ANYTHING BUT ENEMIES

22. not his type

DANE ANDERSON IS an incredibly hard person to ignore.

It's a fact I'm all too aware of once I'm sitting down across from him in the conference room, body buzzing from the feel of him against me. Mind wandering to deep, dark places it should never be allowed to go.

My legs shake under the table like an earthquake, nails pinching into my skin, yet every time I glance over at him, (which is pretty often, I'm not gonna lie) he seems completely unbothered.

For a split-second during my twentieth glance, our eyes catch, and he shoots me a look. Not an I think about you so often I write poems about you look but a what are you looking at, freak look. My eye twitches, and I hurry to pick up my pen and tap it against the table, quick to occupy myself with something other than his face.

Ruby's the next one to give me a look, first at the pen-tapping then at my expression, eyes narrowing as she takes in my anxiety, which I quickly try to smooth over.

"You okay?" she mouths.

I let my pen still, clenching it so tight my knuckles turn white. "Yeah, great."

Her raised eyebrows let me know she doesn't believe a word I've said.

We have a new guest speaker today since Frances had to take care of some publishing business. His name's Griffin and I've only heard about ten percent of all he's said so far—his last name not included in that number. Now I do my best to give him my undivided attention.

"Today I thought since Frances isn't here we'd move on to fiction."

A couple cheers break out around the table, and Griffin chuckles.

"At first I was thinking we start with short stories, but then I figured we might as well start with flash fiction. It's a bit trickier to nail in your thoughts because of the shorter word count, and it must have a beginning, middle, and end." The man adjusts the collar above his sweater vest before beginning to pace the room. "For our next assignment, I'm going to put you all into pairs—which will probably make this even harder, but I'm sure you can handle it. You'll be writing a flash fiction piece of five-hundred words or less."

I purse my lips together. Five hundred words in a pair is not how I'm used to operating. Typically, I like to run my own creative process, either too argumentative or docile to end up with a piece that reflects an equal amount of view from two different people.

"I assume you all went over a couple of the fiction pieces with Frances already?"

We all nod, a tenseness starting to surface in the air.

"Great, so let's break up now."

He lists off all the names, and somehow—unfortunately for me—I end up with Nicholas Murphy.

Murphy's Law, truly.

The menace pulls up his chair next to mine rather than just switching seats, leaving a very confused Reece without a spot on the opposite side of the table.

"Hey, Cleo! How goes it?"

My body seizes up with cringe at just the thought of being stuck with him for the entirety of this project before I nod feebly.

"I'm okay. What about—?"

"Just okay? Well, we've got to change that, now don't we?"

An awkward laugh comes out of my mouth, and he leans closer like he's letting me in on a conspiracy. "You don't have to worry about the project by the way. I've got you. Actually, I already have an idea."