Daydreamer

by Brea Brown

  look around frantically for him; and

  punch Marvin in the face for the implied “dumbass” at the end of his sentence.

  Instead, I manage to swallow my beer and say coolly, “Oh. Right. I didn’t realize he beat me here.”

  The next batter strikes out, ending the inning. Marvin turns his full attention to me as the sides switch out. “He went to the bathroom. So what’s the deal? I thought he said he wasn’t coming to the game.”

  “I guess he changed his mind.”

  Marvin rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, thank God you’re here. The dude’s been asking me so many questions about the game that it’s embarrassing. I’ve hardly had a chance to watch.”

  I hide my smile in my plastic beer cup. “Sorry. I got here as soon as I could,” I manage before drowning my grin in another swallow.

  The people immediately to my right stand up, allowing someone through. Jude edges past me and moves to retake the empty seat on the other side of Marvin, but Marvin willingly scoots over to make room for him between the two of us.

  “Go ahead, man. Sit next to Libby. She’s the one teaching you about baseball, right?”

  Jude hesitates for a nanosecond, then takes the seat. “Right. Excellent. Thanks, mate.”

  Marvin’s absence is literally a breath of fresh air. I can breathe through my nose again without getting a snootful of sweaty man. And there’s enough room between Jude and me for a slight breeze against my left side.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to Jude.

  “Not at all,” he answers, smiling. “What’d I miss?”

  I know he’s talking about the game, but I say quietly, “You missed my finding out that you covered for me, probably knowing that I was sitting at home, bribing myself with season tickets next year to get myself out the door.”

  He laughs out loud, then covers his mouth as he murmurs back, “I actually thought it was a huge bag of Kit Kats you were promising yourself, but I was spot-on with the rest of it.”

  Marvin startles me by standing up right as I’m about to say something about his sweat glands. I quickly close my mouth and smile up at him as he announces he’s going to the bathroom and slides past us.

  As soon as he’s gone, I inform Jude, “He’s really mad you’re here. He’s already bitched to me about it. Why’d you change your mind?”

  Hiding behind his sunglasses, Jude watches the action on the field, a routine ground-out by the other team’s hitter. “Already had the ticket. Had nothing better to do. Etcetera, etcetera...”

  “But you told Marvin—”

  “He can bugger off. He did a great job on the animation, and he really saved my bacon, but he’s been a bit of a wanker about it, holding this over your head when it’s obvious you don’t fancy him.” Now he looks at me. “Right?”

  “Right!” I agree readily. “So right!” More quietly, I say, “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

  He gently bumps against my side. “Me too.”

  Suddenly a ball comes rocketing toward us. I put my glove up, but Jude’s taller and manages to catch the opposing team’s homerun bare-handed.

  “Mother fu—” he hisses, tossing it into his other hand so he can shake off the sting.

  “Throw it back!” I shout at him.

  “What?”

  “You have to throw it back, to show the other team we don’t want their homerun ball!”

  Quickly, as if the ball has cooties, he tosses it over the wall, where it lands on the centerfield grass. Everyone around us cheers. He grins so brightly his smile could have been used to illuminate a night game before Wrigley got lights.

  “Yeah!” he yells, forcing a vein to pop bulge the middle of his red forehead and shaking his arms over his head. “Screw you, Cards!”

  This outburst makes him the prince of our section. Guys around us slap his back and tousle his hair. I can’t stop laughing. The excitement eventually dies down as it sinks in that we’re still down one-zip, thanks to that homer. But I feel as happy as I would if we were winning with two outs in the ninth inning of Game Seven of the World Series. Well, maybe not quite that happy, but pretty close.

  Marvin left in the middle of the eighth inning, claiming he wanted to beat the traffic, but we’d largely ignored him since he returned from the bathroom, so I have a feeling it had more to do with that than anything else. After we said goodbye to him, I told Jude, “By the way, true fans don’t worry about the traffic. We stay until the bitter end.”

