Idiot For Hire

Chapter 11: You Wanna Know if I’m Single, Huh?

When Nathan led me downstairs to the basement, I figured he was either going to push me into the pool again or take me to the game room. My second guess was right; his idea of a good time apparently involved video games and foosball tables.

“Prepare to be introduced to the great things in life: Family Guy, video games, and pizza,” Nathan declared, and I was reminded of the speech that had gotten him hired in the first place. He’d said something incredibly similar to this when he was telling me why he was the guy for the job.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding that day,” I said, sounding less than excited at the prospect of being subjected to God-knows how many hours of this. I liked hanging out with Nathan, sure, but something told me we had different ideas of fun, and eating a ton of pizza definitely wasn’t one of my ideas of fun.

“Nope. I would’ve introduced you to the beauty of Big Macs tonight, but this was kinda short notice,” he went on.

I took off my shoes and threw them aside. There was no way I was staying in those all night. “That’s alright,” I said. “That wouldn’t have been a good idea, anyway.”

“No. No way,” he said, and the vehemence in his tone surprised me. “This isn’t how tonight is gonna go. Tonight, you’re letting go. You’re not gonna worry about what your mom thinks, or what your boyfriend thinks, or what your nutritionist thinks. You’re gonna sit down on that couch and enjoy the pizza I’m about to order.”

I frowned. “But—”

“Nope.”

“Nathan—”

“Unless you’re gonna finish that sentence with ‘you’re a genius,’ I’m not listening.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I guess having a slice or two won’t kill me.”

“Or three. Or four. Or five. Or—”

“Don’t push it.”

“Alright, fine,” he said. “After I order this pizza, we’re heading over to the video game corner, and you’re gonna try not to cry when I kick your ass at Mario Kart.”

I’d never actually played Mario Kart, despite owning the game, but that didn’t stop me from saying, “Oh, it’s on.” I think it was his irritating self-assurance that drove me to challenge him. I wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it seemed to impress him.

He grinned and used my phone to call some pizza place I’d never heard of, claiming their pizzas and breadsticks were a foodgasm in your mouth.

“Don’t you have your own phone?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it’s upstairs,” he said, and he actually had the nerve to tell me to shut up when someone answered his call. I hadn’t even been talking anymore! “Hey, can I get a large pepperoni pizza, a large order of breadsticks and marinara sauce, and a liter of Pepsi? Unless you guys make extra-large pizzas. If you do, I want one of those.”

I slapped at his arm, a horrified look crossing my face. Was he feeding us or an army?  “How much food do you think we’re going to need?”

He confirmed his order—and was probably told they didn’t make extra-large pizzas, judging by the look on his face—before hanging up the phone and turning his attention back to me, saying, “You can never have too much food, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I beg to differ,” I said, ambling over to the video game area and shuffling through the video games we had as Nathan looked through the ones scattered throughout the room.

“Found it!” Nathan exclaimed. He then decided it would be a good idea to throw the game at me, case and all, but just throwing it wasn’t good enough. No, he had to throw it like a Frisbee and almost decapitate me in the process. I ducked just before it hit me in the face and cringed when it hit the wall. “Whoops.”

“Seriously?” I asked, slowly standing up. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Did I mention nights in with me are occasionally hazardous?”

I shot him a look. “No.”

“I probably should have.”

“You think?”

He just shrugged and walked over, picking the game up off of the floor. He opened the case and examined the disk carefully. “See, it looks good as new. Not a problem.”

I didn’t even bother replying. I just sat down on the big couch in front of the TV, wishing I’d changed before coming down here. This dress was gorgeous, but it wasn’t very comfortable. I watched Nathan put the game in and crawl around looking for the Wii game controllers, offering no input even when I knew exactly where the controllers were.

What? I wasn’t going to give this view up.

Eventually, he found them and stopped crawling around. He handed me a controller, and we both stood up to play. He tried explaining the game to me, but I knew there was no way I was going to remember how to play. I’d just have to figure it out as I went and wing it.

As he’d so confidently proclaimed earlier, he did end up kicking my ass at first. I had no idea what I was doing. I was basically just shaking the controller around and hoping for the best. Nathan didn’t care that I was a newbie; he still felt the need to get in my face and scream about his victory. Personally, I thought the screaming and chest-beating was completely unnecessary and archaic, but maybe that was just me.

Once I got the hang of the game, though, I started enjoying myself more. I figured out a few tricks that gave me an advantage and basically put Nathan to shame from that point on.

“Shut. Down.” I threw the controller down on the couch triumphantly, repeating what Trish usually said whenever she won anything. “You know, I really was preparing myself for tears, but they never came. I wonder why that is.” I pretended to ponder the thought just to annoy him.

