Page 17 of With Love, from Cold World
“It must be good,” he continued. “Was that what your phone call was about?”
She had to think for a minute before she made the connection—when he’d come into her office earlier and she’d been pumping her fist. At least this suggested he hadn’t actually heard the content of her call, or figured out that it was technically not work-related.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said. Great. What a classic comeback. What was next,I’m rubber, you’re glue?
Asa broke off momentarily to gesture toward a young couple who’d started to make out in one corner. “Aren’t you going to break that up?”
“Why—because I’m such a wet blanket?”
His brows drew together. “No...” he said, drawing the word out. “Because it’s part of the job? We try to keep things PG here in the Snow Globe.”
Right. Lauren glanced over at the couple. They were really going at it by now. The guy’s hands were wandering dangerously close to a place that would definitely bump the rating to PG-13 at least.
She desperately wanted to ask Asa to take care of it. He’d know just what to say, with enough levity to make it seem like not a big deal but enough firmness to make them stop. In high school, there’d been a couple who would meet every single morning right in front of her locker, and Lauren had never bothered saying anything. She’d just started carrying all her books in her backpack.
But she knew that went against the whole point of this exercise, and she didn’t want Dolores getting word that she hadn’t been up to it. Shereallydidn’t want Asa to be able to hold it against her, that maybe she really was hopelessly out of touch with the day-to-day of Cold World. She dropped the snow she’d been holding to the ground, clenching her hand to get the feeling back in her fingers.
She marched over to the couple, reaching out to tap the guy on the shoulder before thinking better of it. Instead, she cleared her throat loudly, and then, when that had no result, said, “Excuse me?”
Their faces were still shoved together. She wouldn’t have been able to identify either one in a lineup without the other one plastered on top of them. She glanced back at Asa, but hejust gave her a little smirk, likeWell?God, she hated him in that moment.
“Excuse me!” she said again. “We, uh, keep things PG in the Snow Globe.”
She’d borrowed Asa’s line because it had sounded so breezy, the way he’d said it. But of course coming from her it sounded prissy and uptight instead. Seriously. She was going to kill him. Heknewshe’d fail this test, and that was why he’d sent her out here on her own. The college kid they’d hired part time because he’d given Dolores a “good vibe” could do this job, but meanwhile Lauren was going to make a complete ass of herself.
Now a few other people had noticed Lauren trying to get the couple’s attention and were watching with ill-concealed interest to see what would happen next. Great. Her chances of getting out of this without a scene had just taken a nosedive.
The guy did break contact long enough to give her a withering stare. “This ain’t a library,” he said. “Go shush someone else.”
“Actually—” She was about to point out that she worked there, but the guy didn’t let her get another word out.
“Unless you were trying to cut in?” He gave her an insulting once-over. “I’ll pass.”
His girlfriend tittered, but Lauren could tell it was more a nervous sound than one of genuine mirth. She bet the guy was a real laugh riot to spend time with. Now that they’d pulled apart, she also saw that he was wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt, which, yeah. That checked out.
“Hey,” Asa said from behind her. “You need to move on.”
She’d been wrong about his tone of voice. There was no levity in it at all—only a low authority that made her toes tingle.
The guy spat into the snow, narrowly missing her shoe. “Jesus,” he said. “We were about to. Come on, babe. Let’s go somewhere else that’s not filled with geeks who can’t get laid.”
Lauren flushed, sure that comment was more directed at her. But Asa only gave the couple a sarcastic little smile.
“Try the Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,” he said.
The guy doubled back for a second, as though unsure whether to take that as a sincere recommendation, before he led his girlfriend out of the Snow Globe, muttering the whole time. Eventually, the people who’d been watching to see if things would escalate turned their attention back to playing with the snow, and Lauren glanced up to see Asa frowning at the door.
“Should we let more people in?” she asked.
“No,” he said shortly.
“Okay.” She didn’t know how to read Asa’s mood. Was he pissed at that guy, for being such a jerk? Was he pissed atherfor some reason, because she couldn’t handle it? “I could’ve dealt with that guy. I was about to—”
Asa cut her off. “This was a mistake. You should go back to your office, finish up your work there. I’ll cover this shift until the next person comes to relieve me.”
Earlier that morning, Lauren would’ve leapt at the chance to get out of this new Freaky Friday initiative. But now she resented Asa thinking he could make a unilateral decision to kick her out, the same way he’d made a unilateral decision to bring her in in the first place. And she really didn’t like that wordmistake.
“We said an hour, and I’m going to stay the hour,” she said, glancing at her watch. It had been barely fifteen minutes.