  Jude nodded. “Damn right!” he concurred. “I can easily see us coming back and getting eight runs in our next two at-bats. We’re not ready to jack it in just yet!”

  He cracked me up pretty much the entire game. He knows a lot more about it than he was letting on, but I can tell he thought it was funny to be the clueless foreigner, especially around Marvin, who was visibly annoyed by his questions and ignorant comments. After his bare-handed snatch, I gave him my glove and said, “Here; if you’re going to be a hero, you’ll need this.” I knew any ball coming our way would meet his reach much sooner than mine anyway, and I hated the thought of him breaking his hand at his first (maybe?) baseball game.

  Now the game’s over, and we’re sitting in the bleachers, waiting for the crowd to clear. A few other fans have the same idea, but we’re pretty much alone up here.

  “This is how you do it,” I tell him. “You stay later, not leave earlier. Marvin.”

  Jude laughs. “Absolutely.” He stretches his legs, resting his feet on the empty bleachers in front of us.

  “This is my favorite place in the whole world,” I say, tucking my hands under my legs and shrugging my shoulders up near my ears. I don’t know why I feel the need to tell this guy such personal details.

  He looks around. “Good memories here?”

  I nod. “Yep. Never had a bad time in this park. That’s why I was dreading today so much. I couldn’t believe that Marvin was going to break my streak. And it was my own fault. Speaking before thinking, you know?”

  “Yeah, but I really do appreciate your speaking up. I didn’t have anything to bribe him with. I don’t think he would have helped us as readily if I’d offered to get him into one of my rugby matches. Not quite the same attraction as this.” He motions to the field in front of us.

  “You’re welcome.” I play with one of the laces in my ball glove. “Thanks for helping me keep my happy streak alive. Here. Today.” After an awkward pause, I add, “And I heard that the presentation went well Monday night, so I guess it was all worth it?” I don’t divulge that I only know this from eavesdropping on him and Lisa the day after the Art Museum Board meeting.

  “Yeah. Definitely. For me, that is. I hope it was all worth it for you, too.”

  I actually mean it when I say, “For sure. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “Really?” he quickly asks, pulling his knees up and anxiously turning toward me. “Nothing? Even… what you told me?”

  I swallow. “Even that. I guess. It’s kind of pointless to regret it.”

  “Because I feel like you hate me for knowing.”

  “I don’t hate you, Jude.” I stand up to lead the way down the bleachers and out of the ballpark, but he snags my hand. “What?” I ask, turning to look down at him. Why won’t this topic die?

  “Did someone… hurt you?” Despite the slight sunburn on his cheeks, he looks pale.

  I blink a few times, then laugh nervously. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, the answer’s no. Nobody hurt me… in that way.” I tug on his hand. “Come on. We should get going.”

  And although it’s not necessary by any means, we continue to hold hands all the way to the street, where we reluctantly part ways.

  14

  “At the risk of getting my head bitten off, what’s going on with you and Jude?” Lisa asks me quietly in the bathroom.

  Calmly and pleasantly, I answer, “Nothing. Why?”

  “He’s been at your desk five times so far today. And it’s only”�
��she consults her watch—“10:12.”

  I smirk at her but respond mildly, “Don’t you have anything better to do than count how many times people visit my desk?”

  “Not really.” Now that she knows I’m not going to be defensive and angry, she moves closer to me. “Come on. Spill it. I know something’s up.”

  The reality is, though, that it’s still not much. Definitely not enough to dish about in the ladies’ room. Despite my instincts to keep it to myself, I answer, “I don’t know. We’ve just been… hanging out. A lot.” That’s when the smile that’s been making itself quite at home in my chest breaks through to my face.

  “I knew it!” she says triumphantly. “I told Zoe there was an electric current between the two of you strong enough to light up the greater Chicagoland area. Ha! I love it when I’m right!” She faces the mirror and reapplies her lipstick. “So… when you say ‘hanging out,’ do you mean ‘hanging out with your clothes off’?”