He grumbled under his breath. “Not even cool. How was I supposed to know you were some Mario Kart prodigy? You don’t even play video games!”

“You poor thing. You look absolutely heartbroken. Need a tissue?”

“Shut up.” He decided we’d played enough Mario Kart after that—being schooled by a newbie must have been too embarrassing for him to handle—and started flipping through our TV channels, leaving it on TBS when he saw Family Guy was on. The show was actually pretty entertaining, from what I saw of it, but I was more interested in how fascinated Nathan was by it. He just seemed to think it was the greatest thing ever.

“I wonder where the pizza is,” I said during a commercial. “We ordered it a while ago.”

“Shit. Someone probably ate it by now.”

I grabbed my phone and quickly texted Trish. Did our food come already? We ordered pizza, breadsticks and a Pepsi.

Trish texted back immediately. You… Adriana Martella… ordered pizza, breadsticks & Pepsi? *flails arms* *falls to floor* *foams at mouth* *twitches*

I snickered at her text and showed it to Nathan when he shot me a questioning look. He was still laughing when I replied to her text. Lmfao yes… is it down there or not?

Trish’s reply didn’t come immediately this time. No surprise there, considering what she wrote next. I may or may not have eaten a slice or two.

“There may be a few slices missing,” I told Nathan as I replied to Trish, telling her to bring the food down to the game room.

“Damn it. I should’ve ordered two pizzas.”

I didn’t bother telling him what an awful idea that would have been. After watching him eat three pancakes, four sausage links, two eggs, five slices of bacon, a biscuit, and two glasses of milk for breakfast, I didn’t doubt he would’ve finished every last slice, with or without my help.

Trish eventually came down with our food in tow, nearly dropping everything when she saw us. “Are you watching Family Guy? Wait, why didn’t you go to that movie premiere? What is going on here? Are we in some alternate dimension? Oh, my God, am I dead?”

“Trish. No.” I slowly shook my head.

Nathan felt the need to elaborate, proudly declaring, “She ditched her boyfriend to stay in and hang out with me.”

Trish looked at me for a confirmation of his words, and I just shrugged. It was true, after all. “Halle-freaking-llujah! About time you left that asshat hanging! If you ask me, you need to dump his ass and start dating this perfect specimen that just so happens to be sitting right next to you.” She tried coughing violently to cover up that last part, but it didn’t work. Like, at all. If anything, it just brought more attention to what she was saying.

I felt my face turn red, while Nathan just chuckled at her suggestion. And again, what was that supposed to mean? I’m laughing at your embarrassment or I’m laughing because that’s a ridiculous suggestion or I’m laughing but I actually like the idea?

“That’s why I don’t ask you,” I said, regretting my words the minute I uttered them. I quickly tried to correct myself, but well, that didn’t work out too well for me. “Not that I wouldn’t date you. I mean, I’m dating Mitch right now, but if I wasn’t—um. It’s not that anything is wrong with you, it’s just—it’s me. That’s all.”

“Are you giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech?” Nathan asked.

I paused. “I think I am.”

Nathan smiled with half of his mouth and spoke to Trish. “Why do I feel like she just broke up with me?”

“Even I feel like she just broke up with you,” Trish said.

“Just… disregard everything I just said,” I told Nathan, already knowing he wouldn’t.

Trish noisily set the food down on a table and dragged it over to us. “Bon appetite, mon friends.” Trish’s French wasn’t very good. “I’ll just leave you two to mingle and eat and be awkward around each other.”

Trish slowly backed away after that, making kissy faces when Nathan’s back was turned, and I had to resist the urge to throw a cushion at her face. Instead, I opened the box of pizza and grabbed a slice without being told to.

When I took a bite, I thought Nathan was going to fall off of the couch. “Holy—I can’t believe I didn’t have to shove that pizza slice down your throat. Holy shit.”

I shot him a look. “It’s not like I don’t eat.”

“You barely eat,” he pointed out. “Dree, I’ve never been prouder of you in my life.”

“Nathan, you’ve only known me for a week.”

“So? You and Mitch have been dating for three years, and I bet he’s never told you he was proud of you. Actually, I bet he doesn’t even know the first thing about you.”

I considered his words for a moment, setting my food back down on the table. “No, I guess he doesn’t. He hasn’t bothered trying to get to know me since I was fourteen.”

“So he wasn’t always a jackass.”

I just shook my head.

“What changed, then? I don’t get it.”

