Wishful Thinking

by Evangeline Anderson

  “Uh-huh.” Phil tried not to let her hopes drop too much. Maybe he really had remembered it was her birthday and he was just leading her on. Sometimes Christian liked to tease her that way. “You know,” she said, giving him a tentative smile. “If you have time later on tonight I’d really like to talk to you. About plans for the wedding—Cass and Rory and my nana all want to know when we’re setting a date.”

  “Aw, c’mon.” Christian frowned. “Don’t hit me with that first thing in the morning, okay? I know you want to set a date and I promise we’ll do it soon. But we need to save enough money so that you can have that nice big wedding you deserve.”

  “I don’t know, Christian.” Phil looked down at her bare feet. “Lately I’ve been thinking that a big wedding isn’t so important to me. We could even run off to Vegas if you want to.”

  “Look, Phil, can we talk about this later?” Christian was beginning to look annoyed. “You know I want to get married as much as you do. Hell, we’ve been waiting four years to do it. But just…not now. Okay?”

  Phil sighed and bit her lip. Her fiancé always seemed to have some excuse for not talking about the future they had planned together.

  Christian must have seen her expression because he put down his coffee and reached out an arm to pull her close and gave her a squeeze. “Aw, don’t look like that, babe. You know how much you mean to me and that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Don’t you?”

  Phil nodded. “I know. It just seems like you’re always too busy to talk about the details.”

  Christian grimaced. “It’s this damn job—has me tied in knots day and night. But I promise we’ll talk about it soon, okay? You know how I feel about you—right?” It was an old joke between them and Phil answered automatically.

  “The same way I feel about you. Hate your guts, you jerk.”

  “That’s right. Hate you so much I can’t stand to be without you.” Christian laughed and dug his fingers into her side, just below her ribs. Phil yelped and jumped away.

  “Christian! You know I hate to be tickled.”

  He grinned at her charmingly and picked up the mug of coffee and the paper. “Why do you think I do it, Philly-babe? Seriously, I promise we’ll talk about plans for the wedding and all that crap later, okay?”

  When Christian had decided he didn’t want to discuss something, there was no point in trying. Pasting a smile on her face Phil said, “All right, I guess we can talk about it later just as well. So—did you sleep well?”

  “Well as can be expected with so much on my mind. Got a big day today.”

  Phil felt her heart leap. He had been teasing her earlier! This year he really had remembered! “So, you have something special planned for tonight?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Sure do, babe. And you better be ready at seven sharp ’cause we’re going out.”

  “Really?” Phil nearly did a little happy dance right there in the kitchen. She knew Christian wasn’t a sentimental kind of guy—he’d warned her he wasn’t when they first started dating. So when he did go out of his way to make a gesture like this, it meant that much more to her.

  “Really.” Christian shook out the paper and sniffed the air suspiciously. “Hey, what’s that smell?”

  “Nothing,” Phil said hastily. “I spilled some coffee on the burner and it smoked up some. So can you tell me where we’re going?” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice.

  Christian sniffed the air again, shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “Sure, we’re going out to Ivarone’s with the Vances—new clients of mine. Remember I told you about them? He’s into foreign imports and she collects some kind of art. Thought maybe you could schmooze ’em a little since that wacky sister of yours thinks she’s an artist.” He laughed and took another sip of coffee.

  “New clients?” Phil felt her heart drop. Please don’t tell me you forgot again! she thought desperately. “But…but Christian, don’t you remember what day this is?”

  “Sure I do.” He shook out the paper so he could read the date at the top of the wrinkled page. “It’s…Monday, June thirtieth. Looks like a beautiful day.” He slurped down the last of his coffee, belched and stood up to kiss her on the cheek. “Gotta go, babe, I’m running late. If you’re gone by the time I get out of the shower, have a good day. And don’t forget to be ready by seven tonight. Can’t keep the Vances waiting.”

  He brushed past her, leaving Phil feeling like someone had poked a hole in her heart and let all the good feelings out, like air leaking out of a balloon.

