LoveLines

by S. Walden

  I pointed to my door and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Adios, Bailey!” Soledad replied.

  I walked inside and plopped on my couch. Usually when I arrived home from Erica’s house, I was grateful for the quiet, orderly stillness of my living room. But not tonight. Tonight I wish I hadn’t insisted on going home. Tonight I wish I still had Annie crawling all over me, staining my already-beer-sullied shirt with pizza fingers. Tonight I wish I were still tripping over toys on the kitchen floor and chatting with Erica and Noah about their “bad” parenting skills. It didn’t happen often—I trained myself to embrace solitude—but tonight I needed people.

  “Hey, Bailey,” Erica said into the phone. “What’s up?”

  “Umm, do you think you or Noah could come pick me up? Maybe I could spend the night?” I suggested.

  A brief pause.

  “I’ll call Noah’s cell. Have him turn around and get you,” Erica said.

  “You sure it’s all right?” I asked.

  “Girl, you know it is,” Erica replied.

  After we hung up, I packed a small bag, then sat watching the ticking clock, counting the minutes until Noah’s headlights shown in my living room window. I hurried through my leaving-the-house rituals: touch and test all the knobs on the stove in counterclockwise motion; walk twenty-three steps to the guest bathroom to check outlets; turn locks on both doors three times in rapid succession.

  I climbed into Noah’s car and nestled my bag on my lap.

  “You checked the outlets?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “The stove?”

  “Mmhmm,” I replied. “And you’re not supposed to be encouraging me.”

  “Hey, I’m just making sure your house doesn’t burn down,” Noah replied, backing out of the driveway.

  He was the only one of my friends who didn’t get it. In a therapy session a while ago, Dr. Gordon told me to stay away from Noah—that he wasn’t being a good friend to me because he wasn’t encouraging me to manage my condition. I thought long and hard about the doctor’s words, trying to make sense of his advice when I knew Noah was the best kind of friend—the kind of friend who recognizes the faults in others but loves them anyway.

  “Bailey, right?”

  She looked up from her desk and blushed. The new guy. The cute guy.

  “That’s me,” she replied.

  Direct gaze. She wasn’t prepared for it. His green eyes sparkled, danced a little jig, like he knew a secret about her she didn’t remember sharing.

  Reece just stood there staring and grinning. He’d walked over with confidence, knew precisely what he was going to say, and then . . .

  “Did you need something?” she asked. It was pleasant, not pushy. She didn’t want to push him away. He could stay a while. Would throw her schedule off a tad, but she could deal.

  Reece shook his head and cleared his throat. His mind went blank. It was her heart-shaped face. It distracted him. Made him nervous.

  “Um . . . yeah. I, uh . . .”

  She looked at him expectantly. Suddenly he didn’t seem so confident. She wondered what happened in the course of three seconds that would have him so rattled.

  She didn’t know what to do, so she picked up her purple pen. An uncertain smile spread across her face. He kept staring at her—clearly at a loss for words—and now she started feeling the first uneasy tingles of anxiety. Damn anxiety! It was the trigger. The compulsion was guaranteed to follow.

  Oh God. It’s happening. No, no, no, Bailey thought, but she couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the pens lined up in a neat, little row. Red, blue, black, green. Red goes first. Always. It always goes first. I use red the most. That makes sense. If I use it the most, then it has to come first. That’s not OCD. That’s common sense. I am in control of my OCD. If I want to move the red pen, I can. I have the power to move it . . .

  Reece watched the contortions of her face, realization dawning that this chick may, in fact, like him. She was certainly growing more flustered by the moment. His chest swelled, and he found his footing.

  Well, well, well, he thought smugly. The tables sure have turned quickly. Look who’s making who nervous now?

  He cleared his throat and watched Bailey snap her head up, staring at him with the most helpless expression. He couldn’t know that it had nothing to do with him anymore. Once her anxiety set in, her sole focus was on her pens.

  “Sooo,” Reece said, basking in his newfound confidence. He whipped out his hand and leaned to his left, certain of catching himself against her cubicle wall. That was his goal: to go for an effortless, casual lean. Maybe throw in a smoldering smile. But he missed the wall altogether and dropped like a sandbag to the floor.

  “Oh my God!” Bailey cried, stifling a laugh. “Are you okay?” She jumped up from her chair and offered her hand.

  Reece, mortified, nodded and scrambled to his feet. He chuckled and shrugged, adjusting his collar for something to do to avoid her eyes.

  “Yeah, so that just happened,” he said.

  Bailey burst out laughing. It was the sweetest laugh he’d ever heard. Barring his complete humiliation, he was happy his mishap evoked that laugh. It was a singsong laugh. A bright melody. He realized she was the perfect person to go to when he had a bad day. She could laugh away his irritation.

  “I’m sorry,” she wheezed. “I’m not laughing at you . . .”

  “Yes, you are,” he countered, grinning.

  “I just . . . how on earth did that happen?”

  “Obviously my peripheral vision blows,” he explained.

  “Obviously,” she agreed, giggling.

