Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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Mentally calculating the fastest time I could reach my workplace, I decided I had about eight minutes to convince Kakashi Hatake he was a fictional character and figure out what the hell was going on. No big.
I paced back and forth on my sky-blue carpet stained by mysterious tenants of the past. My hands in a tight hold on my forehead, I tried to figure out where to begin.
Kakashi stood, peering into the box of two happily-mewling kittens. Hable and Sintar didn't care about the one-eyed gaze staring down at them from an impressive height, his silhouette very much like his namesake.
I could almost hear the clock in my bedroom that I kept solely for the ticking sound counting down the moments until I'd be late for my day of being harassed by strangers and overworked until my thigh joints screamed at me in pain.
This is an emergency situation, isn't it? Should I just call in? It would be okay just once, wouldn't it?
I thought of the lined faces of the older ladies I worked with as a cashier. Each line punctuated their hard years of labor, of service. Thankless work that they'd become the unappreciated masters of.
If I didn't show up...who knew if Amanda, my usual Service Coordinator, would be able to take a break. She'd be busy covering everyone else's fifteens and lunches, right on the hour.
All it took was one person not showing up, and everything was thrown into chaos. The schedule always had tons of names listed, but when you figured in breaks, the reality was much more dire than it let on.
I blew out a sigh, finally facing the ninja silently observing the wiggle beans on the couch.
"Look, can you level with me for a moment?" I asked, a restless, nervous energy building within me, full of fire.
Those measly flames petered out once I took in the sheer size and breadth of this man, who always looked so skinny and harmless on my tiny iPad screen.
I took several steps backward, edging my spine on the corner of the wall leading into the kitchen.
Swallowing nervously, my mind was a mess. Did it have to be someone as handsome as Kakashi? Did it have to be a male character, of all people?
Fictional men were all well and good, and I could love them with my entire heart. With distance. There was always a screen or the pages of a novel between us.
I didn't have to deal with the sheer size of them. Not in real life.
Men were something I tried to avoid, mostly for no reason at all. Everybody's got their mysterious quirks, don't they?
"You want me to 'level' with you?" Kakashi asked. Without me noticing, he'd pulled his Hidden Leaf headband up from where it covered his eye.
He stood with his left side—his Sharingan side—facing me, that red iris decorated with tomoe.