  Chapter Four

  The drive to work was uneventful although Phil found, when she pulled in to the parking garage for Brummel, Brummel, & Dickson, that someone had parked in her assigned space. The sleek red Mercedes seemed to mock her smaller, shabbier, pale blue Volkswagen bug. Phil had been working at BB&D for almost four years and she knew exactly who the Mercedes belonged to—Alison, the office flirt who used her charms shamelessly to get anything she wanted. Alison had her own assigned space, but it was toward the back of the lot and she didn’t like to walk. How she could afford such an expensive car on her salary, which was supposedly the same as Phil’s, was a subject of ongoing office speculation. Sighing, Phil found a spot in the back and walked slowly towards the elevator.

  “Hey, lady! Hey, lady! You wanna buy a pencil?”

  Phil winced as she passed the kid, who looked to be fourteen or fifteen, wearing large, dark sunglasses and jingling a cup of change and pencils. He was short for his age and only the dark fuzz of hair on his upper lips gave it away. There wasn’t supposed to be any solicitation on the BB&D premises but somehow the little blind pencil boy never got caught. Honestly, Phil wasn’t even all that sure he was blind, or even sight impaired. She was fairly certain she’d seen him or someone who looked exactly like him riding away on his bike one day, sunglasses tucked in his back pocket, as soon as all the employees had gone into the building. But still, every day he made her feel guilty and every day she bought a pencil she didn’t want for a dollar she would have preferred to spend at lunch.

  She’d told Cass and Rory about it and they had laughed at her, and called it ‘the not-so-blind-pencil-boy diet”. Phil supposed she could see the humor in it but somehow today she just didn’t feel like being taken for a ride.

  “Please, lady, don’t you wanna buy a pencil?” the boy begged, tilting his head appealingly. Sighing, Phil reached into her pocket. Why should today be any different?

  BB&D was located at the top of the Continental Bank Tower, a large silver building that rose forty-seven stories to loom over downtown Tampa. Phil stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for her floor, trying not to see the defeated look on her face in the mirrored walls of the elevator. She stepped out onto the plush maroon carpet that complimented the pale pink walls of the office.

  One of the senior partners had hired a color expert to remodel the entire space a few years back who had claimed that soft pastels on the walls were both soothing and invigorating—supposedly making people more focused on their work. In Phil’s opinion, the “expert” had probably just had about fifty gallons of pale pink paint to use up because she felt neither soothed nor invigorated when she hit the doors of BB&D. Instead, she felt like she was stuck inside the middle of a giant seashell and she couldn’t get out. But maybe that feeling had less to do with the color scheme and more to do with her job.

  Once at her cubicle, she stuffed the useless pencil in her desk drawer along with about a hundred others and put her purse on the shelf. A look at the calendar told her that Atwood Dickson Junior, her boss, had a big day in court this afternoon and she was willing to bet he wasn’t half done with the files she’d sent him home with that weekend. Just another day in paradise.

  “Phil? Hello, Earth to Philomena. Come in Philomena.” It was Kelli, the paralegal who sat in the cubicle beside Phil’s, practically shouting in her ear.

  Phil suppressed another sigh. If she had been quicker, s
he might have missed Kelli this morning since her coworker was almost always late. Now she would have to listen to the bizarre details of Kelli’s social life until she managed to get away.

  “Good morning, Kelli.” She attempted to smile. “How was your weekend?” It was the wrong thing to say.

  “Oh. My. God.” Kelli widened her eyes dramatically, her long black hair swirling around her narrow hips. Phil often thought her coworker looked like what might happen if an evil scientist had taken a shrinking ray to Cher and miniaturized her. “So you know how all those bad things were happening to me last week? I mean, how my car was broken into and that tree in my yard fell over and James broke up with me for like, absolutely no reason whatsoever at all?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Phil nodded, glancing longingly at her stack of paperwork. Kelli was harmless, but she sprayed the details of her personal life like a leaky garden hose and kept talking even when Phil was trying to work. Especially when Phil was trying to work.

