The Life Lucy Knew

by Karma Brown

  “Work was pretty stressful before you, uh, had to take leave,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, curious as to what he knew that I didn’t. He had mentioned earlier we’d stopped sharing the ins and outs of our daily work grinds once we started dating. Something about trying to find separation so we’d stay sane. “Like church and state,” he had said, smiling. “We leave the office at the office.”

  But now he shrugged. “You were putting in long hours and dealing with some stuff with your team.”

  I frowned, not remembering anything particularly stressful about the office other than the usual deadlines and workload. But I also had zero recollection that Matt was not only my “work husband” but also my real-life boyfriend. So it was entirely possible things had been utterly falling apart at work before my accident, and I didn’t remember.

  “Well, I’m sure I can handle it. And Brooke’s been amazing at keeping things running smoothly,” I said. “Plus, the dizziness is gone and the headaches are so much better.” Matt still looked unconvinced. “Matt, I’ve been home for over a month. I’m tired of being trapped here and the doctor said I’m good to go. It’s time to get back.”

  He nodded, tapped the spatula against the edge of the bowl to clean it of the pesto and then started the pasta water. It seemed he had more to say but was holding his tongue and I decided not to push him on it.

  “Give me a job,” I said, rolling up my sleeves.

  “Here. You can grate this.” He handed me a wedge of Parmesan cheese and the grater. “We need about half a cup.”

  I went to work on the cheese while he tossed some sliced chicken breast into the bubbling olive oil in the frying pan. “Okay, full-disclosure time,” Matt said, pushing the chicken around the searing hot pan with a wooden spoon. He lowered the heat, turned toward me. “I am worried about the headaches, and the screen time.”

  I nodded. I got it. Dr. Mulder and Therapist Ted had been very strict initially about the importance of resting my brain, and it was hard to shift gears. To believe, without some sort of test or scan to prove it, I was okay and my brain had in fact healed. Especially because while the concussion symptoms had abated, my memory was still a disaster. I was better in some ways, worse in others.

  “But I’m most concerned about, well, the memory stuff.”

  I tapped the wedge of cheese against the grater, releasing the shredded pieces stuck to the inside of the stainless steel pyramid. “What about it specifically?” I asked, keeping my tone even. I wondered where this conversation was headed.

  Matt set the pasta noodles in boiling water. “When I told Jake about what was going on, I didn’t mention the part about you not remembering the office.”

  “I do remember the office, or at least the people in it,” I said. “And my job.” I was beginning to adjust to this routine—where people worried and I tried to justify why they shouldn’t. “Where should I put the cheese?”

  “Right there is good. We’ll sprinkle it on after.” He went back to stirring the pasta, the chicken. “But what if you can’t remember the work, once you’re there? It seems like you’re expecting to sit at your desk and get right back to it. And I’m worried for you it won’t be like that. Even if you remember everyone’s names, you may not remember other important things.”

  To be honest, I was also slightly worried about this. My work and Jameson Porter seemed to have survived from getting caught up in my false memories (if we took Matt out of the equation), but it was true I likely wouldn’t know for sure until I immersed myself back into it.

  “I appreciate the concern. Honestly, I do,” I said. “But I remember the work, and our coworkers. I nailed the list.” Matt had added the names of our colleagues and some of the big clients at the firm to my memory confidence list and I’d had no problem recollecting any of it.

  “That you did,” Matt said with a smile, draining the noodles. He started to assemble dinner while I got out plates and silverware. “Want a drink tonight?”

  “Sure,” I said, reopening the cupboard door for wineglasses. Matt pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured the red wine, handing me one of the filled glasses. “Look, I know it might be a bumpy reentry. But what’s the alternative? I’m good at what I do, Dr. Mulder said I’m okay to go back and, to be totally honest, I’m starting to hate our apartment.” I sprinkled grated cheese on top of our plates of pesto pasta with my wineglass-free hand—the chicken strips looking deliciously crispy and also, for a brief moment again, guilt-inducing. I knew I was an enthusiastic carnivore, but I sometimes still felt like a vegetarian.

