"It would be faster if you cooperated with me," he said.
I shrugged. "It would be faster if you stopped interrupting to tell me how to go faster."
He dropped the piece he'd been walking between his thumb and index finger. I couldn't be sure since I was still doing the averted eyes thing but it felt like he was staring at me. He could stare all he wanted. I had plenty of nondescript gray pieces to occupy me, their ins and outs blurring into an unending monologue of "Do you fit? What about you? Does this work? Does anything fit? Do you even belong in the same box or is that the gag here—that nothing goes together?"
I could do this all day. If I dissociated from the setting and the large, growly man across from me, the one who'd abandoned all pretense of working on the puzzle since I wouldn't follow his rules, I could find some zen in the repetitive motion of putting it all together. It was like those adult coloring books I'd hoarded a few years ago in the hopes of chasing away the constant squabbling in my head. My perfectionism had really struggled with getting the coloring just right and I'd realized I didn't like coloring but, for a brief time, the act was enough to draw me away from my stress and my worries.
A growl sounded from the other side of the table. "Could you—"
"Probably not, no."
"If you'd just listen to—"
"But I'm not going to," I replied. "Accept that I am doing it this way, even if your way is better, quicker, more nutrient dense, peer reviewed, and morally righteous. I've made my choice."
I joined several pieces together and tapped the gray surface to congratulate myself on making progress under these conditions. But then I noticed Sebastian had most of the perimeter complete.
Because I couldn't help myself, I gestured to the shell he'd constructed. "What's the point of harassing me into helping you when you don't need any help? Is it about compliance for you? You're hell-bent on getting me to obey?"
Sebastian sucked in a breath and I countered that with a petulant shrug-head-shake combo that I never would've risked as a teenager. He resumed his silent staring and I continued hunting for pieces to fit somewhere on the segment I'd started.
I figured we were running out the clock on this session—which was perfectly acceptable—but then he crossed his arms over his chest. In such close quarters, I couldn't help but hear the rustle of crisp fabric against warm skin and it threw me back to that night. To him stretched over me. To clothes and sheets everywhere. To his beard on my skin, his mouth all over me. To his sounds. His words.
I blinked down at my pieces. My pulse was hammering and I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. My earlobes were hot. All I could do was dive into my snack bag and cram three almonds into my mouth. It would take me an age to chew them up into the tiny, tiny pieces necessary for me to digest them without disaster and that process would be more than enough to sap me of all sexy thoughts. Nothing was less sexy than the threat of triggering an irritable bowel.
I would've gotten away with my memories and the hammering of my heart if he hadn't been watching me, waiting for me to trip up and forget the game.
"Shap," he said knowingly, "what the hell are you eating?"
Since I was very consumed with my almonds, I held up the bag by way of explanation. He snatched it away, his scowl all plucked and offended by my unconventional trail mix.
"What…what the hell, Shap? Nuts, cereal, what are these things? What is this? Dried pineapple?" He helped himself to a chunk of crystallized ginger and, if the disgust on his face was any indicator, immediately regretted it. "Fuckin' ginger, my god, why?" He reached for the bottle of water I'd abandoned on the sofa and chugged half the contents. "Oh, that's fucking awful." He peered into the bag again. "M&Ms, dried cranberries of all the god-awful things, raisins—"
"Help yourself to the raisins," I said, a hand over my mouth as I chewed the last bits of almond. "I don't do raisins."
Only when Sebastian leveled me with a steady gaze did I realize I'd forgotten the game. It had only required some perverse amusement over his reaction to the ginger and—poof. A round surrendered.
"Then why is this full of raisins?" He shook the bag.
"Because that's how the trail mix comes from the store and I don't have the patience to separate them out."
I'd bought the biggest bag available and then dumped it all into a storage container. Store packaging and nutrition labels made me twitchy, and I always wanted to add extra bits like cereal and ginger, or pretzels when I needed to keep it on the bland side.
Shaking the bag again, he said, "This isn't trail mix. It's the discard pile from the bulk bins at a health food store."
I grabbed for the bag but he held it out of reach. "Thanks for weighing in but your opinion is irrelevant."
He pushed to his feet and paced away from the table. "Are any of my opinions relevant to you? Ever?"
He stood facing the wall of bookshelves, his back to me. With his head cocked to the side, it seemed like he was reading the spines but I couldn't be sure. I couldn't pry any meaning from the depth and grooves of his scowl either.
"When it comes to what I eat? No." I glanced at Milana, urging her with my eyeballs to do something. Make him sit down. Make him finish the puzzle. Make him stay on topic and out of my personal life.
Her brows arched up and she held out this is the process, trust the process hands.
"You don't see me registering my opinions on your choices," I continued. "I don't care if you want to put the edges together first and I don't care if you hate dried cranberries. I happen to love them but I only eat, like, five every few days and I savor those five cranberries. I save them for last and I am not interested in hearing any noise about it. Is that all right with you, Dr. Stremmel?"
He rounded the coffee table and sat on the edge of the sofa. He held out the bag. "You have the weirdest snacks in the world. It's disturbing."
I looked into the bag. Four crinkly little cranberries sat on one side, the nuts and other bits on the other. The raisins were gone.
I jerked my head up, over to the bookshelves, searching and searching for some explanation. Then I noticed the wastebasket beside the shelves. He'd sorted out the raisins for me.
"Why?" It was just a whisper.
Sebastian gave a single shake of his head. His elbows were on his thighs, his gaze on the puzzle.
"Why?" I repeated.
His shoulders lifted in a great heave. "I was tired of watching you paw at that bag. Not the first time I've saved you from yourself. Not the first time you've instructed me to fuck off while doing it."
Did that make this the last time? Or just one in a series of next times?
"We are just about at the end of our time for today." Milana gently clapped her hands together and lavished a warm grin on the partially excavated puzzle. "For your homework this week—"
"Not unless we can agree on reducing the total number of sessions," Sebastian interrupted.
She shook her head, that warm grin unfazed. "I haven't made a decision on that yet." She passed each of us a half sheet of paper. "I'd like you to arrive at this location at seven on Sunday morning."