by Lily Maxton
If I were him, I wouldn’t have been ashamed either. The only thing nerdy about him was his taste in TV shows.
“I used to watch Voyager with my sister. I think Captain Janeway could have kicked Picard’s ass.” I realized I’d said “ass” after the word had already escaped. My face heated.
His smile flashed wider, revealing perfectly straight white teeth. I wondered if he’d had braces as a kid. If not, it really wasn’t fair. “Captain Janeway was pretty tough,” he agreed. If I’d reminded him of the fact that he’d seen my ass, he didn’t show it.
“I don’t mind coffee,” I said, trying to change the subject in case he was thinking about my butt and was just good at looking like he wasn’t. “But I like tea better in the afternoon. You know, less caffeine and all that. More soothing. Won’t you have trouble sleeping?”
I wanted to smack myself. Not only was I rambling, it was a boring ramble.
“No, I’m more or less addicted to it. I should sleep fine.”
I wouldn’t sleep fine, regardless of caffeine intake. I realized his hand was still closed around mine, under the running water. We’d stayed like that the whole time we’d been talking. Wait, was he flirting with me? My heart jolted.
I yanked my hand away abruptly, splashing us both with water. “I just got out of a relationship. It was really serious,” I blurted out.
He ran his hand down the side of his pant leg to dry it. “Yeah?” he asked, impassive. “The guy at the bar?”
I nodded. “It was very serious,” I repeated more forcefully. “We dated for over a year.”
“That’s cool,” he said. But his bland expression and his even blander tone made it obvious he couldn’t care less about my love life. And now he knew I assumed he’d been trying to flirt with me or something. That was the only reason a girl would wave her “very serious” ex around like a battle flag.
I’d just made a complete and utter fool of myself in front of him. Again. If all the ways I looked like an idiot in front of Evan were baseball, I’d be running toward home plate. Well, let’s be real … I’d probably be crawling toward home plate because I’d done a face-plant along the way.
“I should get back to work,” I muttered, moving past without looking at him.
It was only after I’d sat back down that I realized I’d left my tea in the break room. I groaned, letting my head fall into my open hands. But there was no freaking way I was going back for it now.
*
“Are you okay?” Alyssa asked me one morning.
I sat at the table glumly chewing my cereal, staring into space. I wasn’t depressed exactly, more conflicted. Drew had been right—I had expected everything to stay the same, and when I suspected that it wasn’t, and was getting worse instead of better, I’d denied it to myself. My hands had been clutching a diminishing ideal for so long I didn’t know how to feel now that it was finally out of my grasp.
She glanced over her shoulder at me as she waited for a slice of bread to toast. Her long brown hair was pulled into a ponytail that swung with each movement of her head.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you dated him for a while, but there are other fish in the sea.” Alyssa could be pretty blunt.
“I know.”
The toast popped up and she grabbed it. “You need a rebound guy.”
“What?”
“A rebound.” She leaned her hip against the counter and looked at me. “It can make you feel better. Especially if the loser was cheating or something.”
“He wasn’t cheating,” I said.
“Still,” she shrugged. “Taking your mind off things with another guy might be the way to go.”
“But …” I hesitated. Alyssa was a lot more experienced than I was. The only guy I’d had sex with was Drew, but I’d never told her that. Unlike some of the girls I knew who’d gone a little wild in college, I’d waited until the end of my senior year to lose my virginity. And if I hadn’t started dating Drew, I probably wouldn’t have lost it at all. “Isn’t it weird to sleep with someone you don’t have an emotional connection with?”
One of the reasons I liked Alyssa was because I didn’t feel weird asking her a question like that. She was a direct sort of person. I remembered meeting her in the first class I’d attended at college. The professor had told us to pair off for a project. I hadn’t known anyone, so I’d sort of done that thing where you slouch in your chair and hope someone will want to partner with you without looking too concerned about it.
Alyssa had turned to me, caught my eye and said, “We can be partners but I hope you’re a good student because I’m not doing all the work.”
Some people could be a little put off by Alyssa, but I’d liked her immediately. Her confidence tended to balance out my neuroses.
Now she answered my question in her usual direct way. “Not to me.”
My nose wrinkled. “I don’t think I could do that.”
She laughed. “Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Speaking of which …” she ducked out of the kitchen and a few seconds later came back with a line of foil packets.
I blushed as she threw the condoms onto the table like they were as innocuous as a handful of candy.
“You can never be too prepared,” she said matter-of-factly, sounding like a sex-ed teacher from middle school. I was kind of wishing I’d ended the conversation before it got to this point. “I know you’re on the pill, but don’t trust a guy if he says he doesn’t have any STDs. Unless you’ve seen the test results, it’s a possibility.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I muttered.
“Put those in your purse,” she ordered.
I sighed, plucking the damn things from the table. When my eyes skimmed one of the packets I paused. “Glow-in-the-dark?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you need glow-in-the-dark condoms for?”
“I don’t know … they were on sale. I guess if you like to have sex with the lights off, it’s easier to find things.”
“Oh,” I said.