  “I know how hard this has been, Lucy,” he said, carrying our dinner plates to the table. “And I don’t want to make anything worse for you.” The corners of his mouth turned down—classic consultant “fixer” Matt, when faced with a problem he wasn’t sure how to solve. I hated being responsible for that look.

  “Okay, enough of this worry and angst. I get plenty from my parents.” I picked up my wineglass, held it high. “Let’s talk about something fun. Something happy, okay?”

  “Cheers to that,” Matt said, clinking my glass. We tucked into the pasta, which was delicious. I was suddenly starving.

  “Tell me how we ended up together,” I said. Matt looked at me sharply, midbite, like I’d said something I shouldn’t have. “What? I don’t remember, and I would like to.”

  “I just thought...” Matt started. “I thought you wanted to talk about something that had nothing to do with all this.” He gestured in a wide circle between us, and I laughed.

  “But that’s fairly tricky, isn’t it?”

  Matt grinned. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  I swirled a few long noodles onto my fork. “Okay, so tell me how we went from friends to here.”

  “It was Halloween, and I didn’t have a costume...”

  19

  Lucy leaned against the entryway of Matt’s “office”—a cubicle, like every consultant at Jameson Porter had because they traveled so often closed-door offices were a waste of both space and resources—and waited for him to notice her. Which he finally did a few moments later.

  “Oh, hey,” he said, his eyes back on his computer screen a second later. He swore under his breath and leaned forward, adjusting his glasses as he stared intently at whatever was up on the screen. Lucy smiled. Matt wore glasses only when he was working on the computer, but she’d mentioned more than once he should wear them all the time—they suited him.

  Uncrossing her arms and pushing off the frame of the cubicle, Lucy walked into the small space and went to sit down in the chair in front of Matt’s desk until she realized her dress wouldn’t allow it. So she stayed standing. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s not.” He sighed, leaned back and clasped his hands on the back of his head. He closed his eyes as he stretched his back into a deep arch against his chair. “The Rooneys are at it again.” Matt had been working on a strategy plan with the Rooney family and their large auto parts business for close to a year, and the infighting between the four kids and their founder father, Donald—who refused to let go of the reins, despite his inability to be nimble with the changing landscape of the industry—had been a source of constant frustration and setbacks. “I’m set to go back out Monday, but I’m not sure it can wait.”

  It was Friday, and Matt had been in the office for only two days this week. He’d been spending nearly every Monday through Wednesday in Winnipeg at the Rooneys’ head office and plant, trying to help them implement their growth plan. The constant travel was normal for the firm’s consultants, and Matt rarely complained about the harrowing schedule—necessary to secure a partnership position in a couple of years—but the endless back and forth made Lucy glad she was in communications. The only time she had to travel was for the annual Jameson Porter retreat.

  “Which ‘F’ is it?” Lucy asked, watching Matt tug the end
s of his hair, back to worriedly scanning his email. Project problems within the office were described by one of two F’s—Fixable or Fatal (Jameson Porter took its internal cultural lingo nearly as seriously as the work itself)—and Lucy hoped for Matt’s sake the Rooney strategy could be stamped Fixable.

  “Probably Fatal, but there’s a chance to turn it around if I can convince the siblings to oust Daddy Rooney. Three of the four are on board, but the fourth is digging his heels in.” He sucked in a breath, puffed out his cheeks, looked irritated. Matt had invested much time and energy into the Rooneys. If things went belly-up now, he would be devastated. “I don’t want to have to bring Jeremy in.” He cursed under his breath. Jeremy Darby was a partner and Matt’s mentor, though he was fairly hands-off—something Matt appreciated and didn’t want to change.

