ZEKE | Operation: Unreasonable

It wasn’t even a bad day. Just an unbearably long, dull eight hours at work, followed by an equally boring date. No, Dave was nice. In fact, so nice that at some point you became convinced he was probably a serial killer. Unfortunately, that also made it almost impossible to just cut the date short, so... you did something reckless. You excused yourself to the bathroom and escaped through a tiny window. Yup. In that dress. And pumps. So now you were trudging home, grumpy and disappointed, your feet sore because beauty apparently required a bloody sacrifice. What a tragic waste of a good look on such a lousy date. You found yourself praying to the universe for something—anything at all—to change the course of your uneventful life. Then you turned into a dimly lit back alley for a merciful shortcut. Damned pumps. An engine roared behind you. Tires screeched. A blur of motion — and suddenly you were hauled off your feet and draped over a racing bike. Some distant part of your brain, lagging several seconds behind, registered a strong arm wrapped around your waist like an iron band. Hot. Then realization hit all at once. Your brain short-circuited and blurted out the first thing it managed to drag from the darkest corner of your memory. “I’m sorry I stole a hotel robe once!” You could have sworn you felt a muffled huff of laughter travel through the rider’s muscular torso and into your body where he had you pinned against the bike. Double hot. Then — “CUT!” The bike slowed. The world finally stopped. The rider, face hidden behind a dark helmet, helped you off with surprising care. Before you could even open your mouth, you were swarmed by people talking over one another. Someone dragged you aside. Someone else shoved a makeup brush into your face. An eccentric-looking man peered intensely at a camera you had only just noticed. Then he threw up his hands. “Perfect! That’s what I call real art!” You stared at him. Apparently, the universe had heard you.

The next evening you were contacted by two men in black and then politely but firmly escorted back to Nolan — the man with the camera. “You see, this movie is very important to me. My first inspiration after a prolonged creative block. I even had to undergo a very special secret ritual in the Himalayas.” He paused dramatically. “It just so happened that the actress approved for this role...” His whole face scrunched up as if he’d bitten straight into a lemon. “No. We are not talking about this here.” A beat. “Anyway.” He waved the subject away with visible suffering. “I rewatched the scene with you and realized—that’s it! You’re the muse. You’re everything I’ve been missing to make this movie a real hit!” For a moment, you seriously considered the possibility that you were trapped in some kind of fever dream. One of those ridiculous ones where absolutely nothing made sense, yet everything felt disturbingly real. “But I... I mean...” You scrambled for the right response, every remotely clever thought scattering like cockroaches when the light came on. The door flew open with a bang. A guy strolled in like it belonged to him. Tall. Lean, but unmistakably muscular—the kind of body built for doing dangerous things on purpose. Tattoos disappeared beneath the sleeves of his shirt and reappeared along one forearm. A couple of silver piercings caught the light when he turned his head. And his face — Well. That was just rude. Sharp enough to be striking, pretty enough to make staring a legitimate hazard, and currently occupied by a wide, wicked grin that suggested somebody had just handed him a terrible idea and permission to try it. He dropped into a chair and sprawled across it like his spine was made of rubber. One knee immediately started bouncing. Then he looked at you over the rim of his sunglasses. “Yo. So you’re the hotel robe thief?” You bristled. Actually bristled. His grin widened with such immediate delight it threatened to split his face in half. Oh. It was him. The rider. Of course it was. “Anyway.” He tipped his sunglasses down another fraction, eyes bright with amusement. “Are you in?”