Just a Name

by Becky Monson

  Logan doesn’t even flinch. “We were getting dinner,” he says, his hands still stuffed in his pockets as if he doesn’t trust them to move freely.

  “Right,” I say, feeling stupid.

  “If you’re asking why we were with those women . . .” he trails off, brows raised as he searches my face.

  “No,” I say a little too quickly, shaking my head to add emphasis. “I wasn’t asking that.” I laugh awkwardly.

  This is not going well.

  “It was a business dinner,” he says flatly.

  “Um, okay,” I say, disbelief in my tone. I add an eye roll for emphasis.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” he says. “They’re from AppLee.”

  “AppLee?”

  “Yeah, AppLee. Kind of a big deal, actually. They want to purchase Digits.”

  “Oh,” I say, my mind doing double time, putting pieces into place like a puzzle. AppLee is a large smart phone app-building company that Nathan and Logan have been trying to sell their accounting app to. It’s what they’ve been working for. AppLee is a really big deal.

  But the women they were with? Surely they don’t work for AppLee—they didn’t even look like they came from work. Even as I think this, though, my mind wanders back to what they were wearing—the short red sheath dress and the silky tank with the pencil skirt . . . if you slapped a suit coat on each of those outfits, you’d have work attire. Even the short red dress—heaven knows Tiffany’s worn similar dresses to work.

  Could it have been a business meeting? But what about flirty-mcflirtyson who was all up in Nathan’s space? Maybe I read into that too?

  Logan takes a hand out of his pocket and runs it through his hair.

  “Um . . . so how did it go?” My mind is running all over the place and I need time to sort it out, so for now I decide that I’m just going to go with this whole business meeting thing. Plus, Logan is a lot of things, but a liar is not one of them. I’ve only known him to be honest. Too honest, sometimes.

  He scans the room with his eyes before settling them back on me. “Good. I think.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “Yeah . . .” He pauses, searching the room again as if eye contact is too hard. “As long as Nathan doesn’t screw it up,” he says. Something briefly crosses his face, like he didn’t mean to tell me what he just did, but it passes quickly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I . . . I mean, it’s nothing. It’s fine. I think it went well,” he says.

  “Well, good then.” I’m half curious why he’s saying Nathan could screw this deal up—Nathan, who could sell condoms to a nun. I think if anyone could screw it up it would be the socially awkward man standing in front of me.

  “Yeah,” he says, nodding his head. Both hands now back in his pockets.

  We both stand there, not looking anywhere but at each other. I start chewing on the side of my bottom lip wondering how I can be done here. I glance over at the counter and see the woman with the dreads behind the counter waiting for me. Seeing my escape, I quickly take the few steps to get to the counter and then place my order—which they put on Nathan’s tab, and I’m too flustered to fix it. Next time.

  I turn back around to find Logan still there. I half expected him to go back to his booth. Or maybe I’d hoped.

  Right, so I’m just going to say it.

  “Listen, Logan,” I say. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “Have to do what?”

  Oh, sweet déjà vu. Do I really have to spell this out?

  “We don’t have to continue this,” I gesture between him and me.

  “What exactly is this?” he says, pulling a hand out of his pocket and mimicking my gesture.

  “Logan,” I say tilting my head to the side in irritation. What is he not getting here? “I mean, you and I don’t have to continue this—whatever we have—now that Nathan and I are done.”

  There’s not a word to describe it—what Logan and I are, or rather, were. We were never friends, just forced to get along because of Nathan. Not for lack of me trying, though. I so wanted Logan to like me. I’ve never experienced that before, wanting someone to like me. I’ve never wanted to work on it—either someone likes me or they don’t. I think it was only because Logan is Nathan’s best friend; I wanted to work on it so we could be one big, happy family. It feels slightly relieving that I don’t have to work on this anymore. I can go back to not caring who likes me. Well, except for my team. I need them to like me. Crap.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” he asks, eyeing me with confusion.

