by Heidi Lowe
I turned to leave but stopped, hand on the door handle. With my back to her, I said, “I wasn’t lying when I told you I loved you, I hope you know that. And I won’t stop, I hope you know that too.”
I heard her get up from her desk. “Miss Adams.” I faced her, felt the power of a thousand daggers in her glare. “The next time you step into my office, and every occasion from then on, the only thing you will talk to me about is work. Understood?”
I swallowed back my tears. Nodded. Her resolve wouldn’t budge. If she was hurting inside as much as I was, it didn’t show.
“Good. Now get out of my office.”
That day, the woman I met all those months ago in Mario’s ceased to exist.
TWENTY-ONE
As far as cheap studios went, this one wasn’t half bad. Located in Tacoma, in a neighborhood described as “up and coming”, it sat on the eighth floor of an unsightly apartment building, and offered plenty of lighting, and an enviable view of Mount Rainier. The windows needed scrubbing down, as did the rest of the place, but it was inhabitable. Its selling point, however, was its price. Truth be told, even if the windows faced a brick wall, and the carpets were smeared in dog poo, I still would have taken it, seeing as I was paying the bill. Brit had sweet-talked the landlord into waiving the deposit, but I’d still had to scrape together two months worth of rent, money I could scarcely afford.
Dove surveyed the room, took in the dismal brown wallpaper, the single bed with the stained mattress, the broken blinds that only half closed. I stood back, awaiting his verdict but not really giving a crap either way. He had no right to be picky.
“Thanks, sis,” he said with feeling. I knew he meant it. “It’s perfect.”
It wasn’t perfect, but I loved him for saying it.
“Colin knows a guy who’s downsizing. Old guy, dead wife, empty nester. He’s got some furniture that’s still in good condition, if you want it?”
He smiled, nodded. “You bet. A lick of paint, some potted plants, this place will look like a suite at the Ritz-Carlton.”
I laughed. “You’re only twenty-five minutes from me now, so that’s something.”
He hugged me tightly. He’d put on weight whilst in rehab, had regained muscles I hadn’t seen in over a decade. There was color in his cheeks, meat on his bones; he no longer smelled of death and cigarettes.
“I checked online, and there’s an AA group nearby too. Did you know about that?” he said, once he let go of me.
I nodded. I was one step ahead of him. In the four weeks that he’d spent in rehab, I’d thrown myself into the search: for suitable housing that ticked all the boxes, and for venues that were looking for live performers. I’d lucked out with the apartment, and managed to find a place close to an AA meeting venue. A blessing sent from God; a reward for sticking to my word.
“The next meeting’s tomorrow,” he continued. “Think I’ll go along, introduce myself.”
“Good for you.” I patted him on the back. “If you need moral support, I don’t mind tagging along.”
He did a lap of the room, ran his hand along the wall, observed the dirt and grime that had rubbed off on him, then made a face. “I better go get some cleaning supplies.”
“Cool, I’ll help you.” I sounded way too enthusiastic.
He laughed. “You’ve already done enough. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be meeting Colin and his friends for lunch?”
Don’t remind me! I thought but didn’t say aloud, afraid that God would strike me down for it. If I voiced my reluctance, it was as good as breaking my promise. Thus, I’d kept those feelings to myself, smiled when I was expected to, lied when I had no choice but to. So far, no one had been able to see through the facade.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I said quickly. “You’re still coming over tonight to watch the game, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
We hugged again, he thanked me again, then I left him with the keys to his crummy new apartment. Grimy, with a strange smell, and a mattress that looked riddled with viruses and STDs. And still I would have preferred that over where I was going...
Dull didn’t begin to describe the couple sitting across the table from me and Colin. A husband and wife in their late thirties — Colin’s age, they owned a souvenir shop downtown and had been Christians since their recruitment/indoctrination in high school two decades prior. They were so bland, from their clothing right down to the food they ordered. I started imagining that they were aliens from outer space who’d taken over the bodies of humans, and didn’t quite know how real humans were supposed to act.
My sudden outburst of laughter made them and Colin gawk at me.
“What’s funny?” Colin asked.
I felt my face burning up. Laughing at my own imagination, in public, wasn’t that a sign of insanity?
“Oh, sorry, I just remembered something my coworker said to me,” I lied, and continued eating.
“So anyway, you can imagine the surprise we got when we saw how much the Space Needle refrigerator magnets were selling for last summer...” Mr. Alien continued, in his monotonous drawl.
Kill me now, I pleaded with God. Or are you still punishing me for my past transgressions?
“I think I have one of those,” Colin chimed in.
I looked at him in disbelief, as I had been doing since we sat down to eat. Unlike me, this stuff seemed to fascinate him; this insipid couple who looked like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Fascinating only in how boring it was possible for two people to be!
Once dessert had arrived, the topic of souvenirs appeared to be fully played out, and the subject changed.
“Marriage is something you have to work at,” Mrs. Alien said. Her lip did this weird thing when she ate, and it put me off my ice cream.
Her alien husband moaned and nodded his agreement.
“Take us, for instance. We’ve been married twelve years, each of them a challenge,” she continued.
