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I was going to win this fight. I was not going to be defeated by a thin sheet of polymers.
Glaring down at the stretchy plastic in question, I carefully pried it apart from itself. And then I immediately had to compensate for the free corner swinging back up again, trying to stick to itself again, almost like drawn by a gravity well.
What the shit? Who thought this stuff was a good idea? Was this just made to torture people who were in the middle of doing something, and who were probably also covered in some kind of food substances?
Thankfully, I didn’t have any food things smeared on me. But this plastic was going to get melted into a tiny pile of slag soon if it didn’t behave.
The giggling wasn’t helping.
I turned and glared at Amena, who was leaning against the door jam with a hand over her mouth, trying not to be too obvious about laughing at me.
She was failing spectacularly at being subtle.
“If you can do better, feel free,” I bitched at her.
She snorted, a disgusting sound of amusement she made sometimes, and shook her head. “No, I can’t do any better, I promise. It’s just delightful seeing you be so bad at something for once.”
My glare intensified.
“Besides anything related to interpersonal interactions, I’m mean,” she added, with a cheeky grin.
I thought about throwing the clingy plastic film at her, but I knew it wouldn’t make it across the room. Then I considered throwing the whole plate of food at her instead.
She was probably quick enough to duck.
But I’d have to clean up the mess, and that would be even more annoying than fighting with the polymer. Especially since it would be wasting the food I was trying to protect with the stupid, argumentative self-adhesive thing.
And then suddenly there was Mensah, standing in the doorway, and glancing between the two of us, thoughtfully. “And what exactly are the two of you up to in here,” she asked in her gentle-yet-firm “it had not better be anything I don’t approve of” tone.
Amena straightened from the door and smoothed the expression on her face. “Uh, nothing bad. Just SecUnit is kind of failing at something and I don’t see that very often…”
Mensah’s look toward her became chiding.
Amena grimaced a little. Then when she saw my expression she made a face at me, slipping out the door back into the rest of the house.
Mensah turned to look at me and whatever face I’d been making was neutral again by the time she saw my expression.
She looked contemplatively up at me for a moment. “Well,” she said after a moment. “We can’t have my children teasing you too much, can we?”
She stepped forward, untangled the film from my fingers and deftly manipulated it to cover the plate of muffins so skillfully I wanted to put it into my permanent storage for future reference.
She was so competent at so many things, and it caught my attention every time. Some of the things she could do, like this were little and not really important to major life events, but it was still impressive.
I was not going to tell her again how much I liked her. In a not weird way.
“They’re for you,” I blurted out, and then immediately tried to set a reminder to code that two second delay on my mouth.
She blinked up at me. We were standing so close together that I could feel how warm she was, and I wanted to increase my body heat to match.
“Pardon?”
“The muffins,” I said, since I was already committed to this conversation. “A couple of the kids said you and Farai, and Tano all like them.”
Her expression went warm, and fond, and made me melt on the inside, and I pretended I needed to stare out the kitchen window at something with urgent intensity.
“Thank you,” she said softly, her voice just as warm and fond as her expression was.
Ugh.
She picked up the plate, and smiled at my shoulder. “And thank you for your valiant fight with the cling film,” she added, absolutely giving me shit.
I rolled my eyes, and left the kitchen, the sound of her soft laughter following me down the hall.