7. Unpretty
Unpretty
Look at this fucking guy.
Sitting there slicing up his flank steak as if he hadn’t just called me ugly.
Rhys is blissfully unaware that I’m shaking with rage. I want to toss my lemonade in his face. I want to stab his hand with my fork. I want to launch myself across the table and wring his neck.
“So what do you want to know about the ASSET?” he asks, without looking up.
After I’ve sufficiently beaten the ever-living shit out of him, I’ll have the perfect comeback: “You’re not God’s gift to women yourself... and you need a shower, scumbag.” And that’s when I’ll spit in his face.
The comeback is on the tip of my tongue, but no words escape. My throat clogs up and my eyes water. Long suppressed memories of looking in the mirror and wishing I had enough money for plastic surgery resurfaces with his words.
My self-esteem was in the toilet during my teen years.
It was the perfect blend of growing pains and having a mom who savagely critiqued my looks.
My mom had a nasty habit of comparing me to my cousins, and while she could never spare a compliment, she was generous with her unfiltered thoughts: You’re not as pretty as Flora.
On the rare occasion she thought I was prettier than someone else, she’ll find a way to compliment me in a shitty way: At least you’re not as ugly as Irene.
Or my favorite: You need a successful career in order to afford a nose job.
With a mother like that, who needs trolls?
It’s a miracle I survived young adulthood without picking up an eating disorder or slitting my wrists.
Not only did I survive, but I’ve rebuilt my self-esteem from the ground up and transformed myself into a confident career woman.
I no longer feel ugly. In fact, I feel pretty most of the time.
But there’s always that seed of doubt, my inner critic (who sounds suspiciously like my mom, may she rest in peace) chipping away at my carefully reconstructed temple of self…
Asking me if I should get double-eyelid surgery to make my eyes bigger…
Questioning the width of my nose and if a nose job is necessary to my overall life satisfaction…
So far, I’ve been able to lock my inner critic in a coffin and bury her six feet deep. But Rhys’ comment dug my mother up and galvanized her back to life.
You’re prettier in your photo than you are in real life.
Yeah. No shit. My profile picture was taken at golden hour, during optimal conditions, and with a little light airbrushing. This fluorescent spotlight isn’t doing anyone any favors.
How dare he? He has some nerve saying this to me while wearing that funky-ass hoodie, looking like he stepped out of Skid Row.
In fact, I may just give him a piece of my mind. I’m going to eviscerate him. I know exactly what to say to humble him.
“You know what, Rhys...” The comeback tumbles out of my mouth on shaky doe legs, stumbling past my lips and falling flat. Suddenly, it becomes abundantly clear to me that I’m not going to eviscerate anyone.
To my absolute mortification, a tear dribbles down my face and, of course, that’s the moment Rhys lifts his head.
He stops chewing and peers at my face, frowning. “Are you crying?” he asks, becoming visibly uncomfortable at the sight of my tears.
“No.” I swipe at my cheeks. “I have something in my eye.”
“Oh, good,” he breathes a sigh of relief, but as I choke on a sob, he curses under his breath. “Wait... you are crying. Um...”
Rhys scans the restaurant, ineffectually searching for assistance. Finding none, he takes matters into his own hands, yanking out a wad of napkins from the dispenser and handing them to me. “Look, there’s no reason to cry.”
“Yes, there is!” I blow my nose.
Frowning, he looks down at his half-eaten steak until the answer dawns on him. “You did want this after all,” he says, dropping his fork, “I’ll buy you another—”
“It’s not the steak, you idiot!”
“What is it then?”
I stare at his blank face through a haze of rage-filled tears. Is he really that clueless? “Because you called me ugly.”
Rhys slumps back in his chair, blinking at me with the most dumbfounded expression. “I never called you ugly.”
“Unbelievable. Are you gaslighting me now?”
“The word ‘ugly’ never left my mouth.”
“You implied it. ‘You’re prettier in your picture than you are in real life.’ Does that ring a bell?”
“I mean...” Rhys gestures vaguely at my face, causing me to flinch. “It’s true. You don’t look like your photo. Airbrushed and glamorized, I mean. Plus, this lighting is not doing you any favors, so…”
“You son of a—.” As if he didn’t already do a dirty little jig on my self-esteem, now he’s doubling down. I hate him. I don’t know him, but now I can confidently say that I truly hate this man. And here’s what I’m going to do about it.
“Whoa!” Before I can make my move, Rhys dives forward and snatches my drink out of my hands before I could chuck my lemonade in his face. “Let’s calm down and talk about this.”
“Calm down? Calm down?”
We’re getting a few side-eyes from nearby tables, but a public breakup is nothing new in the L.A. dining scene. Except I’m not breaking up with him. If he opens his mouth again, I’m about to break him.
Rhys senses the danger he’s in because he doesn’t say a word, just stares at me with his big hazel eyes, feigning confusion. “I wasn’t expecting you to attack me. Was it something I said?”
I glare at him in amazement. If his question had been delivered in a mocking tone, I would have launched myself across the table. But strangely, I detect no facetiousness. He was really and truly clueless.
Taking a deep breath, I nod at the lemonade still clutched in his hand. “Something tells me you have that reflex down to an art.”
“This isn’t the first time someone tossed a glass of water in my face,” he says, setting down my lemonade on his side of the table.
“Happens to you often?”
“If I had a penny for every time I got splashed, I’ll be rich.”
“Because you’re a fucking asshole,” I mutter.
Rhys hears me, but doesn’t retort. Something also tells me he’s heard that insult before. Having said my piece, I fold my arms across my chest and glare at him as if he’s a cockroach.
