Reflections [Complete]

Chapter 4

"Are you ready?"

"Uh..yeah...I can just find my way there on my own."

"How?"

"I can take a bus or maybe a cab or something."

"Let me get this straight, you are saying even though I am driving my personal car to the meeting, you want to instead take the bus? And I should just wait around for you over there until you manage to find your way?"

"Umm...no...that's..."

"So let's just agree that was a stupid suggestion and get on with it. I don't understand these numbers as well as you and it makes me nervous not being completely prepared. So can we please focus getting me up to speed and not wasting time arguing ridiculous logistics?"

He only nodded before slowly drudging behind to follow me towards my car. The man truly was one unique character cause as soon as we began driving he rolled down the window and stuck his head out as far as possible while I screamed over the massive road noise to shoot questions at him and his responded like he had all the answers already rehearsed. He didn't even need a split second to think before he rattled off a reply, no matter how complicated my question was.

Thankfully, the meeting with our sponsors went really well no thanks to Kong looking like a hobo I had picked up from the side of the road. If he hadn't managed to dazzle them with all the numbers and projections he had under his wing we would have probably lost our contract. Now I could have claimed righteous indignation and yelled at them 'don't you dare judge the book by its cover', but I clearly had too, and unfortunately so will the world. And if I wanted to push him as the face of more meetings, interacting with the top dogs in our world, as he clearly deserves to take credit for all the hard work he puts in with people finally recognizing his true brilliance, I need to address the first impression he puts across. And not to mention his weird resistance to sitting in my car. He finds a way to make even the most mundane tasks comparable to pulling teeth.

We were leaving the building after the meeting and unconsciously I had slowed my steps and was contemplating a little too hard on how I should go about addressing his severe distaste of anything related to color and fit or perhaps introducing him to the concept of combs and razors. Unfortunately my musings had unknowingly halted my feet, and since Kong nearly always moved with his eyes lowered he crashed against me with his face banging right into the back of my head.

"Ouch."

"Oh my god, are you ok? You need to really watch where you walk. Did you get hurt?"

Apparently he did, cause he had a slightly swollen lip where he had accidentally bitten it when he ran into me. But the bigger problem was that his glasses had snapped right into two halves while still on his face, with a small shard having lodged into the skin of the bridge of his nose. A tiny trickle of blood falling down from the wound.

I removed the two pieces of his glasses off his face as tenderly as possible, the a stray piece of plastic still jutting out of the wound while he forced his pained, injured expression to go back to the same ole neutral one. How is even literal blood pouring down his face not enough to get a significant reaction out of him?

I dragged him towards the car, gently of course, and rushed towards the closest pharmacy to pick up a tweezer, some disinfectant and a tiny bandaid. I half ran back to the car and this time slowed my steps for an entirely different reason. For the first time since I have been paying him a little too much attention did I see him do something remotely normal. He was sitting in the passenger seat of my car, having pulled down the sun visor and looking at himself in the mirror, gingerly touching his wound, dabbing at the drops of blood by his cheek. I know this small action should not at all be surprising, but for some reason I had just assumed he never really looked at himself in the mirror. Did he even own one? But as soon as he noticed me nearing he quickly pushed the flap back in its place and pretended like he wasn't just behaving like a human being.

I sat back in the car and turned towards him and beckoned him closer to remove the tiny shard as carefully as possibly. Yet there must have been a pinch of pain cause for the second time that day he flinched with a very normal reaction as he sucked in his breath to prevent himself vocalizing the pain. But the open wound had now been unplugged where a gush of blood began dripping down his face, some even dripping into his eyes, which automatically fluttered shut, with me vigorously dabbing the wound with cotton doused in disinfectant to clean it as quickly as possible.

I have spent many hours in the past few weeks staring at him, his actions, his quirks, his definitely lacking fashion sense, but this was probably the first time I was looking this closely at his face. And ignoring the task at hand, without consciously thinking about it I moved in a little closer to observe him unrestricted. For some reason I was noticing things I hadn't before. Things that shouldn't have in all practicality ever caught my attention.

He had surprisingly long, unnaturally black eyelashes, and without the chunky glasses hindering the view they framed his eyes very appealingly. And then there were his high cheekbones and a long straight nose, dipping sharply to meet him plump, pinkish lips. The lines defining his face stark, and distinct especially the striking jawlines converging smoothly to form a sharp chin, peeking through distinctly even through the hindrance of his shabby beard. All of this enhanced with creamy, pale, smooth skin. I know I had noticed his good looks in passing before but never from less than half a foot away, and never with this much detail and I was taken aback when it suddenly hit me how truly gorgeous his features were. It was almost blasphemy at this point for him to hide behind those ridiculous glasses.

My hands had halted for a few more minutes than reasonable while I continued peering over his face when his eyes slowly fluttered open, looking straight into mine. Another first for him when he held my gaze giving me a closer look at his deep auburn eyes.

Multiple heartbeats passed. We were surrounded by the intimacy of the enclosed car sitting less than a foot away, me unable to move my gaze away from his, and for the first time him holding mine just as steadily.

It wasn't until a loud random noise from outside the car shook him out of his reverie did he be break eye contact and immediately moved slightly away from me, frowning in confusion, triggering a further flow of blood in the process and shakily whispering.

"Wh...what are you doing?"

"I...uh...I was trying to figure out how deep your wound was. I am worried it might leave a tiny scar."

"Oh, I don't care about that."

Then he simply reached forward, pried the bandaid from my hand and slapped it haphazardly over his wound, even managing to get a lot of it over his eyebrow, which if you haven't realized yet is going to hurt like a bitch when he tries to rip it off. I guess he was back to being his quirky self. But atleast for today I feel I want to spend some time forgetting why his behavior was so weird and think for a few minutes how did he captivate me so much despite him being....well, him.

I dropped him off near his apartment and headed home contemplating over and over what I wanted to do about him. He was too smart, had too much potential to be left on his own to forever disappear into the hordes of people that come and go in any large company. Yet he clearly took being shy and awkward to another level. And I don't know if it is conducive and/ or even healthy for me to be so involved with someone who clearly loves the shadows.

I pulled into the garage of my apartment complex ready to drop his topic from my mind atleast until tomorrow. I spend enough time during the day trying to figure him out. There was no need to carry his thoughts into my private space too. It wasn't until I jumped out of my car did the pieces of his glasses topple out from my lap.

Ah crap! Maybe he needed his glasses back. I don't know if he even has a spare. I should have actually asked if he needed to go get new ones or if he would be able to survive without them until he got a replacement. I looked through one of un-shattered lens to determine how bad his prescription was and if he would be ok without them. And that's when I realized they were simply for show. No prescription whatsoever. Just plain ole' clear glass.

Hang on a second, did the man wear this ugly piece of trash on his face for absolutely no reason?