  “I mean . . . look, Logan, I know you never liked me, so I don’t want you to feel like when you see me, you have to talk to me.” There, I’ve said it.

  “Who says I don’t like you?” Logan asks, confusion on his face mixed with something like . . . hurt, maybe? I’m not sure.

  The barista calls out my name and I move over to the pickup counter and grab my coffee.

  I hold my coffee up to show him I got what I came here for. “Well, I’ll see you around, Logan.”

  He huffs through his nose, his brows knit together. “Holly, who says I don’t like you?”

  I sigh. He’s not going to let this go as easily as I thought he would. “No one, really,” I say. “It’s just, you know, pretty obvious.”

  “I—” he cuts off, running a hand through his hair. “How?”

  “How?”

  “Yes. How is it obvious?”

  I laugh a fake, almost witchy sounding laugh. Where did that come from? I freaking cackled. “Where do I begin?” I ask.

  “Give me an example,” he says, folding his arms.

  “Let’s see, you barely acknowledged me when we first met. You’d get pissy whenever I came over to the apartment. You were a total jerk at my engagement party. Do I need to go on?”

  Logan briefly stares down at his flip-flop-adorned feet. I do give him some credit here, because he does look ashamed. His eyes move back to me.

  “I just wanted for us all to get along.” I don’t even know why I’m saying this. It’s futile. I don’t want Nathan back, and I don’t need Logan’s friendship. Not anymore.

  “Holly,” he takes a step closer to me and gently wraps a hand around my upper arm. It feels so foreign, yet doesn’t at the same time. I don’t think Logan has ever touched me. Not on purpose at least. His hand is warm against my skin, and my arm prickles instantly from the touch.

  “Don’t,” I say, shaking off his arm. “It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize—”

  “I wasn’t going to,” he says, cutting me off.

  “Oh,” I say, looking down at the drink in my hand. This is not how I thought this would go.

  “I like you just fine,” he says, his hand opening and closing as if touching me was a very trying task.

  Right. What any person loves to hear: I like you just fine.

  “Okay, fine. Then you just didn’t like Nathan and me together,” I say.

  He doesn’t say anything, and that’s my answer.

  “Well, at any rate,” I take in a big breath, “you’re off the hook now.” I give him a forced smile.

  He still has nothing to say, so I take that as my cue to leave. There goes my great start to the day.

  ~*~

  And it’s only getting worse.

  “Knock, knock!” a voice says from outside my door.

  Oh, yay. Tiffany. I’d sell my soul to anyone who could magically zap me out of my office, I swear it. Just tell me where to sign, Satan. I’m yours for the taking.

  “Knock, knock!” she says again.

  “Come in,” I finally say.

  “Hi, Holly,” she says as she walks in my office. Her hair is up in one of those updos I can never get my hair to do and she’s wearing a pant suit that looks like she just picked it up from the cleaners. I’ve only been at work for an hour and my striped button-down blouse and navy blue pencil skirt appears as if I’ve been rolling around on my floor.

  Well
, I got propositioned by a bum today, so in your face, Tiffany.

  “Oh, hey, Tiffany,” I say and then turn my focus back to my computer screen.

  She takes a seat in one of the chairs in front of my desk, lays a small stack of papers in front of her, and then clears her throat. I take a deep breath and glance over at her.

  “What can I help you with?” I ask, my tone dry. I can’t fake it today.

  “So,” she starts, a patronizing smile on her face. “We got the PFC report from your team—”

  “You did?” I say, cutting her off, sounding utterly surprised—because I am utterly surprised.

  “Yes,” she says. “Your team sent it over last night.”

  My heart warms. My new approach is working. I can’t help but feel a little burst of pride for my team. My little lovely team. It’s going to be easy to shower them with praise and compliments today.

  “Yes, but the report they sent was all wrong,” she says, tapping the small stack of papers in front of her.