  “That,” I reply, “is none of your business. But no. Just hanging out.”

  “Do you want it to be more?”

  I blush. “I guess.”

  “I don’t blame you. He’s a cutie.”

  LFW is open for business again. Only this time, Fantasy Jude is pretty much the same thing as Real Jude. I have to fill in the blanks sometimes on things I don’t know about him, but there’s no longer an Oxford-educated, tennis-playing, MG-driving, gleaming-toothed, satin-tongued Brit residing in my mind. The Jude in my fantasies plays rugby, uses weird terms and phrases that I don’t really understand all the time, drives a car identical to mine, loves Psycho, and makes me laugh. He’s… well, dreamy.

  There’s a knock on my apartment door. I open it and there’s Jude, standing in a pool of light that has no obvious origin. But it makes the blondish highlights in his light brown hair stand out. And it makes him look like an angel.

  “Hey, Libby. Can I come in?”

  “Yes. How did you know where I live?”

  “Corporate directory. I just had to see you tonight. I’m sick of talking on the dog and bone all the time like two spotty teenagers.” He walks in and looks around. “This flat is the business!”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “Well, I didn’t come here to compliment your apartment. I came here for a bit of a snog, actually, to be quite honest.”

  “Oh. If you insist…”

  “…I say, ‘good for you!’ This is exciting!” Lisa trills over her shoulder in a silly soprano, breaking into my daydream as she pushes the door open and exits the bathroom.

  I must say, beaming at myself in the mirror, that I agree with her wholeheartedly.

  It used to be that I dreaded the weekends. Even more than weekdays, which I also didn’t really enjoy. So, in other words, it used to be that I hated my life. But especially weekends. They were long, boring, and—yep—lonely. And then after suffering through two full days of doing nothing with no one, I’d have to go to work and endure everyone asking me, “How was your weekend?” or “Did you do anything fun this weekend?” You can only say “Fine” and “No” in so many ways. Then, after surviving the Monday inquisition, I’d have three measly days of peace before people would start asking, “Have anything fun planned this weekend?” Two hundred times a year (at least), I’d find myself answering something having to do with my empty weekends.

  Well, not anymore. I have (dare I say it?) a boyfriend. Well, kind of. In a sort of Victorian definition of the word. He’s definitely a boy, and I’m pretty sure we’d consider each other friends. Okay, so I’m a little confused about what we are to each other, since I’m not very experienced with this sort of thing, but what I’m getting at is that Jude and I make plans to do things together. And then we actually do them. That’s called “dating,” right? I’m almost certain it is.

  Only… don’t people our age who are dating do more than hold hands? Well, Jude and I don’t. I think once he may have given me a peck on the cheek when he dropped me off at home at the end of the night. But it was a kiss very similar to the one my brother gave me when I took him to the airport to return to the University of Florida last semester. And since the pillow-fight/“I’m-a-virgin” fiasco, I haven’t set foot inside his apartment again. Neither has he been inside mine. I think I’m destined to turn thirty without ever having been French kissed. What a dismal prospect!

  I’ve determined that if anything’s going to be done about this, however, it’s going to have to be my doing. It’s obvious that Jude’s taking things slowly (what’s a word for “so-slowly-that-three-toed-sloths-are-passing-us-while-making-out”?) because I’m a virgin, and he doesn’t want to freak me out. How nice. But it’s just a kiss, right? Am I missing something? The only thing stopping me from going for it is that I may be missing something. Now would be a good time to have real girlfriends.

  Tonight we’re sitting in a bar (not a gastropub) after seeing a movie that almost required a meeting of the Geneva Convention for us to agree on. Jude didn’t want to see a chick flick. I didn’t want to watch an action/adventure/thriller/mystery/the-end-of-the-world-is-here blockbuster. Neither one of us wanted to sit in the middle of a bunch of kids and their parents watching the latest animated piece of fluff. So, after researching our choices all week, we decided to see an independent drama at one of the smaller art-house theaters. It seems, after talking it over, that we both actually liked it, although Jude criticized it for being somewhat pretentious and a little too earnest.

