Check Mate

Chapter 7

Sometime during Ryan's interaction with my ass I think my spirit and frankly will for anything left my body. A girl's soul can only take so much bullshit. I did not come to until he removed his hand and walked away. I blinked a few times trying to process what the actual fuck just happened.

Birdie: SOS

Ira: OK I'm omw - what happened?

Birdie: I'm going to do something drastic

Ira: Hold off - I'll b there in 30

Texting Ira was the first thought that came to my head. The second was murder. And not well thought out, not getting caught murder. I mean gory, random ass, unadulterated murder. You may be thinking, 'yes, your brother-in-law should not grab your butt, but maybe he's just weird and gross.' All of those points are completely right. Brother-in-law, check. Weird, check. Gross, quadruple check. But, the factor you have not measured in is that I used to be with Ryan. Scratch that I was once engaged to Ryan. Here you have fiancé numero uno - Ryan von Brandt.

Let that sink in.

I try to forget for the sake of my sanity and my therapist's, but I guess for this once I will go through my long and ultimately painful relationship with him. Ryan and I had met during the summer before my junior year of undergrad. I had been interning at a graphic design firm and he was our boss's assistant.

"You're doing that wrong," a voice said behind me.

I had been in the copier room for 45 minutes now, trying to set up the company's new printer and royally failing.

I turned my head around to see a guy leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed on his chest. He had bright blue eyes, that shone out against his pale skin. His hair was a feathery, dirty blonde styled back with gel.

I huffed in frustration and swiped my arm across my forehead. Unbeknownst to me I wiped printer ink onto my forehead.

"Oh, like you could do better," I knew who he was, but we had never talked directly and quite frankly I did not like him. He always would tell the interns what to do without any encouragement, just criticism. Could it kill you to say 'good job'?

Assistant Ryan pushed off of the doorframe and took the machine part out of my ink stained hands. And with a quick flourish of placing the part into the correct socket and some buttons being pressed, the printer awoke and sent out the tester paper. I sat there in awe. He then opened up a near by cabinet and pulled out a sheet of paper towel, wetted it and handed it to me.

"You have printer ink on your forehead," then he turned on his heels and left.

You have to know something about me, I don't like feeling useless and I'm highly competitive, so I took his silent disappointment of me as a challenge. I, an unpaid intern, began to stay as late as him doing menial filing and came in early with perfect coffee orders from Starbucks. I was fueled on the pure need to be praised. A few weeks went on and I got absolutely nothing. The only way I knew that he noticed anything that I was doing was him leaving a post-it note at my small, cluttered desk.

I ordered a black coffee with 2 sugars, no cream. Not no sugar, 2 creams. If you're not going to do it right don't do it at all - Assistant Ryan von Brandt

I ripped that lovely reminder up, keeping my internal rage at bay with each tear. I really wanted to give him his own post-it note that would say a cute little reply such as 'shove it' or 'bite me', but I ultimately decided against it. Instead I killed him with kindness, drawing smiley faces on his coffee, sending encouraging memos at the end of my emails and color coding files like an absolute boss - the whole nine yards in ass-kissery. After long, long nights at the company, I would then actually make money at a local bar as a piss poor bartender.