  He sauntered into her workspace and leaned against her desk. Her laughter ceased abruptly when he scattered her pens with his hand.

  He didn’t do it on purpose, Bailey.

  I know, she thought.

  Don’t. Freak. Out.

  I’m freaking out slightly.

  Don’t reach for the pens. His ass is right there.

  But I think I can get to them without accidentally touching his ass, she argued.

  And what if you can’t? Huh? Then you’ve touched his ass. You realize how weird that’d be?

  Bailey took a deep breath.

  “Are you okay?” Reece asked.

  “Sure!” Oh my God. I just screamed.

  Reece raised his eyebrows and nodded. “I don’t think I introduced myself.”

  I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. My pens are out of order . . .

  “I’m Reece.”

  “Like the candy?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Never heard that one before.”

  I can be careful. If I just reach out . . . Oh, fuck! You had to move?!

  “Sorry for the sarcasm,” he said when she didn’t reply.

  “No, no,” she said. “I don’t know why I asked you that. It was stupid. I’m sure you hear it all the time.”

  “It would have been nice if my parents just named me ‘John,’ but what are you gonna do, right?”

  “You can always change your name,” Bailey suggested. I’m going for it. I have to. I’ll die if I can’t fix them!

  She swiped her hand as quickly as possible over the pens, grazing his ass in the process.

  “That’s a peculiar thing to . . . Hey, now!” Reece exclaimed, looking over his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you buy me a drink first?”

  “I’m so sorry!” Bailey replied, gripping the pens in her sweat-slicked hand.

  “I mean, not that I’m not flattered or anything,” Reece went on.

  She cracked a smile.

  “I could have just handed them to you.”

  She didn’t think about that.

  “You needed all of your pens this instant?” he asked.

  She grimaced. Her mind split in two—two voices demanding polar opposites. Her OCD voice wanted those pens lined up. Her reasonable voice begged her to let it go. The OCD voice was stronger, louder, and it compelled her to pl
ace the pens on her desk, each end lined up perfectly with the edge of the table. Red, blue, black, green, purple. Evenly spaced. Just so. She had a sudden urge to listen to Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.”

  She kept her eyes glued to her desk, particularly the red pen that screamed at her to get back to work. She was on a schedule. She wrote out a list, and she had to complete her tasks before she could leave for the day. And she had to—had to—leave the office at exactly 6:00 P.M.

  You’re a jerk, Bailey!

  She looked up at Reece. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  “My ass is all right,” he replied.

  “No no. What I said about your name. It was so . . . flippant.”

  “It’s okay. I hear it all the time. I’m used to it,” Reece replied.

  “No,” Bailey said. “I don’t care what other people say. I care what I said to you. And I’m sorry. You should never change your name. People . . . people should never change, never change who they . . . I meant they should never change their names,” she finished. It was the clumsiest thing she’d ever said.

  Reece studied her for a moment. “Okay. I see where you’re going with that.”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “But what if their name was Shithead?”

  Bailey laughed all over again. “Point taken.”

  “The phablet,” Reece said suddenly, remembering his reason for popping by her cubicle.

  She tried to compose herself. “Yes?”

  “You corrected the spelling of ‘fablous.’”

  “Because it was misspelled,” she explained.

  The side of his mouth quirked up. “It was supposed to be.”

  She blinked.

  “’The phablet. It’s fablous,’” he quoted.

  She thought for a moment, and then she grinned. How did she miss that? “That’s cute.”

  He nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Doesn’t really translate on the page, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just looks like you misspelled ‘fabulous,’” she said. “Look.” She pulled a clean sheet of notebook paper from the second drawer of her desk and wrote out Reece’s slogan. “See?”

  He nodded.

  “Now, if you spelled ‘fablous’ with a ‘ph’ instead, it would mirror ‘phablet’ and make more sense. And you should capitalize ‘Phablous.’ An even better mirror.”

  “But wouldn’t that be too hard for people to read?” He plucked the pen from her hand and wrote out his slogan with the new spelling: “The Phablet. It’s Phablous.”

  Bailey chewed her bottom lip while she considered the altered spelling. She grabbed another pen and underlined the “Phab” in each word.

  “But see how clever that is? The letters are the same at the beginnings of each word. A mirror. Look how sharp and clean that appears on the page. Two words per fragment. Same number of syllables. The ‘P’ capitalized in both words. Visually, it’s perfect.” And then she added softly, “Stunning, really.”

  He turned in her direction and watched her stare at the page.

  “It’s so clever. So funny. Who wouldn’t get it?” she asked.

  “You’d be surprised,” he muttered.

  “Well, maybe this can be a smart campaign for smart people,” she suggested.

  He chuckled. “The goal is to advertise to the largest number of people possible: smart and dumb.”

  “Makes sense,” Bailey said.

  Reece grunted. “I’ll show this to the team. See what they think. I like your suggestion. A lot, really.”

  “Thanks,” she replied.

  He really didn’t have any other reason to stay and chat, and he knew she had work to do, but he wasn’t ready to leave her quite yet.