Yeah, because there’s nothing exciting about either of you.
Colin nodded with understanding, his brow furrowed in that way it got when he was concentrating hard.
“That’s why it’s important to marry your best friend. Because when the chips are down, you’ll always have that to fall back on,” Mr. Alien said.
I had to stifle a laugh at the thought of marrying Brit. That would be the shortest marriage in the history of marriages, fraught with violence, screaming, cheating, all from her side!
“Ruth and I have been best friends since middle school,” Mr. Alien continued. “Were there others we were more attracted to aesthetically? Yes. But ultimately we married wisely, not out of lust.”
I blinked big for effect, dumbfounded by his admission. So he basically admitted that they didn’t find each other attractive. What was most remarkable about the whole thing was how no one but me seemed to be alarmed by it.
“Maybe if you’d kept looking you would have found someone that ticked all the boxes,” I said before I could stop myself.
The whole table shot me indignant looks. Colin’s cheeks lit up. Oh dear, I was embarrassing him in front of his extraterrestrial buddies.
We walked to his car in silence, once the meal was over. I could sense his ire. Only when we were on the road did he speak.
“I didn’t appreciate the way you spoke to them.”
I fought back the urge to roll my eyes at him. I’d had to do that a lot lately.
“I said what any sane person would have thought.” I folded my arms defiantly.
“No, you were being judgmental. Their marriage works for them, all right? It might not look like much from the outside, but it’s functional.”
“Functional?” I snorted. “Functional is what you call an old car that still gets you to work, not a life-long union between two people.”
He tutted. “Sometimes you can be so naive, Dakota. Sometimes it’s like you don’t live in the world with the rest of us.”
“Well at
least I’m actually from this world, unlike your extraterrestrial friends!” I snapped.
His face screwed up in confusion. “What? What are you even talking about?”
“Forget it,” I mumbled, realizing how crazy I sounded.
We drove in silence again, and every now and then I sneaked a peek over at him. Such a sensible driver, sensible dresser, even a sensible debater. Sensible, sensible, sensible. And I despised him for it.
If Brit were to tell it, it wasn’t a party. Twelve people — including me — snacks, beers and sodas enough to feed an army. So much noise whenever a touchdown was scored that it sounded like I was actually at the football stadium.
“Twelve people isn’t a party,” she’d insisted when the final guest arrived. “It’s more of a small gathering.”
Well, the “small gathering” consisted of four men I didn’t know, Brit, Colin, Dove, Patty and her girlfriend, plus Saeed and Ximena. They were a last minute addition. When I casually informed Saeed that my roommate had used her bonus money to purchase a mammoth sixty inch plasma TV, he simply couldn’t resist.
Football wasn’t my thing, but Brit wanted an excuse to show off her new purchase whilst cozying up to prospective suitors, so I’d caved. Now, watching not the game but how careless the guests were being with the food and drink, I deeply regretted it. Crumbs, spillages, mayhem!
I hung back, cringed from afar.
Saeed came over when he noticed I was quiet.
“I’m not a big fan either,” he said in solidarity, without me even breathing a word. “I just came for the free food.”
I laughed. “Get out of my head!”
“Oh my God, there it is, a laugh,” he said, pointing at me. “I thought I’d never see it again.”
Taken aback. “What? I laugh all the time.”
He took a swig from his bottle of Budweiser. “Not anymore. You don’t even sit with us in the break room anymore. And when was the last time we had lunch together?”
Four weeks ago. I didn’t need to think about it. Nothing had returned to normal, as I’d hoped it would. I hadn’t returned to being the woman I was at the beginning of the job. That person was gone; she’d only ever existed because she didn’t know any better. The woman I was now, she’d loved and lost, and wore the scars all over her heart. What I would have given to go back to my days of ignorance.
“It’s been busy at the office...” I fidgeted nervously. “And honestly, I haven’t had much to laugh about these past few weeks.” It shocked me how open I was being with him. My eyes welled up.
I looked away before he saw, cleared the grog from my throat.
“Well here’s something that might cheer you up.” He leaned in closer. “Rumor has it that The Glacier Queen’s moving up in the world, and by moving up I mean moving out. Hint, hint.”
Just the mention of her set the crows in motion, made me want to throw up. It wasn’t news, and it certainly wasn’t good news, but I couldn’t let any of that show.
“Really?” I asked, feigning surprise.
He nodded with a grin. “Heard it through the grapevine. Executive manager. She’ll soon be making another department’s life a living hell.” He cackled wickedly.
I felt weak. Seeing her at work was the only thing that kept me going. We barely exchanged words, and she barely looked at me, but that gave me life. I’d just assumed that now that we were over, she didn’t need to take the job. But she was a businesswoman, I should have known she wouldn’t turn down such an opportunity.
In my peripheral vision I saw but didn’t register Brit whispering something to Colin, and then both turning to look at me. They could have been plotting my death for all I cared; my thoughts were on Naomi. My thoughts were always on her.
“I’m feeling a little lightheaded. Just gonna lie down for a bit,” I said to Saeed, and dashed to my room. I blinked away the tears, sat on the edge of my bed, fished out my phone. I turned down the volume, and hit play on a video I’d watched more than one hundred times. The footage never got old.