I was reluctant to tell Nathan my story, but if this guy was going to be my assistant for an indefinite amount of time, I couldn’t stop him from getting to know me. I let out a sigh and proceeded to tell him part of the story behind the disaster that was my life. “Our relationshit is basically a business deal. Once Mitch figured that out, he just stopped trying to impress me.”

“Did you just say relationshit?”

“I did.”

His lips twitched upwards, but he didn’t elaborate on that particular subject. Instead, he said, “I thought this was an arranged thing from the start.”

“It was. I just didn’t know about it.”

“What? How could they not tell you?”

I shrugged. “They wanted it to last. They wanted me to think it was real so we’d take it seriously. And we did at first. The whole thing was unrealistically perfect; Mitch was unrealistically perfect. I felt like I was living a Nicholas Sparks book, but eventually I found out it was all a setup, and Mitch just stopped trying.”

“He figured he was already in so he didn’t have to try anymore, or what?”

“Basically. I mean, it was business from the start. I was just the last one to realize it. My name and fortune were going to boost Mitch’s acting career, and they did. But as his career took off, he turned into this monstrous, cheating dick.” 

“But his career has already taken off,” he pointed out. “Why can’t you just walk away now?”

“Because there’s something in it for my family. Mitch is an heir, and my mom wants me to be an heiress.” I could tell he was about to make some sort of comment about us being loaded, so I added, “I know it seems like we have a ridiculous amount of money, but things aren’t always what they seem. There are some financial issues my parents won’t talk about with me.”

“Yet they’re okay with using you to solve these financial issues of theirs,” Nathan said, blatantly judging my parents.

“Pretty much. Now I’m stuck with whatever this is, and my mom is starting to mention marriage. Marriage is terrifying enough, but marriage with Mitch?” I shook my head. “I can’t. I physically and emotionally can’t.”

It was at that moment that it dawned on me that I’d never actually asked Nathan if he was in a relationship. What if I was developing a slight emotional attachment—just slight—on a taken guy? How had I never thought to ask him, or thought to ask Benjamin at least? Or I could have had Trish play detective and find out for me. Or I could have just stalked his Facebook or Twitter. Seriously, how had this never come up before now? I mean, sure, I’d only known him for a week, but still.

“Then don’t,” he said. “Get out while you can.”

If only it were that simple. My main concern wasn’t even my relationshit with Mitch anymore; it was trying to figure out a way to slyly ask Nathan about his relationship status. I could have done things a-la-Trish and blatantly asked him, but I wanted something a little more subtle than, “Are you single?”

Well, it couldn’t be that hard. We were talking about relationships, after all. There had to be a way to get him to spill the beans without him realizing it.

“Do you speak from experience? Not the marriage thing, obviously. Just the getting out while you can thing. You haven’t been married, have you?”

Nathan raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “No, I haven’t been married. I’m twenty-one.”

When he didn’t elaborate any further, I cursed internally. Damn it. Now what? “So you haven’t just gotten out of a bad relationship?”

“No,” he said slowly, looking at me questioningly.

I was grasping for any string I could reach by that point. I had nothing. He wasn’t making this easy for me. “Are you in a bad relationship right now?”

When he started smirking, I knew he’d seen through my casual—fine, not-so-casual—hinting. “You wanna know if I’m single, huh?”

I laughed, but it sounded nervous, not casual. “I don’t want to know. I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean, we were talking about relationships just now.”

He shrugged. “Then I guess you won’t mind if I don’t tell you.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine.”

There was a long pause. Finally, I broke the silence. “You just want me to say I want to know, don’t you?”

Nathan just grinned. “Yeah.”

After thinking about it for a moment, I decided my curiosity was greater than my pride and went for it. “Alright, fine. I want to know if you’re single. But only because I never actually thought to ask you.”

“Why didn’t you think to ask me?”

“I don’t know. It just never came up.” I paused. “I guess I assumed there was no girlfriend when you started hitting on me and had no problem moving in.”

Nathan shot me that half-smile of his. “Well, there’s no girlfriend. There hasn’t been for a while.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Guess I haven’t found anyone who’s my type.”

I knew he was just baiting me, but I couldn’t help it. I was curious, and I wasn’t too prideful to take the bait and ask him to elaborate. “And what’s your type?”

“Snarky, impulsive, and hard to figure out.”

I rolled my eyes. How had I not seen that coming? “Subtle,” I said.

“I thought so.” Just as I was about to say something, he added, “You know, I’m surprised.”

“Surprised about what?”

“Surprised you haven’t asked me about that kiss up on the runway.”

I debated over whether or not I should change the subject, but in the end I decided I wanted to hear what he had to say about the kiss. “Did you want me to ask you about it?”