“That seems to be the consensus,” he says, sounding weirdly sad, though non-repentant. He grows silent for a moment, drumming his fingers on the reclaimed wood table. His fingernails are bitten down to the nub.
I chew on my inner cheek, still hating his guts. “Your cubicles are bleeding,” I blurt out.
Surprised, Rhys glances down at his hands, at the scabby hangnail on his thumb. “I bite them.”
“That’s gross.”
“I like the taste.” He brings his fingers up to his mouth.
“You should get a manicure.”
“Guys don’t get manicures,” he says, chewing on his hangnail.
“The good ones do.”
“I’m not one of the good ones.”
I snort. “That’s for sure.”
Rhys doubles down, chewing on his other thumb. “Are chicks usually this fussy about hands?”
“Chicks?” I arch an eyebrow.
He stops gnawing, wiping his hands on his hoodie (gross). “Or this violent?”
“I’m not violent.”
“Something tells me you wouldn’t have stopped at the lemonade.”
Today I saw a dark side of myself that I didn’t know existed. I’ve never had a violent thought in my life, but in the span of ten minutes, I’ve committed multiple crimes of passion against Rhys in my imagination. I guess we all have a killer beast inside us if properly provoked.
At long last, Rhys clears his throat. “You know you’re not ugly. Anyone with eyes can see that. What I meant to say was, ‘You just looked better in the photo.’ But that doesn’t mean you look bad in real life.”
I blink at him. “Don’t tell me you were trying to compliment the photo?”
“I suppose I was.” Suddenly he curses under his breath. “I don’t understand women.”
I snort. “You’re as bad as my mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother was bad at compliments in that she never gave them, or when she did, she did it in a shitty way.”
“I suppose that’s me,” Rhys grimaces.
His candid admission placates me, and I allow my body to relax.
He may be a clueless jerk, but at least he’s honest about it.
A tense silence swirls around us. Rhys realizes he’s holding my lemonade hostage and begins to slide it back to me, but one glance at my unfriendly face and he plops it back on his side of the table, safely tucked behind the napkin dispenser. I guess he’s taking my drink.
He clears his throat. “So you had some questions about the ASSET?”
I square my shoulders, recalling why I asked him to lunch in the first place. “Right.” Affecting my most haughty tone, I reach for my laptop. “I have a presentation this Friday and seem to have stumbled upon a... roadblock.”
Rhys picks at his steak, mildly interested.
“Does it have something to do with bypassing Foucault’s Matrix Terminal 3?
The mainframe is still glitchy, so you’ll have to retype your command with an added space after the second to last line.
” Chewing absently, he drinks from my lemonade. “It’s so easy even a baby could do it.”
I blink several times, trying to make sense of the words that just came out of his mouth.
“I’m not worried about Foucault’s Matrix Terminal 3. I’ve already bypassed it.” The lie slipped out before I could stop myself. I didn’t want him to think I was more inept than a baby.
“Have you?” Rhys lifts his head, surprised. “It took me two weeks to bypass it.”
I sniff. “It took me a week.”
What am I doing? It’s a sickness.
Rhys arches an eyebrow. “Then what do you need me for?”
Okay. Time to come clean. If I don’t stop lying, I’ll never get the help I need before my deadline. I take a deep breath, salvaging what pride I have left. “I’ve just received a perplexing directive, and I was hoping you could maybe...” I hand him the slip of paper, “help me make sense of it?”
Rhys glances at my orders, then meets my eye. “I don’t understand. This is pretty straightforward stuff. What’s the problem again?”
“Well…” I rub the back of my neck, cold sweat slicking my fingers. “It’s hard to describe.”
He sighs. “It’s easier if you show me where you are with the ASSET.”
“Gladly.” I snatch up my laptop and pull up the program, unlocking it with the dual keys. Hesitating for a beat, I hand it over to him and hold my breath.
Rhys studies the screen, types a few commands, and frowns. Finally, he peers over my laptop, skeptical eyes flickering over my anxious expression. “What exactly have you been doing?”
“Oh, you know...” Why do I feel like I’d just been called on in class and I don’t have the answer? I’m having trouble meeting his no-nonsense gaze. “A little of this. A little of that. Trying to get ahead on the directive.”
“And this presentation is on Friday, you say?”
I nod.
Rhys studies me with a perplexed frown. His focus returns to the ASSET. Tap. Tap. Tap. “You haven’t really done anything...”
“It may seem that way,” I say. “Because I run a tight ship.”
“What?”
“I clean up after I log out.”
Rhys blinks at me, opens his mouth, then returns to inspecting my progress with the ASSET. “Huh.”
“I stumbled upon an issue where...” How do I explain this so I don’t sound completely inept?
He doesn’t need to know that I nuked the whole program just by pressing Enter.
It’s better if it sounded like an accident, then I could look like a victim of circumstance.
“I was eating lunch at my desk, you know, trying to get ahead, and I dropped a—” What did I drop?
Hurry! Make something up. “A meatball on my keyboard and deleted a crucial line of code, spurring the matrix to multiply. Do you see the problem?”
“I see it,” he says dryly.
“How do you fix it?”
“That’s the homepage,” Rhys says, staring at me incredulously. “It does that as part of the design. You know, a throwback to old-school Windows ’95 Solitaire? It’s an inside joke.”
“Ah.” I nod. So that explains it. “I knew that.”
“Do you?” He asks with a weird catch to his voice as he digs around my laptop.
“Of course.” I sit up straighter. “I was just trying to keep you on your toes.”
“Interesting,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Carina?”
“Hm?”
He picks up my directive, scans it again, then glances at the screen, frowning. Confusion skitters across his face until it finally dawns on him. At last, he meets my eye. “You don’t have a clue how to use the ASSET, do you?”