  “So, anyway, I was like—this can’t be right. Bad luck comes in threes. So I had my cards done this weekend. I had a, um, reading?” Kelli had an annoying habit of turning every other sentence into a question. Phil nodded again, wishing that for once in her life she could tell Kelli to shut up.

  “So the lady who did my cards? She’s from Puerto Rico and she’s a priestess of Santeria or something like that. Anyway, she said…”

  Phil kept nodding, stacking the files she needed to take to her boss’s office and letting Kelli’s high, annoying voice pour over her. If she tried to leave in the middle of the story, her coworker’s feelings would be hurt, but she really needed to get going. How would Kelli like it if Phil started bitching about how her own day had started? Hey Kelli, she imagined herself saying. This morning my next-door neighbor stole my paper, her dog peed on my slippers and my fiancé forgot my birthday—again. How’s that for the trifecta of bad luck?

  “I had kind of a rough time this morning, too,” she said, when her coworker seemed to have reached a break in her narrative. “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kelli’s eyes glazed at once. “Well, maybe you should have your cards done. It’s like the Puerto Rican priestess told me, she said, ‘Kelli, you are under a curse.’ Just like that! Can you imagine? So then I was like, ‘No way—I can’t be.’ And she was like…”

  Phil let it wash over her again, unsurprised that her conversational gambit had failed. In her experience, Kelli was only interested in Kelli. Phil was doomed to hear the details of her coworker’s life forever. She wished again that she could tell her to just shut up. But there was no way to say that without starting a huge fight so she put up with it—as always.

  Finally Kelli seemed to be winding down. Phil nodded rapidly and started edging out of her cubicle. With a “That is such a shame, Kelli. You’ll have to tell me all about it later,” she escaped and went about her morning duties with a sigh of relief.

  Someday she would be the one sitting in the corner office ordering files, Phil reminded herself. Someday she would be the one making partner—not the one making coffee. Dickson liked it with four creams and five sugars and he always made the same joke when she brought it to him—“I like my women like I like my coffee—hot and sweet.”

  Just as she was about to leave the break room, the coffee in one hand and the files in the other, Alison Tanner wandered in. Per usual, she was dressed as though someone had asked her to star in a porno movie about a naughty secretary who gets spanked over her boss’s desk. A white silk blouse open to the third button showed plenty of cleavage and a hint of her lacy white bra and her black pencil skirt was short enough that if she sat down, no doubt the matching panties would be revealed. Black spike heels at least four inches high completed the look and gave Alison a slithering walk that seemed to hypnotize almost every man in the office.

  “Why, good morning, Philomena,” she purred. “My, aren’t we looking, ah professional today.” She raked poison green eyes up and down Phil’s frame, turning the compliment into an insult.

  Her nasty-nice tone made Phil want to smooth her hands self-consciously over her own sensible navy blue skirt and the tight bun of hair at the nape of her neck. Since her hands were full, she resisted the urge.

  “Good morning, Alison.” She tried to keep her voice level. “I, uh, happened to noticed that your car is parked in my spot.”

  “Oh, my—is it?” Alison raised an eyebrow, managing to make her tone sincere despite the mocking look on her face. “I am just so sorry, hon. I just seem to keep on forgetting and parking in the wrong spot. Silly me.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” How stupid do you think I am? You've been parking in my spot for months and you expect me to believe it’s an accident? Phil seethed, knowing that nothing she could say would change Alison’s behavior.

  “Not to change the subject, but what are you wearing to the beach party on Thursday?” Alison continued. “I’ve got a naughty little bikini all picked out. But you know…” She gave Phil another critical look. “I’m thinking maybe you should go with a one piece. Maybe the kind that has the little skirt attached. Those are just so cute and they hide so many flaws.” She smiled as though she honestly wanted to give helpful advice.

