Anger Issues

04

"Honestly, Brent, it's a really good idea!" Maisie defended over breakfast. "No, Maisie, I see no good in this idea, you're literally going to try and make me mad on purpose, that's really just stupid," retorted Brent. "No, listen. Today at lunch we'll stay in your office. We'll find a topic that we don't agree on and we'll keep talking about it until you get all loud and angry and then we'll work you down from there. It's like controlled experiment in a safe environment." "Maisie, honestly, I don't think that's a good plan, though, if it shuts you up, we'll do it." With a sense of triumph, and a little twinge of hurt, Maisie put her empty plate in the sink and left to go wait for Brent in the car, ready to start her first full day.

Moments later she was joined by Brent and they pulled off seconds after he closed his door. Seeing as they weren't really on friendly-conversation terms and they had already discussed their plans in terms of work for the day, the entire ride to his building was silent, Brent and Maisie both just staring out the windows pretending to be interested by the roads they had come so familiar with. When they had finally reached the twenty story building in which they both, now, worked, Maisie got out of the car to follow Brent into the building and into the elevator to the office. She couldn't help but notice the amount of superiority with which he carried himself, with no consideration to the feelings of others or how rude it looked when he never bothered to mutter a simple 'thanks' or 'morning' to those that would talk to him. Maybe it was just the way New York had shaped him or maybe it was her southern roots taking charged but Maisie found it unbelievably impolite and would make it a point to remind him of it. Not that she was hired to correct him on how he did everything, but she figured that she may as well kill two birds with one stone, right?

"You know," began Masie, when they were finally within the walls of his office and free of nosey onlookers, "it's rather ill-mannered of you to ignore everybody like you do. It takes so little effort to thank them or to respond to them when they tell you good morning, or ask how you are." "Weren't you just telling me last night that I had good manners?" Brent asked, with a small breath of exasperation. "Well, it is quite possible that I spoke out of turn, or maybe you only have manners when you feel like it. If I were back home and acted like that, I'd have everybody telling me to brush that chip off my shoulder." "Well, guess what, Maisie,"  started Brent, putting emphasis on her name, and already with his usual tone of arrogance, "We're not where you come from, if you haven't noticed. We're in New York City and if you think that, even for a second, walking around and being nice and cheery to everybody will make them respect you, then you've got it all wrong!" "See, that's where you've got it all wrong, Brent," Maisie stated with her calm tone, "you can't make people respect you, you've got to earn it. And, quite frankly, you wouldn't have earned a lick of my respect with the way you handle things. Also, I still think you should brush that chip off your shoulder." Adding a smirk to the end of her sentence, Maisie sat down in her desk chair and began writing down in the notebook she started last night, while absentmindedly doodling in the margins.

....

"Are you sure that you'd still like to go along with this whole plan of yours, Maisie?" Brent asked as they sat across each other at his large oak desk, their food pushed to the side. "I am as positive as I've ever been, Brent. Now, what are some topics that you feel passionate about?" "I dunno, football?" "Well, seeing as I don't watch football, that's not going to help us out here. Maybe I'll just keep asking you things until I see that one of things I've said has irritated you." "Honestly, Maisie, where did you get your degree from?" "You know, this could either mean that I'm unbelievably brave or insanely stupid and I guess we'll have an answer by the time lunch is over," Maisie said with a small laugh at the end. Then Brent set out in a laugh so unfamiliar to Maisie that all she wanted to do was hear it again, and she realized that she thought that was the first time she had ever heard such a sound come out of him. Even though they had barely known each other for 24 hours, Maisie laughed all the time and just assumed that he did too.