I Don't Need A Promise

Chapter 4

            I brandished my fist after him as he went into the living room with Miss Annie. Muttering to myself about the inconsideration of famous people, I cleaned the rest of the dishes resentfully, but without complaint. I put all the dishes on the drying rack, and put away the ones from last night back. I grabbed a clean towel with which to dust and headed into the living room, where Ash and Miss Annie were sitting on the couch waiting.

            “Ready to lose?” Ash asked, rising from his seat.

            “I should be the one asking that,” I put my hands on my hips and glared.

            “Feisty. I like that,” he motioned for me to position myself under the lamp, and I did so obediently. He stepped behind me and I stiffened slightly up as he put his hands on either side of my waist. “On the count of three, I’ll hoist you up and you start dusting, got it?”

            “Got it.”

            “Alright. One, two, three!” Suddenly my feet were dangling far from the ground, and my head nearly collided with one of the fan’s blades.

            “Hey, be careful! I’m not a rag doll!”

            “My bad. Guess I don’t know my own strength.” To my disappointment, he didn’t even sound like he was straining himself to hold me up. I took my slow time pulling one of the fan blades towards myself and starting to dust off the top; it was a good thing I did this today, the dust was so thick. Ash’s fingers were bony and long and dug into my sides a bit, but it didn’t bother me.

            “Hey, Ari? I have a question.” I glanced over my shoulder to Ash staring up at me curiously.

            “What?”

            “I’m really curious. What’s it like being short?”

            “Excuse me?” I tried to twist around to look at him properly, but I couldn’t do so mid-air.

            “Hey, don’t take it the wrong way. Its just that short people like you usually hate tall people like me just for our heights. Is it really that bad being short?”

            “What, you mean you don’t remember being this tall?” I sneered, scrubbing angrily at the fan blades.

            “I was as short as you when I was like, ten.”

            “Stop calling me short.”

            “Please, don’t fight,” pleaded Miss Annie from the couch.

            “What’s your height, anyway? Five foot two maybe?”

            “I don’t feel the need to measure myself, thank you,” I snapped back, getting irritated now. “It doesn’t make a difference whether or not I know.”

            Ash laughed. “Yeah, I guess people think you’re a teenager more often when you’re short. Twenty-one, you said?”

            “I’m twenty-two!” I lost my temper for the second time and aimed a kick behind myself, hitting him square in the chest. He took a step back in shock, and his hands tightened on my waist. The back of his foot collided with the coffee table, and the next thing I knew the ceiling was behind me and the ground was rushing up to meet me.

            I screamed as Ash crashed onto the table, and it cracked in two under the force of the blow. He turned me around at the last second and wrapped his arms around me in order to protect me from the wooden shrapnel. I buried my face into his chest and prepared for the impact. We landed with a deafening crash as the table split in two. After the shock, I looked up nervously to Ash’s face, but I couldn’t see past his chin from the angle my head was at.