  Before Phil could figure out how to reply, a voice interrupted them. “Morning, you two.” It was Davis Miles, one of the attorneys who worked at BB&D. He hadn’t made partner yet but the office buzz was that he was on the fast track.

  As always, when she saw him, Phil couldn’t help wondering what he might look like with his shirt off. She knew she would never cheat on Christian but Miles was hands down the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of GQ with his dark hair and eyes and crisp, hand-tailored suits. He had broad shoulders and teeth so white they belonged in a toothpaste ad. But even so, there was something about him—a professional distance, perhaps. Miles never talked about his personal life and was never anything but polite when she spoke to him. Considering that she had to work closely with both Kelli and Alison, Phil appreciated that quality immensely.

  “Morning, Mister Miles.” She nodded at him politely. But before the words were out of her mouth, Alison brushed past her, knocking against her arm and slopping hot coffee down the front of her white blouse.

  “Ow!” Phil gasped as the hot liquid soaked her blouse and scalded her skin. Alison paid no attention. At least, not to Phil.

  “Davis,” the other woman purred, linking her arm with his and giving him her most seductive look. “You bad boy—why didn’t you call me this weekend? I waited and waited by the phone.”

  “Well, I…” Davis Miles looked uncomfortable, but men tended to be sucked into Alison’s orbit like cosmic debris into a black hole. Phil had yet to see one escape.

  “Now, no excuses. I want to know every little thing you did this weekend. And are you all ready for the beach party this Thursday? I was just telling what’s-her-name here about the naughty little pink bikini I’m going to wear. I mean, it’s practically see-through. So now tell me—what are you going to be wearing, Davis? I hope it’ll be something to show off all those muscles I see bulging under that expensive suit of yours…”

  They walked out of the break room arm in arm, leaving Phil to stare down at the brown stain on the front of her blouse. She wanted to scream. Instead, she put down the half-full coffee mug and the stack of files and ran to the break-room sink to try and get the coffee off before it set permanently. The result was a see-through patch on her shirt right over her left breast which left her feeling more exposed than if she were wearing Alison’s “naughty little pink bikini”. She wouldn’t have minded so much if she wasn’t just about to go to her boss’s office but… There was no point thinking about it. Better just get it over with.

  “Good morning, Mister Dickson,” Phil tried to sound businesslike as she sat the coffee and the stack of files and paperwork down on his desk.

  “Morning, Philomena, sweetheart. Aren�
�t you pretty today?” Atwood Dickson was short, squat, and balding with piggy little eyes the color of mud. He always had coffee breath and his fingernails were never very clean. He was also the son of the senior partner of the same name. Everyone at BB&D, including him, was certain he was going to make partner regardless of his performance. Accordingly he slacked off as much as possible and Phil knew for a fact that he was looking at internet porn on his computer most of the time he was supposed to be working.

  “Did you get through the Jackson file this weekend?” she asked, ignoring his remark.

  “Aw, hell—who could get through all that mess?” He kicked back in his chair, his feet on the desk, his gut bulging up from his too-tight suit pants.

  Phil wanted to say that he had better get through that mess if he wanted to avoid looking like an ass in court that day but she controlled herself. “You have a big day in court today,” she reminded him, going to look for the file in question. Doubtless it was at the bottom of his briefcase, untouched, and she would have to go through it and point out the salient points to him herself.

  “I’ve got all kinds of big things, if you know what I mean, darlin’. ‘Specially now I see we’re havin’ a wet T-shirt contest this morning.” Dickson leered at her see-through blouse and Phil felt a red blush creeping up her face.

  “I spilled some of your coffee on myself.” She nodded at the mug still sitting untouched on his desk.

  Dickson took a sip from the mug, his greedy little eyes never leaving her chest. “Mmm, I like my coffee like I like my women—hot and sweet.” He laughed at his own joke the same way he did every morning.

  Phil bent the corners of her mouth into an approximation of a smile and continued to dig through his briefcase until she found the Jackson file. She would have complained to HR, except that another member of the Dickson family worked there—Atwood’s cousin, Herbert.