All I could imagine was a glowing, disembodied hard-on coming at me (no pun intended) in the dark. There was no way I could use these without feeling ridiculous.
But it didn’t matter. I wasn’t planning on having rebound sex anyway.
“Do you ever think sometimes it’s better to pay full price?” I asked, as I read the back of the packet—the condoms promised a fun and passionate experience. I wasn’t sure how anything that reminded me of a laser-tag arena could be “fun and passionate.”
“Hey, I’d love to pay full price for condoms,” she said. “But we live in Chicago on entry-level wages.”
“Maybe you’ll get a raise.”
“I hope so,” she said. “Entry-level wages suck.”
“At least you have a car,” I said.
She lifted her eyebrows. “A tiny used car,” she pointed out. “Do you ever think about asking your mom for money?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “I couldn’t.”
She went to the fridge and pulled out a tub of butter for her toast. “Why not?”
“She’d just worry about me. You know she hopes I’ll move back home and get a different degree. Asking for money would just be proof that I should.”
“Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
I didn’t like not having a car, or eating peanut butter and jelly for almost every lunch, or not being able to travel anywhere unless I saved for like three years in advance, but at least I was making enough to live on. I’d been thrilled when I’d seen my first deposit from SLQ. I’d actually kind of wished I’d requested checks instead, so I could hold the slip in my hand. There was nothing like a steady income to make a person feel like an adult.
And maybe it was a small steady income, and maybe at times it was tempting to ask my mom for money because I knew she could spare some, but I wasn’t going to.
“At least you could ask her though, if you needed it,” Alyssa said. “I don’t think my mom even understands the
concept of money.”
I’d met Alyssa’s mom once. She’d been doing a cross-country road trip with some friends and stopped by Springfield when they were passing through. I hadn’t known people like Alyssa’s mom actually existed anywhere other than in the movies—she was the flightiest person I’d ever seen. She had to have done some serious brain-altering drugs when she was growing up.
It actually might have explained why Alyssa was so self-sufficient.
“Sometimes I wish I had a mom who didn’t worry about me so much,” I said.
Alyssa shook her head. “I love your mom. She’s being motherly. It’s the whole point.”
I sighed. I loved my mom, too. It just would’ve been nice if she believed in me a little more. “I need to get to work,” I said, standing.
Alyssa, who leaned against the counter as she nibbled her toast, gazed pointedly at the condoms I’d left on the table.
I rolled my eyes and put them in my handbag.
*
I was okay at SLQ as long as I was firmly ensconced in my department. Whenever I entered or exited the building I always ended up sweeping the area for Drew, nervous that there would be some awkward encounter between us.
My brain was muddled. I tried to determine if I missed him or not, still unsure of what I felt. I thought I did, but for several months it hadn’t seemed like we were really together. So what was I missing, exactly? The first six months of our relationship? The time before that, when we’d just been friends and everything had been simple?
But sometimes at night, I would stretch my hand to the empty space beside me, grasping, like there was something to hold on to when no one was there. I remembered nights when I had stretched out next to him in the dark, touching and not talking. They were few and far between, but potent in my memory.
Those moments. Those moments were the ones I missed. But I’d been missing them for a long time.
It wasn’t new. It wasn’t the sharp, abrupt pain of a knife point but the dull ache of some chronic ailment.
I watched the clock at the corner of the computer screen as it slowly counted the seconds toward the weekend.
Alyssa would have a date. More often than not, she had a date on the weekend. And it wasn’t always the same guy as the week before. I wondered about that sometimes, but I didn’t feel like it was my place to delve into her commitment issues.
Anyway, I probably had my own issues she could throw right back at me.
When the clock read 5:00, I shut down my computer, picked up my purse, and left. I caught Lucy on the way out. “Hey,” I said. “Are you going to Sadie’s?”
She smiled apologetically. “Not tonight. My daughter is in a play at school.”
“Yeah? What kind of play?”
“Something about the life of Helen Keller.”
I blinked. Lucy had told me her daughter was five. I’d been picturing animal costumes and off-key songs. That’s the kind of stuff my class had done in kindergarten. “Aren’t they a little young for that?”
“It will probably be horrible, but Emma is so excited that I’m looking forward to it.” Then she glanced over my shoulder and grinned, waving her arm. “Hey, Evan!”
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Helping you out,” she responded cheerfully.
He stopped beside us. I tried not to stare at him—employees were allowed to dress casually on Fridays. A pair of faded jeans fell low on his hips, not too tight and not too loose. They followed his legs perfectly. The mathematical symbol for pi covered his dark blue T-shirt. It was difficult not to notice the sinew of his biceps as he folded his arms over his chest. He wasn’t bulky, but he had a lean build. I noticed it every time he walked by the cubicle, and then glared at my computer screen, berating myself for noticing.
Did he work out?
When did he find the time for that? While he watched Star Trek?
“Dani wants to go to the bar, but I can’t make it. You two should go together,” she said.
“That’s not necessary,” I said quickly.
