by Bera, Ilia
“Oh, don’t get all flustered on me,” she said. “I imagine that kiss last night wasn’t intended for my lips—so tell me about him.”
I bit my lip and his face returned to my mind. “He’s tall,” I said.
“What’s his name?”
“I’m not sure.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Not off to a great start.”
“He’s handsome—brown eyes, dark hair.”
“He sounds pretty cute,” she said.
I blushed. “Yeah.”
“Why don’t you know his name?”
“I’ve never talked to him. Well—One time I walked into him, and he stopped me from falling over.”
“Sounds about right…”
“He’s out of my league. Everything about him is just too—too perfect.”
“Perfect teeth?” Maddy asked.
“Perfect.”
“Perfect teeth—that means he’s from a rich family.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because no one really has truly perfect teeth. Only rich kids who got braces and retainers young have perfect teeth.”
“I had braces,” I said.
“Let me see your teeth,” Maddy said. I showed her. “Yeah—see? You were a rich kid. Where are your parents now?”
“Retired—living in Florida.”
“Rich kid,” Maddy concluded.
“Your parents didn’t have much money?” I asked.
“My dad had money sometimes. When I was really small, he was the boss of some big company. He got laid off when the recession hit and he lost all of his savings on some bad investment. We were really poor for a while, living off meal stamps and whatever. Then, he started doing consulting work. Some weeks, he would make a few thousand—other weeks, he made nothing.”
“What about your mom?” I asked.
“She’s gone.”
“Oh—I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No, she isn’t dead. Well, I don’t think she is. She took off right after I was born. I never actually met her.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
“He’s gone.”
“Where did he go?”
Maddy was silent. Her eyes glazed over.
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled. “Tell me more about this guy,” she said.
“He comes down to the floor I work on, and he talks to the managers every now and then. I think he’s one of the bosses, but he doesn’t sit in on any of the meetings. He always smiles at me.”
“Maybe he’s just afraid to talk to you.”
“No way—I mean—there’s just—no. No way,” I said. “He doesn’t want to talk to me. He could have any woman he wanted. You should see him.”
“Sounds like he wants you.”
“I don’t know…”
“Ask him on a date,” Maddy said.
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“What if he says no?”
“Then nothing changes.”
“But he’ll always look at me like, oh, there’s that weird girl who eats ice cream and marathons bad Canadian sitcoms all day.”
“You need to get over your Netflix obsession,” Maddy said.
“I’m working on it.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe his favourite thing to do is to eat ice cream and watch bad Canadian sitcoms all day? Maybe that’s what he’s doing upstairs all day.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I had too much respect for the mysterious man to think that he was as lame as I was.
“Next time you see him, just ask him out. He already knows you like him. So if he says no, nothing will change. He might say yes—you never know.”
“What do you mean, he knows I like him?”
“If your face lights up when you see him the way it does when I mention him, then he knows.”
Maddy placed another log onto the fire and then looked back up to the sky to watch for more shooting stars.
My gaze turned inward as my mind ran rampant. Even in my fantasy, I awkwardly stuttered as I tried to ask the man from upstairs out on a date. His eyes would become wide and dart from side to side, looking for an escape. Before I could finish my stuttering proposition, he would be back on the elevator, heading up to the safety of his own floor. Even my fantasy didn’t have much faith in me.
Maddy looked towards the woods.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
I looked at the still tree line but heard nothing. “No—”
“—Shh!”
I listened but couldn’t hear anything. She rose to her feet. Her eyes were locked on a dark patch of the groaning woods.
“What’s going on? What are you—”
“—Shh! There’s something here.”
She cautiously stepped towards the woods. I strained to listen, but could hear nothing.