by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
“Are you concentrating or are you having an aneurism?” Josh asked.
“Shh.” I held up one finger.
“Seriously, are you okay? That looks painful.”
I reached out and pinched his lips shut. “Thass weally wude,” he slurred.
“Damn it, Kelsey, I hate you!” I groaned. I bent down and pulled out the bottom drawer as far as it would go. “Two years ago, Ray arranged for us to do one of those low-altitude ropes courses as a staff bonding exercise. Swing bridges, zip lines, climbing walls, that sort of thing.” I pulled out the next drawer almost as much. “One of the last exercises was this smooth wooden wall that we had to climb over as a team, set up in the middle of a big sandy pit.” I pulled out the next drawer a little less; and so on and so on until all five drawers formed a sort of stepladder to the tiled ceiling. “The instructor told us, ‘Everything you need to get every person over this wall is in this circle of sand.’ ”
I kicked off my heels and tentatively stepped into the bottom drawer. “We tried everything to get over that damn wall. We tried pushing one person up to the top and having them pull everybody else up. But it was too tall. We tried forming some sort of human pyramid, but we were out of practice with our cheerleading skills.” I shot him a significant look. He snorted and gave me a steadying hand while I walked up the “stairs.”
“Kelsey got frustrated with the jackassery of it all and plopped down on one of the stumps that the instructor used for seating while he led us through the rules of the exercise. Kelsey was the only one to notice that the stumps were arranged in tiered heights inside the circle. She figured out that if we stacked the stumps into stairs, we could prop each other up and get over the wall.” I stood on top of the filing cabinet with a very worried Josh circling under me like a mama hen. The ceiling tile over my head slid out of place easily and I prayed I wouldn’t see anything gross when I put my head through the hole in the dropped ceiling. “She declared herself the stair-step genius and never lets us forget that we’d still be stuck at that wall if not for her. I can see her shoving those reams of paper into the cabinet to make it a stable enough base to climb.”
“Maybe I should climb up. I’ve had less to drink,” he said.
“I’m fine, really, but thanks for . . .” I glanced down to see that Josh didn’t look quite so worried anymore. He did, however, look very appreciative of my legs and whatever else he could see from that angle. “Hey!”
“What?” He threw up his hands. “How am I possibly not supposed to look in this scenario?”
“So you’re a perv when it’s convenient.” I pushed up through the hole and very gently settled my weight on the metal grid that supported the tiles.
“Okay, so you’re up there, now what?” he called as I carefully crawled through the ceiling space. “Are you going to pull me up?”
“I don’t think the ceiling will support us both,” I yelled back, crawling over the wall struts and sliding a tile out of the way. The drop down to the floor seemed far more intimidating than the climb up. And I couldn’t help but notice Kelsey had helpfully left my purse and keys just outside the door.
“So much trouble,” I grumbled, gripping the metal support outside of the hole I’d made. I took a few deep breaths, held on tight, and let myself drop through the hole. “Yipe!”
I fell unceremoniously to the carpet, balancing on the balls of my feet for just a moment before crashing down on my butt. I lay there for a second and let the world tilt back into place. “Ow.”
“Sadie?” Josh yelled. “Are you okay?”
“I did not stick the landing,” I called back, eyeing the security camera mounted on the wall ten feet away. “But I am going to have to pay off Leonard the security guy to make sure that footage doesn’t make it to YouTube.”
“You are going to let me out, right?”
I waited for a long moment, jangling the keys loud enough that he could hear them.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted.
“I’m just kidding, jeez!” I unlocked the door and Josh came tumbling out. He plowed into me, nearly bowling me over, but his quick hands shot around my waist and caught me, dangling me in a precarious dip.
“Sorry,” he said, not moving from our Fred-and-Ginger position. “Thank you for climbing through the ceiling for me.”
My fingers curled around the collar of his shirt to help me stay balanced. He was so very close. I could feel his breath against my lips. His nose was practically nudging my own. “You’re welcome.”
Those soft-looking lips curled upward as he bent his head toward me. I felt the barest brush of his mouth over mine and pressed forward, capturing his lips. He moaned softly, the sound traveling from my mouth to my throat and thrumming through my chest. I clutched his shoulders tighter, pulling him to me as he kissed along the line of my jaw.
When I turned my head, I opened my eyes and realized the security camera had a very nice shot of the two of us making out like it was Times Square on V-J Day. “Josh?”
“Mmm?” he murmured as he took possession of my bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth.
“Josh?” I whispered again. “Security camera.”
He gasped, looking up at the camera with a quick, guilty expression. His hands slipped from my waist and before I could catch myself, I dropped like a rock.
“Oof!” I cried as I hit the carpet. “Ow. Again.”
“There seems to be a theme here,” he said as we collected the evidence of our campout from the closet. “I think I should drive you home.”
“I can crawl through the ceiling, but you don’t trust me to drive?”
“Would you rather see a headline reading, ‘State Employee Caught Driving Home from Work Drunk’?”