Lucy patted my shoulder. “No one should drink alone. Watch out for her, Evan.” And then, with a mischievous little smile she swept out the sliding doors and continued down the sidewalk.
I cursed her under my breath, hoping the play was a hellish three hours of screaming children. “It’s really … I can go by myself. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
Safe? I gawked at him. “I’m not stupid. I can take care of myself.”
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, how about this: I go to the bar and you go to the bar but we don’t go together?”
“I’m sure you have better things to do than babysit me,” I snapped. “Or maybe you don’t. You’ll have to check and make sure there isn’t a Star Trek marathon.”
I was being bitchy. But something about the idea of him going to the bar just to keep track of me rubbed me the wrong way. What, did he think I was so hopeless I’d get lost on the two-minute walk?
“It would be my dream to babysit you,” he said, grinning. Evan definitely wasn’t one of those people who took offense easily. “Do I get to spank you if you misbehave?”
My lips parted on an indrawn breath. A rush of heat swept my body … and the horrible thing was I couldn’t tell if I was embarrassed or intrigued. “No!”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just a joke.”
“It was a bad joke.” I looked away from him, and my eyes were drawn to a familiar profile.
Drew.
My fingers curled into a fist. I stilled, bewildered. We were standing in the middle of the entrance—I’d been avoiding this part of the building like the plague, but Evan had distracted me. I hadn’t even remembered where I was.
Drew’s steps faltered when he noticed me. His gaze swept over my figure and then he glanced at Evan.
And then he passed us and was out the door.
My eyes closed. He hadn’t even acknowledged me—was that what we’d been reduced to? Ignoring each other’s existence?
“Are you okay?” Evan asked.
“Perfect.”
“Was that your ex-boyfriend? Isn’t he the owner’s son?”
I didn’t answer. “I need a drink,” I muttered.
I spun on my heel, not waiting to see if Evan would follow.
The bar was stifling and loud, as usual. My skin felt sticky from heat as soon as I stepped inside. I slid onto a stool and ordered a Jack on the rocks. I felt like I was in a movie. Maybe a western—a lone desperado numbing her feelings with drink.
“So,” Evan began. I glanced over my shoulder at him; I wasn’t surprised that he’d trailed me here, being concerned for my safety and all … like I was a child in need of rescuing. “Should I sit down at the other end and act like we don’t know each other, or can I sit next to you?”
“Whatever.”
He took the stool next to me and ordered some sort of craft beer I’d never heard of. I could feel his eyes on me as I picked up my glass and drained a big gulp.
My eyes burned. I took a few deep breaths because it felt like my lungs had seized. I only just stopped myself from grimacing. No wonder people ordered it with soda.
Several minutes passed, and he didn’t say anything. I shifted on the stool, starting to feel uncomfortable.
I imbibed the last of my liquor. “Another, please,” I said when the bartender came around to us again. The minutes ticked by with neither one of us speaking; we both sat side by side and stared ahead or watched the young bartender filling drink orders as the noise and motion of the full bar pulsed around us. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking in that moment. Finally, when the first glass of whiskey was starting to make my limbs feel a bit heavy, and I was partway through the second glass, I spoke.
“Why aren’t you talking?” But I stared down at the sticky-looking hardwood counter instead of looking at him.
“You don’t seem to be in the mood for talking,�
�� he pointed out.
“You’re so considerate,” I said, with more than a little sarcasm. After another pause I broke down. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very nice to you.”
“It’s okay; I don’t get my feelings hurt that easily.”
“So …” I cast around for a topic, but couldn’t think of one. I tapped my fingers along the counter; it was sticky. I jerked my hand away, wondering what I’d touched. “What do you want to talk about?”
“So the onus of this conversation is on me?” His mouth curled at the corner as he took a drink of beer.
I blinked, wondering if I’d really just heard him use the word “onus” in conversation or if it was a trick of the Jack.
“Is that from Paris?” he asked, nodding toward my wrist, where I wore a silver-link bracelet that was engraved with different Parisian landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. I’d forgotten I was wearing it.
I nodded. “My uncle bought it for me a long time ago. He was there on a business trip.”
“Have you been there?”
“No, I want to, though.” That was one of those things I probably wouldn’t be doing in the next decade. On my current income, I barely had enough to go on an overnight trip. International travel was out of the question. “I want to visit the Louvre.”
“You like art?”
“I love art,” I said, realizing too late how wistful I sounded. “Where would you go … you know, hypothetically speaking?” I shouldn’t have attempted to say hypothetically … in my current state, I stumbled over it a little.
“I’m going to sound really uncultured for saying this after you threw down Paris, but I’ve always wanted to go to Comic-Con in San Diego.”
“Like where they dress up as Vulcans?”
He laughed. “Some people wear costumes.”
“Would you?”
He sighed heavily. “I guess I might draw the line at a costume, but I would wear a really awesome Star Trek T-shirt.”
“Would you do this to people?” I held up my hand and spread my fingers in the symbol for “Live long and prosper.”
“Well, obviously,” he said, which made me smile. “You know, I think you might be a closet dork.”