Far From Normal

by Becky Wallace

  I remember the list hidden under the napkin on my lap. It’s not that I forgot why I was here, but I sort of pushed it to the side of my mind. “Oh, I’m not that exciting. I’m just a normal girl from Normal.” Wow. I couldn’t have come up with anything to make me seem less boring? I hurry to add, “I mean, I’m working at Velocity so that I have something really compelling to put on my college application.” I explain that I need a great letter of recommendation to boost my chances of getting into UNC.

  “What do you have to do to succeed?”

  Here’s my opening. I prop my chin on my hands and try to look as innocent as possible. “Get you to answer these questions, for starters.”

  He sighs and shakes his head, but he’s more amused than irritated. “We are between courses.”

  “Exactly.” I look down at the list, trying to pick an easy question to start with, but they all seem a little intrusive. “I guess we’ll start at the top. What is it about soccer that you love so much?”

  “Calcio,” he corrects, head canted like he’s disciplining an unruly student. “I love calcio—that’s ‘soccer’ in Italian.”

  “All right, fine. For the sake of this conversation, it’s calcio.” I tap the top of my straw, trapping a little water, then releasing it back into the cup. “What do you love about calcio?”

  He leans back in the chair, seeming to consider my question, but since there isn’t much space his leg slides all the way up my thigh. I jump at the sudden contact and nearly knock over my drink. Does he know his leg is against mine? Of course, he does. But is it on purpose? I mean, it’s a small table. Surely, some leg brushing is acceptable. Pull it together, Mads.

  “There is more … tension in calcio than any other sport. It’s back and forth, fast and slow, give and take.” He’s focused on something over my shoulder, but I think he’s watching a scene play out inside his head. “It builds and builds and builds before—” His eyes shift to me, pinning me in place.

  I hold his stare but have to swallow before I can speak. “Before what?” My voice comes out a breathy whisper.

  “Something breaks. There’s a hole in the defense. A perfect pass. The ball sinks into the net.” He tilts his head toward me, looking at me through his eyelashes. “Then ecstasy.”

  “Ecstasy.” I give a nervous-sounding laugh. “That’s one word for it.”

  “Is it the wrong word? I mean …” He waves with his hand like he expects me to help him fill in the blank. “Everyone is relieved. The crowd cheers.”

  “Wow. Yeah. Relieved. Good description.” I have a hard time formulating a follow-up question because my brain isn’t functioning like it should be. I’ve never heard someone talk about a sport in such an intense way. “Is there anything else you’re—umm—passionate about?”

  He pushes his shoulder into the corner of the nook, letting it hold him up, and it alleviates the leg contact. “I play the piano a little.”

  “You have a grand piano in your apartment. Something about that makes me think you might play more than a little.”

  Gabe shrugs again. I’ve noticed it’s a multifunctional gesture with any number of meanings—a yes, a no, a maybe.

  “Does that mean you’d be willing to perform on camera?”

  “Probably. My parents insisted that I be able to perform on command.” Instead of being arrogant about this surprise talent, he seems reticent to talk about it. “They felt it was important that I had many skills.”

  “Being amazing at soccer wasn’t enough?”

  “It’s never been enough.”

  There’s something there, a curtain I want to peel back and peek behind. Not necessarily for the public but for myself. “What does that mean?”

  The shutters drop on his expression. He takes a big breath, and I prepare myself to hear another nonanswer, but it never comes. A different woman, closer to our age but unquestionably related to Maria, brings two more plates of food. She lingers a little longer, eyeing me as she sets down a plate of what looks like chicken with roasted red peppers. Gabe says a couple sentences to her in Italian, and she tucks her hair behind her ear like she’s flattered. I may not be able to translate what’s being said, but body language makes me think they’re flirting.

  Because no one is immune to Gabriel Fortunato.

  When she leaves, he motions to his food with his fork. “We’re eating again, so it’s your turn. What do you like to do?”

