.
you are. You’re like the smallest person I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re just very big,” Mira picked up her coffee cup.
Rex had his hand held out. Mira gawked at it, a deer mesmerised in headlights.
“I liked that jolt you gave me, I could do with another one.”
And Mira did something she hadn’t done in a long time, so long her muscles felt stiff and protesting - she smiled a real smile.
So there she was, trying to get her head around the fact she was having a hand-in-hand morning stroll with a complete stranger who was setting a fire alight up her arm.
And her palm was sweaty.
Gawwwd!
Actually, Mira could only concentrate on the quandary she had of wanting to hold Rex’s hand and at the same time desperate to get rid of the humiliating puddle pooling in her palm.
Before she had another moment to think about it, Mira’s hand pulled away almost by itself and she started wiping it on her skirt.
Rex shoved his hands in his pockets again.
Damn it!
“So you gotta be somewhere?”
“I’ve got about half an hour before work,” Mira stuttered out, still wiping her hands down her skirt in an attempt to put her nervous energy somewhere.
Rex snickered and she shot upright again, worried she’d accidentally flashed her bra strap or something in her fumbling.
“What do you do?” Rex was looking out over her now, like he was distracted.
“I’m a copy editor,” Mira said nonchalantly, “How ‘bout you?”
Rex shrugged, “Shift work,” and he smiled to himself.
“I gotta go. See you then.”
“Ok,” but before Mira could say any more he was down the path in the other direction.
Mira shuffled along the footpath, sipping her coffee, enjoying how warm it felt inside her clutched fingers. The breeze wasn’t exactly cold but everything rippled in Mira. She brushed off shiver after shiver that tickled down her spine and shook her to her fingertips.
The universe was brewing, Mira could feel it in the air.
By the time she hit her desk at work Mira’s hands were trembling with adrenaline.
“You’re wound tight today,” Sunny popped her head around the corner of Mira’s cubical desk.
Mira knocked her coffee gasping, and fumbled a juggling act to catch it.
“So what’s new then?” Mira grumbled.
Sunny smiled and her rainbow energy hummed a soothing balm over the nervous tension that had built itself up into a ball in Mira’s gut.
“Nah, you’re wound up even more than usual - got needles spitting outta your eyes,” and Sunny popped her eyes wide, making fizzy noises.
Mira laughed.
Sunny literally was that to Mira. She was a burst of sunshine on Mira’s shadow nature. They’d grown up together, loved reading together, and now they worked together.
Sunny was a photographer though, capturing the beauty in what was really there and flapping it in Mira’s face.
Sunny was good for Mira.
Sunny was also the only one Mira could talk to about the way she saw things no one else could see, and felt things she shouldn’t be able to feel.
“You’re not talking to ghosts again are you? You always get extra titchy when you do that, like someone’s been messin’ with your radio waves and got you on static.”
“Noooo,” Mira hissed, trying to hush Sunny’s bright voice.
“How’s your Dad?” Sunny asked lower, more gently.
Mira just shook her head down at her desk.
“K,” Sunny put her hand on Mira’s back, “Lunch?”
Nodding into the desk, Mira bit her lip, felt it hurt and used the pain to pin together the ripping inside her.
Then she took a deep breath, snapped her head up, and got on with things.
Later at lunch Sunny smiled over her smoothie at Mira as Jen and Rosie chatted back and forth about Jen’s upcoming birthday party, which was a month away… at least. Shrugging to herself Mira smirked, she was hopeless at keeping track of social events.
“So I’m not sure whether to do 80s theme, 90s theme, or y2K theme,” Jen gushed between mouthfuls.
Rosie chuckled, “Why would you have an 80s party? You weren’t even born yet!”
Rosie was almost doubled over laughing, while Jen squinted at her.
“Look at these balloons bitch,” and Jen started furiously scanning through the camera roll on her phone for a pic.
“No, that’s not it, wait…”
Rosie, somewhat recovered, begged, “Just please don’t have a y2K party. Who does that? Nobody! All that bad fake tan and hipster jeans so low we all practically had our vajayjays hanging out.”
Jen snickered.
Even Mira burst a raspberry through her lips, trying not to spray risotto.
“Ok, I got it!” Jen started shaking her phone in Rosie’s face.
“Oh m’gawd Jen! It looks like a rainbow’s had gastro all over your screen. Here! Look up my bohemian, minimalist 25th on Pinterest for God’s sake,” and Rosie started tapping madly on Jen’s phone.
“You have to come Mir!” Jen lent over and Mira could see bright glints of blue epiphany twinkling across Jen’s eyes, “My cousin’s going to be there!”
“Don’t start on the matchmaking again Jen,” Rosie groaned, then quickly added “But you definitely have to come Mira.” She put her hand on Mira’s wrist like a pawing puppy.
“As long as Dad’s ok,” Mira trailed off.
“Of course! Of course honey!” Jen and Rosie chorused.
Walking back to the office, Sunny put her arm around Mira, slurping the end of her smoothie.
“Hard to get a word in around those two.”
“Are you going to Jen’s party?” Mira sounded so whiny and desperate.
“For sure baby,” and Sunny pretended to chug her empty smoothie cup.
Sunny was a social butterfly, the life of the party. It was like she just couldn’t get enough of people, which often left Mira wondering why Sunny even bothered with her.
It’s not that Mira didn’t like people, she wasn’t antisocial on purpose. Mira was just happier to sit and listen. And that suited most people down to the ground. Mira found more often than not, people just talked at each other about themselves anyway.
At the end of the day Mira was glazing over an email about a work awards presentation night. She wanted to bin it but left it in her inbox just in case. Mira rubbed her burning eyes. She sighed as she closed her laptop, relieved it was the end of the day.
Hackles suddenly shot up the back of Mira’s neck. Mr Reed must have slithered out of his office. She looked over her cubical just in time to see him slink across the room, head craned, licking his lips with a forked tongue - looking for a delicate egg to devour whole.
Mira refused to call that predator, lowlife ‘Chief.’ He was a narcissistic serpent, praying on the desperation of naive young women trying to make it in the competitive publishing industry.
Mira