  And just like that, my burst of pride is trampled. Stamped on, jumped on, and beaten with a bat for good measure.

  She slides the report over to me using her index finger. “Can you see that this gets fixed?”

  I pick up the paper-clipped packet and briefly scan the front page.

  “You know,” she says, and I look up to see her fake smile, “a little proper training with your team might be needed.” She bats her eyes like she’s being so helpful. Helpful like a big B-word. “I could help you, you know.”

  Oh, she could help, could she? Give me a freaking break. I’ll allow that to happen as soon as our current president stops doing his comb-over. So, never.

  Anyway, Tiffany’s team is easier than mine. And I’d know because we were both on that team once upon a time. That’s where we both started at CT Anderson Bank—the fraud resolutions team. Then Marie made us both supervisors and stuck me with the island of misfit toys. I mean, Jim is for sure the choo-choo with square wheels.

  I plaster my own fake smile on my face and say, “Thank you for the offer, but I think we’re doing just fine.”

  She gives me a smile like she doesn’t believe me. Without a goodbye, she stands up and saunters out of my office, her shoes making soft padding sounds as she leaves.

  I put my forehead on my desk. Time to go talk to my team. I can’t even use Thomas’s advice and start passing out compliments. Hey everyone, you sucked at the PFC report, but Jim, that ratty old polo you’re wearing really suits you.

  Nope, it’s back to the bribery.

  Chapter 5

  Marie will not let this vacation thing go.

  This morning at work I logged in to find a bunch of emails from my boss, all about last-minute vacation deals, all of them to the beach. She’s not moving on like I’d hoped. And why did they all have to be on the beach? I’m not a huge fan, honestly. I’m like part of the one percent, or maybe I’m the only percent that doesn’t like it. I hate sand everywhere, and that sticky feeling from the salt water . . . also the beach was my mom’s most favorite place. And it reminds me of her, which I also don’t love. I wonder how much she’s missing the beach now that’s she spent the last three years in an orange jumpsuit locked inside a building.

  I did finally read the article Marie wanted me to read—the one from The Harvard Business Review about vacations. Okay, it was interesting. I’ll give her that. But it still seems so counterintuitive. Why would time away make me a better boss? No, I need to fix everything here first before I can do any of that.

  I decided to do a search of my own to show her vacations don’t work; it’s a well-known fact that you can always find something on the internet—some fact or research—to back up your claim.

  I typed in “reasons why you shouldn’t take a vacation from work,” and over three hundred million—three hundred million—search results came up. But every one of them was in favor of a vacation. Well, I obviously didn’t look up every result, but I got to page twenty before I gave up my plight.

  Since Marie is not letting this go and the internet has failed me, I called Quinn and asked her for help. Quinn is my person. She’s my go-to for pretty much everything. If anyone will know what to do, it’s her. I need her to help me think of ways I can get my team to like me and I need to figure this out fast. Finding ways to buy me some time with my boss would be helpful as well.

  Quinn Pearson has been my best friend since the first day of middle school. We were both new—which is the worst possible time to move schools, as anyone who’s been to middle school can attest to. Quinn’s family had moved from Boston and my dad had taken a job in Orlando, so we had to leave Charlotte, North Carolina. It was only him and me since my mom had decided being a wife and mom was not for her, so she peaced-out just before my twelfth birthday.

  Quinn and I were both in the midst of our ugly phases—me with my massive curly red hair and freckles—and Quinn being nearly as tall as the teachers. We were destined to be besties after meeting in the lunch line and bonding over the fact that we were both new at the school and had both been insulted within the first hour of being there. Someone had called her Amazon woman—which was rather apropos, honestly—and I was asked by a kid with a very disproportionate head-to-body ratio (it was like a grapefruit on a chopstick) if the carpet matched the drapes. I didn’t even know what that meant until Quinn explained it to me.