  Nice redirection, but it does give me an opportunity to make up for my stupid answer about being normal. I tell him that I was a competitive dancer and taught classes until I came to Chicago.

  “It sounds like you miss it.”

  I mimic his shrug. “Some parts. Getting ready for a performance. Being on stage. Seeing the littles I teach doing well.”

  “You must have been good.”

  I had moments when I knew I was, but dance wasn’t something that came naturally. I had to work twice as hard as anyone else to learn a routine. Once my body built the muscle memory, I never forgot it, and performing was bliss. No one who watched me had any idea of the hours I stayed late just to keep up with my teammates, the sprained ankles and broken toes I danced on, or the sleep I lost trying to remember an eight count. Even though I loved it, the adrenaline rush, the way my body felt after practice, I knew it wasn’t something I could do forever. Better to give it up before I broke something besides my heart.

  “I was okay.” I give a self-deprecating laugh. “Not good enough to perform on command.”

  “Too bad,” he says, lifting a piece of perfectly cooked chicken to his mouth. “If I have to play the piano for you, then you should have to dance for me.”

  The line is delivered so smoothly that I almost don’t notice that it’s totally a line. The eyebrow tilt, the smirk, the pause before taking a bite. My brain screeches to a halt, my mental brakes squealing like my mom’s Camry. Hold up. Gabriel Fortunato is flirting with me.

  Or maybe being flirtatious is just his natural state?

  Whether it is or not, I’ve been flirting back. Sort of unintentionally, sort of to manipulate answers out of him. The meat turns to ash in my mouth. I have to take a big gulp of water to wash the feeling away. “That’s never going to happen,” I finally answer.

  “Why?” He seems honestly surprised. “If you’re good, why don’t you want to show off?”

  “Because I don’t have to show off to prove that I’m good.”

  “Ouch.” He puts his hand over the middle of his chest. “That felt like it was directed at me. Are you saying I’m a show-off?”

  “Are you saying that you’re not?”

  He laughs, and I can’t help but smile at the way he takes my bullets—which I can’t seem to stop firing. Ugh. I’m bantering. I should not be bantering with a client.

  “You know my team has a charity banquet coming up?” He puts both forearms on the table and leans a little toward me. “There will be a dance floor. I think it’s a perfect opportunity for you to prove you can dance.”

  “Hard pass.”

  He clicks his tongue. “I’ll find some way to change your mind.”

  “Doubt it.” I push away my unfinished plate, needing to veer away from this subject. “I just realized how late it’s getting, and I really need to get back to Watford. He’s been trapped in the apartment all day, and it has sort of become my responsibility to make sure he gets a walk. I hate to be impolite.” Which is true. I really don’t want to be rude, but we’re at a private table and I’m having a hard time determining where the lines are. “Can I ask a few more questions, speed-round style? Then we can both get out of here because I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang out with me.”

  I’m totally doing the nervous fast-talking thing, and something about the wrinkle between his eyebrows makes me think he’s noticed.

  “Not really, but if you’re in a hurry—”

  “I am.” I am also so ridiculous. “I would hate for Watty to make a mess.”

 
; “Of course,” he says, breaking eye contact. “I understand.”

  I’m not even sure I understand it.

  By the time Maria serves dessert, Gabe is giving me the shortest answers possible, and I stop asking the hard questions.

  Me: Favorite color?

  Him: Blue.

  Me: Favorite animal?

  Him: Dog.

  Me: Favorite food?

  Him: Italian. Is that even a question?

  I have enough to work with, so I give up on the list and offer to pay for dinner—which would have to go on my dad’s credit card. Gabe won’t let me pay. I don’t know what he says to Maria, but she seems shocked when he asks for the ticket, looking between us and at the barely touched tiramisu on my plate like that’s an explanation.

  “Everything was delicious,” I say quickly. “It was the best dinner I’ve ever had. Especially the creamy rice.”

  “The risotto?” She smiles, but it seems a little trembly around the edges. “Come back and see us again?”

