Kate Canterbary

“She killed a federal agent while moving drugs across the Canadian border for her asshole boyfriend. Had no idea it was a sting operation or that she’d committed a dozen federal crimes in the presence of undercover agents.

He skated his hands over my thighs, pushing my dress up as he went. He drew circles on the inside of my thigh, just above my knee, and if asked, I’d have to say that was the singular source of all pleasure in my body.

I want to rip this sweater off you.” He leaned in close to kiss my jaw, his beard scraping over my cheek. “And these jeans. Fuck. Your ass looks like it belongs in my lap when you wear these jeans.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask this but”—he ran a hand over his mouth—“how are those work

Text him.” I jerked my chin toward her phone. “Tell him you’re available in two weeks. The SoWa market, South of Washington. You have a few minutes around ten in the morning and that is the only time you can spare him. Send that and then turn off your phone.”

"What's the real reason I'm a hard pass? Because it doesn't matter whether I find a pen and show my work all over the back of an arm-long CVS receipt right now. It doesn't matter whether I can remember where my stats come from. It only matters that you passed before I logic'd through the odds of us sitting next to each other on this flight."

I still had my coffee cup tucked against my chest like a shield…or a security blanket. I wasn't sure there was a substantive difference between the two, not in my current predicament. "While that was—uh—bizarre, I'm looking for a specific skill set."

Zelda's brows creased as a flash of understanding crossed her eyes. "Yeah, about that. Which job did I apply for?"

She had a streak of blue hair right behind her ear. I noticed it only when she tucked her hair back. I'd noticed it sixteen times. "Auditing assistant."

"—and push huge amounts of transactions through data-mining programs to identify trends and anomalies." I stared at her, waiting for another murmur. It didn't come but—twenty. "How is this even interesting to you, Zelda? That's what I don't understand. Even if your background and experience had the slightest bit of overlap with the role, I still don't understand how this job would interest you for more than ten minutes."

She scanned the document on my screen, touched her fingertips to her lips. She was quiet a moment. I had to believe she was searching for a way to agree with me while maintaining she was the ideal candidate. I'd let her have that. I could be right without being a jackass about it. I did it all the time.

But then she grinned. "I'll build you a spreadsheet right now. Tell me what you want it to do for you."

I gulped. Twenty-one.

"What? No. Don't—don't do that." I lifted a hand to wave away her reach for the zipper of her backpack but that sent a snap of pain through my shoulder. A snarl rasped in my throat as I eased back. "You don't have to do that. Okay? I believe you. You're an Excel ninja."

Bent at the waist with her hands frozen on her bag, she frowned at me. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear anything you just said because I think you growled. Like, a second ago. A growly-soundy thing. That came from you. Right? That happened?"

She reached over, patted my forearm. I tipped my chin down to match the sensation of her hand on my body to its physical form. It didn't make sense to me that it felt this way while looking like an ordinary hand. Her fingernails were painted mint green and, by my estimation, she wore at least twelve tiny rings, and she was going to melt my skin off.

"It's okay," she said, nodding. "We won't talk about it anymore." She removed her hand. I frowned at my arm because, for the first time in forever, I wanted to find out how it felt for my skin to melt off. I wanted to know the beginning and end of that sensation. "You tell me about these statements. That way, I can agree with you and you can have a single moment of happiness in your otherwise tyrannical and obsessively pessimistic day."

Well…fuck me.

That was before I reached for a woman's breast without her enthusiastic interest and then had to sit next to her for three more hours.

I was certain I could stare out the window that long. That was my only option as I saw it. I couldn't open my laptop and bang out a few reports while we pretended my hand hadn't been close enough to the underside of her breast to feel the heat of her. I couldn't pick up the mess I kept creating with Zelda

"It's funny that this is your chivalry," she said, paused at the entrance. "Of all the ways for you to show any gendered deference, you choose the ladies-first route here."

I had fifteen different things to say to her. Most of them contradictory and too opaque to form into clear thoughts. Most of them lurked around the reality that I didn't know how to interact with Zelda. She didn't fit into a tidy LinkedIn headline. She wasn't the standard formula of adjective, job title, career goal. And she was unlike anyone else in my life.