  We were basically inseparable from then on out. We went to the same high school, during which I figured out how to tame my crazy hair and tone down my freckles with makeup, and Quinn’s height no longer mattered as the boys caught up to her. After graduation we attended the University of Florida, where we became obnoxious Gators fans and did all the stupid college stuff girls who are trying to figure themselves out do. Well, Quinn did that. I was more the conservative type. It was during our sophomore year that we met Bree.

  “Hey,” Quinn says, slightly breathless as she takes a seat across from me ten minutes after she was supposed to be here, which is actually not bad for her.

  “Hey,” I return the greeting. I don’t even bother to make a comment about her tardiness because it’s wasted breath.

  “Okay,” she slaps her hands on the table. “I know exactly what you need to do.”

  Yep, that’s Quinn—getting right down to business. She’s not big on small talk. Plus, we’ve known each other for more than half our lives, so we don’t have a need to talk about the weather or other useless topics of conversation.

  And she’s got her crazy eyes on. Quinn’s crazy eyes are usually accompanied by some harebrained idea. Sometimes they’re good ideas—like the time she decided she was going to start doing furniture restoration, which she still does and is amazing at. Other times—like the time in college when she decided she could learn how to wax eyebrows by watching tutorials on YouTube and then promptly took half my eyebrow off, was not one of her better ones.

  “Let’s hear it,” I say.

  She bounces around in her chair. “Okay, do you remember that woman in New York who did that nationwide search for a guy with the same name as her ex-boyfriend to go on that trip to China with her?”

  My eyes travel up to the ugly tiled ceiling and fluorescent lighting of our favorite pizzeria as I try to recall the story. I’m also trying to figure out what this has to do with anything.

  “It was about two years ago. It was all over the news,” Quinn says, now tapping her fingers on the table excitedly.

  “Oh, right,” I say as I recall the story. I remember reading about it and thinking it was so clever and hoping they would fall in love, but the guy she went with had a girlfriend.

  Quinn’s eyebrows move up and down and she nods her head rapidly. I’m not sure what’s she getting at.

  “I can’t go to China,” I say to her.

  “Not China, silly.” She rolls her eyes, slapping the table again with her hands.

  “I’m not following.”

  She lets out a loud breath, still giving m
e the how-are-you-not-getting-this eyes.

  “Hols, you have two tickets to London and Paris.”

  “Yes, and one of those tickets can’t be used.”

  “Exactly,” she says, her eyebrows still dancing up and down.

  “Quinn, I need you to help me with my team. Not a vacation. And besides, I already told you I don’t want to go by myself.” I don’t even know why I must defend myself on this. Who wants to go on their honeymoon alone?

  She huffs a breath out of her nose. “Well I’d go with you, but you know I can’t.”

  “Right,” I say with an eye roll. “You have Fat Camp.”

  “Shhhhhh,” she says, her eyes scanning the area around us to make sure no one heard. There’s no one within hearing distance.

  “Can’t you just go another time?”

  “You know I can’t.”

  Quinn is going to some mind/body/spirit retreat that she got on the waiting list for last year and finally got a spot, and it happens to be when I would have been on my honeymoon. It’s something to do with finding a healthy relationship with food, hence the “fat camp” reference.

  “Holly,” Quinn says, slapping the table twice as she says my name. “You have two tickets for a trip that’s probably already been painstakingly planned.” She eyes me knowingly.

  I shrug. It was pretty close to being all planned. I ditched the effort when it was no longer necessary.

  “So, let’s find you another Nathan Jones to go with you,” she says, her mouth forming a huge smile.

  I sit there for a second before I truly realize what she’s saying.

  “And before you say anything,” she holds out a hand, “I already looked it up on Facebook and there are like, a gajillion Nathan Joneses out there. It will be super easy to find someone. Plus,” she pauses for emphasis, “your bestie happens to have the means to help you do the search. I mean, it’s kind of kismet if you think about it.”