  “Yes!” I stand up from the table, shaking the crumbs from my dress. “And I’ll bring my aunt. She’ll love it.”

  “Great. I’ll look forward to it.” She shakes my hand, which saves me from trying to figure out the Italian cheek-kissing thing and being afraid to turn my face the wrong way.

  She says something in speedy Italian to Gabe, and I’m not sure what he says to her, but it sounds like reassurances. I start to sneak away, but Gabe notices, gives Maria two more cheek kisses, and hurries after me.

  “You don’t have to leave.” I thumb toward Lincoln Park. “I’m only a few blocks from home. I can walk from here.”

  “If you’re in such a rush, wouldn’t it be faster if I drove you?” It’s the polite thing to say, but it feels like he’s checking my story.

  “Don’t feel obligated.”

  “I don’t.”

  Could you maybe tell your face that, then? He’s gone all steel-eyed and flat-mouthed, probably in response to me shifting from friendly to business. But it needed to be done. I slipped into the wrong head space, which involved analyzing every lip curl and arm brush, and had to get back to the right one.

  “Fine. Sure. Thanks.” I drop into the Ferrari, only speaking to give him directions to the Belden-Stratford. He answers with nods and mm-hmms. When we pull under the awning, Doorman Kevin hurries down the stairs to open my side door.

  “Miss Maddie!” He greets me with his booming baritone. “Are you and your friend here to stay?”

  “No, he’s just dropping me off.” I swing my feet out of the car, then lean down so I can see Gabe’s face. “Thanks for dinner. It was really nice.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass your compliments to Maria.” He slips on those mirrored glasses, and I swear it’s like putting a physical wall between us.

  “Later this week, we’ll get video of you playing the piano?”

  “If you must.”

  “I really, really must.”

  He nods, and I guess that passes for a goodbye, so I back away and let Kevin shut the door.

  Gabe speeds out of the driveway faster than necessary, and I don’t blame him. I sometimes wish I could run away from me too.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  I WALK PAST LINCOLN PARK ZOO ON THE WAY TO WORK IN THE mornings. The big male lion has a routine where he roars over and over as the sun rises; I think that’s how he lets his caretakers know he’s hungry. The cows moo, begging to be milked. And the monkeys act like, well, monkeys. So, when I say the office is a zoo on Thursday, I’m speaking with some authority.

  The exec that Javi works for created a portfolio weeks ago, got it proofread by the in-house technical writers and laid out by the design team, and okayed proofs from the printer. But as he flipped through the final copies this morning, he realized it was missing two key pages from the middle and two other pages were printed upside down. The printer they use is in Indiana and couldn’t get new ones shipped to us before his presentation tomorrow.

  So for the first time in the whole two weeks I’ve worked at Velocity, all five interns have been assigned to ditch their work and help Javi pull the project together. We run every copy machine and printer, collate, punch, and bind more than four hundred portfolios with nearly a hundred pages each. Katie’s the official runner, grabbing copies off the machines, bringing us lunch and drinks.

  At first, Mara tries to act like I don’t exist, but by seven thirty in the evening, we’ve reached that stage of exhaustion where holding grudges requires too much energy. My shoes have been under the table for at least four hours, Arman is wearing his tie like a sweatband, Javi put his phone in a cup from the kitchen to amplify his running playlist so we can all work to the music, and Mara is singing along, at full volume. And that’s when I realize that I like all of these people. They’re smart, talented, and to varying degrees, funny. Javi is over-the-top hysterical, but Mara’s snapbacks are wicked in the best ways. Arman is quiet, to match his voice, but he’s steady and consistent. Katie is the perfect cheerleader, though I have a feeling that if I told her that, she’d be offended.

  Best of all, I haven’t thought about Gabriel Fortunato in at least twelve hours. Okay, fine. I’ve thought about him, but I haven’t gotten a stomachache angsting over the way I acted yesterday. The farther I get away from that quiet little nook, the ambience of the kitchen, the closeness of our bodies, I realize it was all a formula for something romantic. Of course, it felt like flirting.