  “Maybe I can help? Write a memo?” Part of Lucy’s job at Jameson Porter was drafting reports for the clients on behalf of the consultants, to aid with communication and to keep things moving forward with the project. “I can do it right now if you want.”

  “I may need to take you up on that,” he said. Then he pulled off his glasses and glanced away from his screen, finally giving Lucy a good look. “Whoa. What’s happening here? What’s up with your hair?” he asked, gesturing to the left side of Lucy’s head, where she’d used nearly an entire bottle of gel to make her shoulder-length hair stick out straight to the side, like it was windblown.

  Lucy laughed. “Glad you finally noticed.” She pointed to the skirt of her black dress, which was also sticking out to the same side and angle as her hair. She raised her eyebrows, pointed to her outstretched hair and skirt again. “Get it?”

  He stared at her blankly, clearly getting nothing.

  She popped outside the cubicle, grabbed the umbrella she’d left leaning on the wall—it was broken and opened inside out, the way she wanted it to—and held it up. It had actually taken quite a bit of work to get it to stay, and she’d sliced her finger trying to bend the metal prongs, she explained to Matt. Another few seconds passed, Matt’s face still blank.

  “It’s my Halloween costume!” Lucy said. “Gone with the Wind. Get it?” She held the umbrella up again, but off to the side this time, and tried her best to take a stance that made it look like there was a strong gust of wind blowing her from right to left.

  Matt laughed, loud and booming. “You’re amazing,” he said, sliding his glasses on top of his head, where they nestled in his short, wavy hair. She took a bow. Then his smiled faltered. “It’s the Halloween party.” He looked around his cubicle, sparse aside from the mess of papers on his desk, a few half-empty coffee mugs, his messenger bag in one corner and his bike leaning against the opposite wall with his helmet dangling from one of the handlebars. “I forgot my costume at home. Shit!”

  One of their colleagues, Jake, and his roommate were hosting a party for a bunch of people from work. Things had started at 8:00 p.m., and it was already nearly eighty-thirty, which was why she’d come to track Matt down. He had his phone on Do Not Disturb and they were supposed to be heading over to the party together.

  “What was your costume again?” Lucy asked, trying to remember if he’d told her already—her mind a bit sludgy, thanks to the few pulls she’d already had off the large bottle of rum Brooke kept at the back of her filing cabinet.

  “It’s lame, but best I could come up with because, as you know, I suck at this sort of thing.” She nodded. Matt was brilliant at business strategy but less so with anything creative. They’d been friends long enough for her to know this. “I was going as a serial killer. But like ‘cereal’—the stuff you eat—versus, you know.” He shrugged. “I had all these mini cereal boxes on string I could hang over my shoulders, with fake plastic knives sticking out of them.”

  Lucy nodded, smiled. “Got it.” He admitted there would probably be at least five other “cereal killers” at the party tonight, but it had been all he could think of. “Okay, I have an idea. I’ll be right back.”

  She was back five minutes later with one of the wire hangers from the dry cleaning she hadn’t yet taken home, and the bottle of extreme-hold hair gel she’d used to secure her hair for her costume.

  “Just finishing up,” he said, typing without taking his eyes off his screen. While Lucy waited for him, she started to unwind the metal hanger, being careful not to reopen the cut on her finger. “And...done.” He turned everything off and slid his phone into his suit jacket pocket as he stood. He glanced at the wire hanger, the bottle of hair gel she’d placed on the edge of his desk. “So, what’s your idea?”

  Lucy held up the partially unwound hanger and smiled.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said, looking from her to the hanger and back.

  Rolling her eyes, Lucy continued to unravel the hanger. “This,” she said, struggling a little to straighten a particularly gnarly bend, “is for your tie.”

  He glanced down at the black-and-gray-striped tie lying flat to his chest. He lifted it off his shirt, waggled the end. “For my tie?”