  “Hey, don’t you use Track Changes to proofread?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” she replied. “Dan knows I’m old school, so he lets me get away with printing smaller documents to proofread with these—” She held up her hand “—as long as I’m not doing it all the time.”

  “Hands-on gal,” Reece noted.

  “I’m better at catching things on the pages then on a computer screen,” she replied. “I bet that sounds weird, huh?”

  “Makes total sense to me,” Reece said, though he really had no idea what she was talking about.

  They grew quiet. Reece opened his mouth to say “goodbye” when she spoke.

  “So how do you like it here?”

  “Oh, I like it a lot. This firm has a really good vibe. Really creative people.”

  “Are you new to Wilmington, too?”

  “Yep. A few weeks in.”

  “I’m sure Christopher has plans to show you around town,” Bailey said.

  “He’s got a schedule,” Reece replied.

  She listened as he expounded on Christopher’s plans for the two of them this weekend all the while she studied his every feature. He had soft brown hair that was slightly wavy—like the Atlantic on a calm, still day. She imagined her fingers in it, learning its texture and temperament. Hair certainly had its own temperament, and she knew this from her own, particularly the two cowlicks on either side of her head where she swore horns used to grow.

  His eyes were green. She wasn’t sure what she thought of people with green eyes. The only ones she’d ever come across were either filled with greed or malice. But nothing about Reece’s demeanor suggested either. His just sparkled like he was up to no good—harmless tricks—and she could handle that.

  He had high cheekbones and cheeks that sported stubble. He trimmed his neck, though. Perhaps he was growing a beard, she thought, and she pictured his face with a full, short beard, deciding it would look handsome and rugged.

  “Have you been there?”

  “Huh?” she asked.

  He smirked. “Front Street Brewery.”

  “Oh sure. Order the beer sampler when you go,” she suggested.

  “I will.” He jabbed a thumb behind him. “I better go. I’ve taken up way too much of your time.”

  Her heart sank the tiniest bit.

  “It’s no problem,” Bailey replied.

  “Thanks for the spelling suggestion,” Reece said, and then he paused. “I’ll see you around, Bailey.”

  “Bye, Reece.”

  ***

  “I think I may have a mild crush on someone in my office,” I confessed to Erica as we climbed into the back of the cab. “And I’ve only had one conversation with him. How ridiculous am I?”

  We were on our way downtown, ready to pretend we were college students for the night. Our girls’ beach trip was the only time we ventured downtown to the dance clubs. All other times we’d go for dinner or to check out the antique stores.

  This was our fifth annual trip. We started the year before Erica had Little Noah, and we headed to Miami for that one. I won’t reveal the details of that trip because half of it I can’t remember, and the other half is way too embarrassing. Once the kids came, we stayed close to home. We still booked a room on the beach to feel like we were getting away, but I couldn’t pretend my house wasn’t fifteen minutes from the water. Erica promised that when her children got a little older, we’d stop girls’ tripping it in Wilmington.

  “Oh, really?” she asked, fixing her garish gold earring.

  “Well, he’s cute. And personable,” I said. “His name’s Reece.”

  “Like the candy?” she asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t believe I said that, too.”

  “To him?” she asked, laughing, then muttered, “Sounds like something you’d do.”

  “Hey now!”

  Erica patted my knee. “You know you can’t date your coworker.”

  “I know.”

  “You can, however, date one of the many cute college boys we’re about to meet,” she said.

  I grunted. “I’ve no desire to date a man ten years younger than I am.”

  “Okay. Let me rephrase that: You can sleep with one of the many cute co
llege boys we’re about to meet.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re ten years younger than I am,” I explained. I twisted a strand of hair around my finger and looked out the window.

  “We’re just talking sex here, Bailey. We’re not talking about commitment. I know 21-year-old men are stupid. But they can make fun boy toys.”

  “Gross. Will you just stop?” I glanced at the cab driver who ignored us.

  “How long has it been?” Erica asked softly.

  “What?”

  “You know . . .” She gave me that look. The raised brows. The pity. The fearful anticipation of a really embarrassing answer.

  “I’m not telling you. I don’t need your judgment,” I said.

  “Judgment? When have I ever judged you? I fed my kids fish sticks four times this week, okay? No judgment.”

  I cracked a smile.

  “Go on,” Erica encouraged.

  “Aside from that random dude we met three months ago at The Blue Post, there hasn’t been anyone.” I watched Erica’s face carefully. She sat back in her seat and exhaled a long, judgment-filled sigh.

  “You’ve had sex once in the last six months?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Once.”

  “Once,” I repeated.

  “One time. One time in half a year?”

  “Yes, Erica.”

  “Okay, honey? That’s what married people do who don’t like each other.”

  I ignored her, catching sight of Kenan Memorial fountain as we traveled down Market Street. Someone poured dish liquid in it, creating sudsy water that bubbled and glopped over the edges. “No respect,” I whispered, then giggled.

  “I have mad respect for you,” Erica countered.

  “I’m talking about the fountain,” I said, pointing behind us.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  Erica shrugged. “Bailey, you need to get laid.”