isn’t giving her anything anymore.
They’ve barely gotten past the structural changes, let alone the things Akilah might want to input on.
Tanner’s been researching. Small clues Akilah has given her.
The internet thinks she could be autistic, but she’ll wait for Akilah to tell her if she wants.
The basic things she’s been trying out seemed to work, until right now.
“I won’t be offended if you don’t like an idea,” she says. “Tell me the bits you do like.”
“I don’t want to be rude.”
“I’ll live if you are. Can you be as honest as when you told me I was literally your last resort?” Tanner asks. Akilah groans slightly, then tightens her shoulders like she didn’t mean it.
Tanner is being pettier than she would normally be.
It’s not Akilah’s fault that she puts all her self-worth into what she can offer people.
She won’t know that Tanner knowing she’s the only choice is how her life has always gone.
She’d be invited to the cinema because they needed to make up numbers.
Or she’d be asked to go on a trip because she’s the only one who could drive.
“I don’t know,” Akilah replies, standing up. She shakes her hands out, pushing her hair behind her shoulder.
“Can you sit down?” Tanner snaps, ignoring the way Akilah’s shoulders tense. She regrets it instantly. Akilah spins around, all at once guarded and stoic. Her arms cross over her body, and she seems to grow an inch.
Tanner runs her hand over her forehead. “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t—” think this is a good idea. Think this is going to work. Think I can get over you not wanting me here.
“I don’t know how to focus when you’re mad at me,” Akilah replies. She taps her fingers against her biceps. Refusing to look directly at her. “I have no idea how to care about arches and neon lights when you won’t look at me.”
Tanner sinks back into her chair with a frown. “I am looking at you. I’m not mad.”
Akilah looks at her properly.
“Tanner.” It’s a soft word, but the look on her face is anything but. “I don’t want to be rude to you. I didn’t mean to be. What did I do?”
“You only asked me here because you had no one else to ask.”
Akilah frowns. “I meant that you were the only person who would say yes, but that’s not how I came to the conclusion.”
Tanner furrows her brow, and Akilah continues.
“I knew you’d say yes because you’re kind and you would help me because you care about this place even though you’ve only been once. You smile when I’m difficult, and you laugh when I’m rude, like you know I’m not trying to be.”
She’s not difficult. God, Tanner wants her to know that, but she can’t breathe.
“You were the first person that came to my mind because I was already thinking about you.”
“Oh.”
Akilah shuffles in place. “I have autism, and I find it difficult to know what people are thinking, and I’m even worse at saying the right thing.
I don’t like to be touched or looked at, and I’m terrible at reading social cues.
I would have liked to meet you at a different time when I wasn’t at risk of losing everything I worked hard for.
Perhaps then I would be better at this.”
“You would?”
Akilah walks around to the front of the desk and perches on it next to her.
She’s taller than her, but it doesn’t feel overbearing.
She leans with her head tilted back and her eyes closed.
Tanner tries to be reasonable. She doesn’t need this contract, and Akilah will find someone else in time.
She tries to decide whether three seconds is enough time to decide whether she wants Akilah in her life.
“Yes,” Akilah replies. “High chances it would have turned out exactly like this either way. I’m not particularly easy to like.”
Tanner tries to pretend she didn’t know the answer the moment she saw her, tries to pretend her answer would ever change.
Tanner smiles. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
Akilah’s jaw tightens, but it’s different this time. The sparkle in her eye, that she’d probably maim her for pointing out, is back. “Stop doing that.”
Her smile doesn’t drop. “What?”
“Distracting me with your face.” Akilah is entirely aggravating, relentlessly opaque … but her response is so entirely her that Tanner couldn’t find it in herself to be mad.
“I didn’t do anything! You said you wanted me to look at you.”
Akilah looks down, the possibility of a smile on her face, but Tanner won’t call her out right now. “You’re smiling.”
Tanner wants to reach out and run her finger over her tensed hands, but she doesn’t. She won’t do anything she doesn’t want her to do.
“Do you want me to hide my face?”
“Yes.” Tanner laughs even as Akilah’s face shows no sign of a joke. Then she looks at her — eye contact for a split second and turns away with her jaw clenched. It’s not a game to Akilah, but Tanner can make it easier for her.
Tanner covers her face with her hands.
“Hey,” she whispers. She can’t see her, but Akilah lets out a puff of air. There’s no way she doesn’t find her hilarious. “We’re going to make it work.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Tanner smiles even though Akilah can’t see it. “Are you working all this week?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “But the answer can be no, if you need it to be.”
Tanner swallows. “I have some ideas.”
“You can lower your hands,” Akilah says, softer than she’s spoken before. Tanner does, and Akilah’s face is back to normal.
“We need to meet outside of the club for it to work.”
Akilah squares her shoulders. “Will I get a drink?”
Tanner smiles brightly, knows that it’s a win, and makes a note to pick some locations.
“It’s not in your contract. You should have negotiated.”