  She stepped closer to him, tripped as the wire hanger in her dress caught on the edge of the chair and nearly took a header into his desk. “Easy there,” he said, chuckling as he grabbed on to her, steadying her. “Did you already start the party?”

  “Shh,” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “Brooke may or may not have a bottle of rum in her office, and I may—or may not—have helped her make a dent in it.” Then she noticed he was still holding on to her arm and didn’t seem like he was going to let go, which caused Lucy to blush and focus harder on the hanger.

  The truth was Lucy had a bit of a thing for Matt...though this fact seemed to be lost on him. Besides working together they were also good friends—and their friendship had moved beyond Jameson Porter, past workday lunches and watercooler visits. She’d cheered him on as he crossed his most recent marathon’s finish line, and when Lucy was sick with the flu, he brought her soup and the first season of Game of Thrones, which she had yet to watch because she was so ill she fell asleep with her head in his lap that night.

  Over the past year they’d gotten to know each other pretty well, and Matt counted Lucy among his closest friends. And Lucy had admitted to Jenny nearly six months earlier she was smitten—Matt was reliable and trustworthy and kind and handsome, in a nerdy way she loved. And he was altogether different from her ex Daniel (in both personality and looks), which made him even more appealing. But Matt, for as much as he obviously cared for her, had so far kept Lucy firmly in the friend zone.

  “Take off your tie,” Lucy said, unfurling the last of the wire hanger kinks. He did, handed it to her. She folded and bent and twisted the wire, positioning it at the widest end of the tie. “So, how much do you love this tie?”

  He shrugged. “Not much.”

  She started pushing the wire up and through the inside of the tie. “Good. Me, neither.”

  Matt laughed. “Noted.”

  “Here, hold this end,” Lucy said, handing him the skinniest part. She pushed the wire in more firmly and it popped through the fabric at the front. “Oops,” she said, cringing. “Sorry about that. I guess I owe you a tie.”

  “Good. You can get me a nicer one.”

  “And...going to try to bend it around this part here...” Lucy tweaked the wire through the fabric until it bent enough to come down the other side, making sure the part he would tie around his neck was wire free. “There. Done.” She recoiled the wire a bit inside the end of the tie so nothing was sticking out, then told him to put it back on. He did with a little difficulty, and after some adjustments Lucy took the wire-filled end of the tie and bent it in a few waves, making sure it stuck out to the same side as her hair and skirt. “Now, a little gel here...” With goo-slathered fingers she worked the gel into his dark hair, pulling the longer bits the best she could—his hair was fairly short and the waves seemed impervious to the gel—out
to the same side as the tie, then stepped back.

  He took the same stance she had taken earlier, like a huge gust was blowing him over, and Lucy clapped her hands together. “Perfect. We can be Gone with the Wind together.”

  “Now I won’t embarrass myself at the party with my lame costume.”

  “Well, I can’t prevent you from embarrassing yourself,” she said. “Because we have some drinking to do, and who knows what’s going to happen after that.” True, true, he said. “But at least we’ll do it together. Ready to head out?”

  He glanced around the office, nodded. “I’ll leave my bike,” he said. “I have a feeling I won’t be in the best shape to ride home.”

  “Definitely wise,” Lucy said, pushing him toward the bank of elevators down the hall from the offices. “Now let’s get out of here. You have some catching up to do.”

  They laughed and then the elevator doors opened, and in their haste to get in, they got caught against the slowly opening doors, his tie and her skirt preventing a graceful entrance. They untangled themselves and he gently nudged her forward first into the elevator, his hands on her hips and her smiling at his touch.

  As predicted there was much drinking, and it would turn out to be the night that changed everything between them. Matt and Lucy won “most original costume,” which meant a bottle of tequila they decided to open and share right then and there. He walked her home—well, they stumbled to her place, their costumes disheveled, the wire in both his tie and her skirt long gone, discarded in Jake’s bedroom, where they’d sneaked a few secret kisses, the thrill of it leaving both of them breathless, wanting more.