“Kind of. It’ll make me seem less creepy if I explain it.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I didn’t think it was creepy. If I thought it was creepy, I probably would’ve pushed you off of the runway.”

“What did you think it was, then?” he asked, and for once, he was the one who sounded kind of awkward, not me.

“I thought it was dramatic,” I said. “Theatrical, even, but at the same time… it was probably the best kiss I’ve ever had.”

Why did I just say that? That wasn’t something you just declared! That kiss had probably just been a dramatic stunt to make things more interesting. Why had I said such an idiotic thing? I was turning into Nathan, or Trish, even. My God.

“Really?” he asked, seeming pleased by this.

I nodded. “I mean, I know it was probably just a stunt, but for starters, you’re not Mitch, so that’s fifty points in your favor already. Really, considering who you’re up against, that’s not saying much.”

Nathan laughed, and I thought he was going to crack some sort of joke, but what he said next was actually serious. “It wasn’t a stunt, actually. I meant what I said up there. I’d been wanting to do that since I met you.”

“Right. Because you think I’m hot, or whatever.”

“Yeah, partially,” he admitted. “But it’s not just that. I just think—I think you deserve to be kissed in a meaningful way by someone you don’t hate.”

I couldn’t help the smile that crossed my lips. “How are you so sure I don’t hate you?”

He dramatically put a hand over his heart. “You could never hate me! We’re practically best friends, remember? Besides, if you hated me, you’d have pushed me off the runway.”

“Maybe you just caught me off guard,” I said.

“Tell you what. If you push me off this couch right now, I’ll know you hate me. If you don’t… well, I’ll know you don’t hate me. Deal?”

“This shouldn’t even count,” I said between incredulous laughter. This was probably the most ridiculous conversation I’d ever had, but for some reason, I liked it. “Why would I push you off of the couch for no reason? I’m not that mean.”

“Because I’m about to kiss you again,” he said, but I had enough sense to stop him this time. Instead of letting him kiss me, I grabbed a slice of pizza from the table just as he leaned in and smashed it in his face. I burst out laughing when I saw the surprised, doe-eyed look on his face.

“Oh-ho-ho, you’re gonna regret doing that,” he said, grabbing a slice of pizza and shoving it in my face. He made sure to rub it around and cover every single spot on my face. Gross.

“Nathan!” I shrieked, blindly slapping at the air. Some pizza sauce had gotten into my eye, and I was pretty sure I was going blind.

He just laughed and jumped off of the couch, wheezing erratically when he saw I had to squint to see him. He actually doubled over with laughter, leaving me with the perfect opening to get my revenge. He didn’t even see me walk over to him, and by the time he noticed the liter of Pepsi I was holding, it was too late. Half of it had already been emptied over his head.

“Holy shit, that’s cold,” he exclaimed, pulling the bottle out of my hands. I tried to protect myself with my arms, but plenty of soda still managed to splash onto my body.

I shivered when a chill passed through the room, and I felt it in pretty much every part of my body. “Okay, okay, can we call a truce? I think I’m going to get pneumonia.”

“From Pepsi? Come on, Dree. Even I’m not that stupid.”

“It’s cold,” I insisted, trudging back to the couch. I sat down, assuming someone would clean up whatever mess we left, and attempted to wipe my face off as my thoughts wandered.

Maybe I should have just let him kiss me. This would’ve ended a lot differently if I had, but as much as I wanted to let him kiss me again, I knew I couldn’t. Not because of Mitch or because of my mom. Because of me. I could feel myself slowly sinking deeper and deeper into this ditch I was digging, and I knew I’d eventually reach a point where I wouldn’t be able to pull myself out.

I mean, sure, it was just harmless flirting at the moment—awkward flirting, sure, but flirting nevertheless—but if I allowed him to kiss me again, in private, things would change. Even if I managed to get rid of Mitch, there was no way my parents would ever let me be with Nathan. They’d sooner disown me than allow that to happen, and what would I do then? I was nothing without them. 

No, I couldn’t let it happen. If I allowed myself to give into whatever was happening between me and Nathan—even if it was just one-sided—I was just setting myself up for heartbreak. And yet I still managed to convince myself that harboring a tiny crush on the guy wouldn’t hurt. As long as that kiss remained a one-time thing, I was good. But I think a part of me knew that video games and long talks and food fights meant just as much as a kiss did in the long run. 

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A/N: I'm out for Thanksgiving break (WHOOOOOOOO!) and had time to post this chapter real quick before I go see Catching Fire (again *cough*) so here it is! Vote/comment if you enjoyed it and let me know what you think!