The way the sun hit her, the way the water gushed around her feet, it was like staring at an angel. Like she had a halo around her head. Each time she noticed me and waved, I rewound it so I could relive it. When she came running over to me, I felt alive, the way I had done that day; like the luckiest, happiest person in the world. I was momentarily transported back to that day at the lake, where we’d made indirect plans for our future together. Where she’d fed me grapes, kissed me in the shade, and loved me in front of the whole world. Then two days later, my world came crashing down.
When the video stopped, the noise of the party returned, no longer blocked out by my trip down memory lane. It all seemed like a dream now, like the person that had been holding the camera wasn’t me.
It wasn’t a dream. That was you, and she was yours.
Though the ruckus they were making would have made it impossible for them to hear anything, I pressed a hand over my mouth so no one would hear me cry.
The wastepaper basket in my office overflowed with discarded drawings and mediocre ideas. It was Thursday afternoon, I’d skipped lunch, and was running on empty, trying to come up with a suitable design for floor polish. The company in question were about six months from bankruptcy and needed a fresh new look and campaign for their most successful product. No pressure. I’d never used floor polish in my life, and was coming up trumps. I needed to bag this account, as I’d been slipping lately, failing to secure new business.
It was hard to concentrate with Naomi in my line of vision — she and most of the team were gathered around the conference table outside, working on a huge campaign that she’d secured. I wasn’t invited. I wanted to believe it was personal, that she was so hurt by our breakup that she wanted to punish me for it. But the truth was she wanted more experienced people on the project, and so too did the client. Besides, I had plenty of my own work to get on with.
Even though it hurt to look at her, I couldn’t avert my gaze. I fell into a deep reverie of my fondest memories, recalling how her long brunette tresses used to fall all around me when she kissed me. Like a waterfall. And how easily her nipples hardened at the slightest touch of my hand. I remembered how much I’d struggled with the buttons of her white blouse, the exact one she was wearing today. It brought a sad smile to my face.
“Slow down, baby,” she’d whispered once, when I got frustrated and couldn’t get it off quick enough. “We have all the time in the world.”
But we didn’t. Just two and a half months, that was all we’d been given. That wasn’t even long enough for me to become unforgettable to her; irreplaceable. She’d probably already gotten over me, if she ever truly loved me to begin with.
Floor polish.
Wrenching my eyes away, I turned my attentions back to my work, made another poor attempt at a design, failed miserably, and ripped the paper from the pad. I tossed it in the basket with a furious growl. The creative side of my brain wouldn’t function, and I knew why. I’d gone from having lots of wild, body shattering sex to having none at all. I’d been masturbating like crazy, but the act was lacking the one ingredient that gave the orgasm meaning: her. She was in every imagined scenario as I worked on myself, but it wasn’t the same. I craved the real thing. The real thing that ended in cuddles and kisses, sweet whispers and unspoken promises. That was what I missed more than anything.
I raised my eyes to look out at her again, and did a double take when I saw Colin.
I got up, opened the door.
“Hi, Dakota,” he said, his smile apologetic. There was a nervousness about him, more than usual.
“Colin, what are you...”
My voice trailed off as he bent down, in front of the whole room. He sank to his knees, my heart sank to the floor of my stomach.
He presented the black box, opened it, and inside the ring sparkled. There was no mistaking what was happening.
“W—what are you doing? Get up!” I shrieked, but he wasn’t listening, h
e’d already launched into his speech.
“I know it’s taken me long enough to get here, and I’m so glad you were patient with me. I also know that I was lucky to get a second chance, and I’m not prepared to blow it this time. So... Dakota Yvonne Adams, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
I gripped my stomach, forcing the vomit to stay put and not pour out everywhere. I thought about Doritos, and cheesecake, and jelly beans to keep it down. But I felt it coming, so I made a desperate dash right past him, past everyone, hand covering my mouth, and headed to the restroom.
I emptied my guts in the nearest stall to the door. Waited a minute, then more came up. Coffee and the two slices of toast I’d had that morning before work.
I wiped my mouth, washed up, took a deep breath, then returned to the office, but waited outside at the glass doors, and gestured for Colin to come out. It needn’t have mattered either way, seeing as the whole team could see us. The whole team... including Naomi.
“Well that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for,” Colin said, scratching the back of his neck. The red in his face would probably stay there permanently.
“Why would you do that here?” I demanded. This spontaneity, this boldness wasn’t him. He wasn’t the bells and whistles type, hated making a scene.
“I wanted to do something different, something that would surprise you.”
“You can’t do that here. My boss is sitting right there.” My boss, the woman I loved above everything. I couldn’t even look in her direction.
“I’m sorry. Brit said I should do something big...”
I folded my arms. “Oh, so this was her idea?”
“She just said big, I came up with this.” He hung his head. “Does this mean no?”
I sighed. “Yes... I mean, no, it means... yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He raised his head, beamed from ear to ear, smashed his lips to mine, smothered me in a bone-crushing hug, before picking me up and spinning me around. From within the offices, both my team and Flavio’s opposite, a chorus of claps erupted.