  Now he’s in the restroom, and I’m plotting how I’m going to plant one on him before the end of the night. Easier said than done when you’ve never done it before. My strategy so far is:

  Drink enough to lower my inhibitions without getting drunk (I actually want to remember my first kiss ever).

  Eat and drink things that don’t make me self-conscious about my breath (I had Junior Mints at the movie; I’m drinking fruity girl drinks at the bar).

  Picture some of the most romantic kisses in my favorite movies (unfortunately, though, most of them were initiated by the men, so it’s difficult to reverse the roles in my head).

  Pretend like I do this all the time (maybe if I can forget I’m inexperienced, he’ll forget it, too).

  Jude returns from the bathroom but doesn’t sit down. Instead, he tosses some bills on the table and says, “Are you ready?”

  What a loaded question! But I answer confidently, “Yes.” Then, beating back the butterflies, I propose, “Would you like to go back to my place for a while?” I would bolster my suggestion with, “It’s still early,” although it’s really not.

  It doesn’t matter, though, because he casually accepts, as if that’s what he expected all along.

  When we get to my apartment, I use my body to shield his view from my shaking hand as I unlock the door. After we step inside, I busy myself with hanging up my purse and petting Sandberg so that Jude can look around without my staring at him and waiting for a reaction.

  My bed suddenly seems ten times bigger than it usually does. And under a spotlight.

  He sits down on the couch.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I open the fridge. “I have beer—but not the kind you normally drink, sorry—wine, water—”

  “Water’s fine,” he answers easily. He leans forward and looks at the magazines on my coffee table. While I open his bottle of water and pour myself a (large) glass of wine, he flips through the Entertainment Weekly, laughing at the “Bullseye” in the back and declaring it, “Very clever.”

  I down half my glass of wine and top it off before joining him. I have another thing to add to my strategy:

  Don’t puke on him (I’m so nervous that I think it could be a possibility).

  When I sit down next to him and hand him his water, he smiles and says, “Thank you.” After drinking half the bottle at once, he sets it down on a coaster on the table and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “You have a nice place.”

  “Thanks,” I reply. “It’s smal
l.”

  “Suits you perfectly,” he insists.

  Pointing out what I perceive to be the elephant in the room, I joke nervously, “You expected my apartment to be all bed?”

  He turns around and glances at it. “Oh. Until you said something, I hadn’t even noticed it. It’s so tidy and tucked into its own little corner.”

  “It seems like it’s always in the way,” I mutter, trying to cover for my awkwardness. I take a huge drink.

  He watches me, then when I pull the glass away from my lips, he takes it from my hand and sets it on the table. He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by the amused glint in his eyes that he knows I’m nervous.

  “I was just thinking,” he says after grabbing my hand, “that maybe you and I…”

  “Yes?” I scoot closer to him, trying to send him plenty of signals as I lick my lips and look at his mouth.

  “…might reconsider our plans to go to that outdoor art festival tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain.” His lips move closer to me. I can’t stop staring at them. “Libby?”

  “Huh?” I ask distractedly.

  “May I just…” He leans in, but instead of kissing me when I close my eyes, he rubs his thumb against the side of my nose, where it meets my cheek.

  My eyes snap open. I pull my head back.

  He grins and holds up his thumb, which has a tiny piece of glitter stuck to it. “This was on your face.”

  “Oh. I wonder how that got there.”

  But he’s leaning closer to me again, peering into my eyes. “Your eyes…”

  I hold my breath, waiting for the compliment that precedes the kiss.

  “…are the oddest color. I’ve never seen anything like them. I suppose you’d call them green, but there’s some gray and blue in there, too.”

  Frustrated and disgusted, I back away from him. “What’s it going to take to get you to kiss me?”

  Looking genuinely surprised by my outburst, he says, “Did you want me to kiss you? I thought we were talking about other things.”