The Ordinary Haunting

26. The Forgotten Exercise - Part 2

"Do you know him?" the incomparably gorgeous female known as Mild asked. A waitress put down a large plate of some sexy grilled wagyu steak and fries, and Tay's head whipped her way. He snorted what sounded like a very large glob of snot back up his red-tipped nose.

"He's one of our spring interns," he said, shrugging and biting at some dry skin on his lips. "This is my first time seeing him outside the office."

The daringly lovely Mild tapped the bag hanging off her editor's chair with the toe of her beige mules. "And that's a cause for glaring because...?"

Tay reached into the bag and lined up the boxes of cold and flu medicine and various vitamin paraphernalia in front of him. Mild used the end of her fork to push forward some day capsules and a vitamin C drink.

"I wasn't glaring, was I?"

"You gave that look you always give before you ask me if a word I've used is 'young people's slang'."

Tay rubbed his temples and busied himself preparing his entree. The alluringly glamourous Mild pierced a thick hunk of steak and glanced across the wine bar as she laid it on her tongue. Three people were seated at a dark wooden table beneath a crimson-toned leadlight cover, two pizzas half-devoured before them and an editor's style guide propped open against the menu holder near the wall. Two of them Mild knew -- Guy Sivakorn, who couldn't proofread a fantasy novel if an elf had his testicles at arrow point but was a machine on query letters; and Kay Lertsittichai, who could probably have been the best sports fiction editor in the company if he didn't spend 45 minutes of his 30-minute lunch breaks playing basketball in the courtyard -- but the third hadn't come across her radar even just in passing via the gossip she got from Jan at Reception. She knew Tay had some kind of playground feud going with Guy, but it had been in the 'I'm just going to ignore you' phase for quite a while, and he was fairly friendly with Kay so far as she knew, so the only one who could have been the target of his 'Do I need to Urban Dictionary this word' was the porcelain-faced newbie with the great posture and lips Jan would die for (Mild's face was too small to accommodate lips like that -- but then so was Jan's, really).

The steak had all but melted, it was that soft, and the delicately fierce Mild quickly chewed the rest of it down. Tay gulped back his vitamin C and let its little bottle drop to the table like a shot glass.

"Take it slow, Tay."

"The quicker it goes down, the quicker it works--"

"Is not something your grandmother told you."

"Hehe. No." He blinked his pretty brown eyes at her and she couldn't hate his cold for making them glitter, nor for blushing his high cheekbones over his deep golden skin.

Too many adjectives, Mild thought to herself. Tone it down, maybe.

"So why's it surprising to see the human Gund Snuffles teddy bear out of the office?"

Tay took tiny bites from a fry on his fork, keeping his mouth open in order to breathe, and frowned at her.

"What's a Gund Snuffles?"

The vivaciously adorable Mild sipped a little red wine and waved her hand. "Mama said it's some kind of expensive teddy bear from America. If you see the pictures of the white one, you'll see what I mean. Very cuddly."

Tay coughed, possibly not from his cold. "Cuddly? If you like cuddling tree trunks, sure, the robot could be called cuddly I guess."

"It's not like you to be this judgy about someone, Tay. Did he say something to you?"