Page 39 of Just for the Cameras
“Trying to show me what you can offer with your mouth open like that?” He shakes his head. “You’re going to have to pop that jaw wider if you want any chance…Baker.”
I snap my mouth shut, my eyes stinging with tears. It’s not because he hurt me, but because he angers me.
He angers me so much that the back of my neck heats up, my stomach twists in knots, and my body goes into fight mode, something I rarely feel.
And I don’t like it.
I don’t like the way it makes me feel.
I don’t like the spike of adrenaline. It’s not…it’s not for me.
Before I came back to San Francisco, I led a very simple life. A life where I slept under a blanket of stars every night, where I shared common interests and goals with the people surrounding me, where I spent every day with people who didn’t insult me but rather praised me for the work I was doing.
So this…thislack of respectis so foreign to me that I don’t know how to handle it.
But I will be damned if he sees me cry, so I lift my menu and focus on the entrées.
If my stomach wasn’t so twisted in knots and my heart racing from adrenaline, I would consider getting the most expensive thing on the menu, along with an appetizer and a dessert since he’s paying, but I don’t want to prolong this meal any more than I need to.
So a main dish and that’s it.
When the server comes back with our drinks, we put in our orders. I go with an eggplant parm, and he picks a pepperoni pizza.
I pick up my wine and take a large gulp before setting the thin glass back on the table, my mind reeling with how he can be so nice to a child out of the blue but can’t treat me with the same respect. And to be honest, I hate that for a moment, a very brief moment, I saw him as a decent human being. I hate that I saw a kind side to him, because before that it was almost easy to just chalk up his behavior to a personality that makes him a constant dick to society. But that’s not the case; he’s just a constant dick to me.
He leans back, twisting his pint glass as he stares me down.
“What?” I finally ask, breaking under his gaze.
“Are we going to proceed with why we’re here, or are we just going to stare at each other all night?”
“I’d rather stab my eyes out,” I say as I remove my phone from my purse and pull up my calendar.
“Hey, you were the one who wanted to have dinner with me. This is the company you chose.”
“Way to make it unbearable.”
“I can make it worse if you want,” he taunts.
“Please, restrain yourself and pull out your phone.”
He reaches into his pocket and retrieves his phone, unlocks it, then shoves his calendar in my direction. I partly want to push it right back at him and tell him to work in tandem with me, but honestly, what’s the point?
I glance down at his calendar and start pressing on the days that have events highlighted on them. I half expect them to be meetings, but they’re all training sessions and his zoo meetups.
“I thought you’d be busier.” Pure observation on my part.
“I will be when the season starts. So get in your precious time now.”
“You don’t do any like…commercials or filming?”
“Funny thing,” he says before taking a sip of his beer. “No one wants you slinging their product around when your team is trash.”
“Well, that makes sense,” I say as I scroll through his schedule and mine. “What do you have planned for me? Because how you plan to teach me will depend on how often I want to be at your training facility.”
“I have to be at your zoo, so you should match it with my football.”
“I can hardly see how they’re the same thing,” I deadpan.