  Hello, Self? You described yourself as normal. There were no sparks. If his leg bumped against yours, it wasn’t flirtation. It was proximity. He’s six two. You’re five ten. It’s not as if that space was designed for people with longer-than-average limbs.

  “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is four hundred!” Javi does a running man. Arman joins in with a head-nodding groove. Katie shimmies, and Mara high-fives me.

  I repeat: Mara high-fives me.

  Today could totally have sucked, but instead, fences have been mended and baby seeds of friendship have been planted. I don’t even care if it’s trite, because it’s true.

  We all leave the building together, and this time I’m not excluded from the dinner invitation.

  FRIDAY MORNING IS BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL, AND IT’S A TOTAL throat punch. I sit down at the front desk, ready to balance Patty’s regular tasks and my assignments for the Fortunato account. But when I open the editing program, I can’t find my folder anywhere. It’s not just the last video I was working on that’s missing; it’s all four of them.

  There has to be a logical explanation.

  When William comes in, I snag him before he can slip through the secret door. “Hey! You didn’t by chance move my video folder, did you?”

  He’s drinking a coffee from the booth on the first floor, but his eyebrows smash together as he swallows. “No. Did it get put into the general folder?”

  “I didn’t think to check there.” I force a relieved smile to my face, but my heart is still fluttering like hummingbird wings.

  “Emma told me what you’d done was great and said to let you play with the footage I shot too.” He leans into the door, moving on to his next assignment. “I uploaded it to your folder on Wednesday.”

  There’s nothing in my folder. I can’t even find my folder. “Cool. I’ll see what I can do with it.” Once I figure out where it went.

  Between calls and ushering a few clients to the executive offices, I explore every nook and cranny of the server. I search under Gabe’s name, my name, Emma’s, William’s. I comb through every footage folder. I get locked out of the system for thirty minutes because I enter my password wrong three times because I’m typing too fast.

  Katie and Mara come out the secret door at eleven, heading to lunch because it’s Friday and we get to leave early.

  “Send the phones to voice mail for ten and come down with us?” When Katie’s cheerfulness fails to reach me, she leans across the top of the desk. “Everything okay?”
/>   “I can’t find the videos I was working on.”

  Mara copies Katie’s stance, leaning over the high receptionist desk to look at my computer. “Didn’t you back them up?”

  “I didn’t think I’d have to. Everything is sent to the server.”

  “That happened to me last year. The server eats things sometimes,” she says, giving me a lopsided frown. “Back up everything in at least two places.”

  “It’s not just one file, though. It’s the whole folder.” I run my hand through my hair, wishing for a tie to keep.

  “Do you think someone deleted it on accident?” Katie asks, face concerned.

  “No …” Well, I didn’t. The only way to delete a whole folder is to drag it to the trash. I check the little garbage icon, and there’s nothing there. Not even any of the early drafts of my edits that I deleted while I was working on Patty’s computer. Someone emptied that too. Someone who had access to this desk.

  “We better run, so we can get back.” Mara’s digging through her purse, not looking at me. Not making eye contact at all.

  Katie doesn’t say anything, but her forehead is wrinkled with worry.

  “You guys go. I’m going to keep looking.”

  “Do you want anything?” Katie offers.

  “No. I’ll eat after I find the folder.”

  Mara finishes with her ChapStick and gives me a smile that falls a mile short of kind. “Sucks that this happened. I guess you’ll know better for next time.”

  She wouldn’t have deleted the files. That’s just so low. She couldn’t have possibly done that and then treated me so nicely yesterday. Could she? The accusation stays trapped behind my teeth, and I hold it there until they get into the elevator.

  Even if Mara trashed all the videos—and I don’t want to believe that she did—it doesn’t change the fact they’re gone.

  I ring William’s office from the front desk.

  “Hey! Quick question.” I try to sound cheery instead of shaken. “You don’t by chance have the footage still on your phone, do you?”