“Good point,” I admitted. “But first, we have to do something.” I retrieved a Swiss Army knife from the bottom of my purse and pulled out an assortment of Allen wrenches. “Kelsey’s desk will never be right again.”
Josh pulled my purse open and peered inside. “What all do you have in there?”
• • •
I guess team-building exercises do work, I mused as Josh drove me home in his impeccably clean pickup. I hadn’t expected him to drive anything as simple as a Toyota, but there was a production plant just outside Georgetown and driving one was considered a gesture of support for the state. The man was an evil genius.
I lived in a quiet corner of suburbia outside of Frankfort, mostly duplexes and modest single-family homes. It had taken me years to save up enough to purchase my part of a duplex, and it was my pride and joy. I was never so glad to see it as when Josh parked his truck in the driveway. Aside from feeling sort of hollowed out by all of the emotional disclosure, I was tired and coated in a thin layer of dried sweat and ceiling dust. I wanted a shower, and some ice cream, and then maybe another shower.
There was this awkward moment in my driveway when neither of us knew what to say. Bad, ill-fated ideas about inviting Josh in for “coffee” started bubbling in a corner of my brain. I’d enjoyed talking to him, enjoyed the hell out of kissing him, and I was afraid that whatever progress we’d made would evaporate by morning. Also, there was the small chance he would need to use my shower and that would be—bad, bad, bad, naked, using my loofah, bad. Or at least that’s what I told myself when the invitation was on the tip of my tongue.
My only excuse is that I was very tired and stuffed to the gills with peanut butter and vodka, so I wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I knew a good-night kiss was probably not in order. I had been confused enough by the casual touching earlier. So I gave him a firm handshake and bade him good night.
“Hold on, I’ll at least walk you to your door,” he said, jogging around the bumper as I walked toward my porch.
“To prevent me from being mugged during the fifteen-foot walk to my stoop?” I snickered. “You’re right, that lawn gnome looks shifty.”
“All gnomes look shifty to me,” Josh muttered, stopping in his tracks as he took in the ful
l view of my front yard. “Wow.”
I was fortunate that the man who lived in the other side of the duplex was a retired landscaper. While I had a black thumb and ruthlessly murdered any botanicals I came into contact with, Mr. Leavitt was some sort of plant whisperer. And because watching me slowly suffocate the sad, bedraggled hosta on my front porch had caused him physical pain when he first moved in, he landscaped my side of the yard, too. He managed to coax roses up trellises surrounding our building on all sides. Hanging baskets full of petunias created midair waterfalls of yellow, red, and orange. He’d put a sweet little fountain on the property line between our two yards, featuring a satyr pouring water into a bowl. He’d circled the satyr with shamrock moss and herbs. It was a magical fairy grotto in the middle of suburban monotony.
“Nice place,” Josh said, whistling under his breath.
“I have a really great neighbor.” Just as I said that, Mr. Leavitt’s porch light popped on. Mr. Leavitt had granddaughters my age, so he felt the need to watch out for me any time he heard me coming home late. I knew that at that very moment, he was standing at his door, watching Josh’s every move to make sure he wasn’t “getting fresh.” I’m not sure what my elderly neighbor would have done to Josh if he had gotten fresh. But he had all those yard tools in the garage, so I chose not to think about it.
“You’re kidding. The only thing my neighbor has given me is a note on my door asking me not to leave my paper on my doorstep past two p.m.”
“Tough neighborhood.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m living in one of those big storage containers.”
I tamped all potential invitations down and said, “If it makes you feel any better, whenever someone gives me a potted plant for my birthday—which seems to happen a lot, for some reason—it has to go directly into foster care with Mr. Leavitt.”
I nodded to the row of small potted ivy plants arranged in a tiered stand by Mr. Leavitt’s front door. “No, that doesn’t help,” Josh said, shaking his head. “Well, despite it all, tonight was sort of fun.”
“Yes, I will be treating the ‘fun’ for most of the morning with Tylenol.”
His arms tensed, as if he were debating whether to offer me a hug or a handshake. He kept them clamped to his sides, gave me a little nod, and turned back toward his car. I waved and pushed my key into my door.
“Hey, Sadie?”
I whirled around, all smiles, because I was sure he was about to lay down some serious John-Cusack-in-Say-Anything romance on me.
“About C.J. Rowley.”
I was wrong.
“About Rowley and him telling me about the job.” He ran his hand through his hair, rubbing it against the back of his neck in a tired, uncomfortable gesture. “I didn’t know, Sadie. You’ve got to believe me. I swear he didn’t say anything about you when we were talking about the job. If I’d known he was trying to screw with you, I would have done something differently.”
“Like what?” I asked.
He pursed his lips. “I’m not sure. I just want to let you know. I’m not some Rowley stooge. I’m not his puppet.”
“Poor choice of words,” I told him, and he barked out a laugh. “I believe you. I do. You’ve taken way too much crap from me to be a mole.”
He nodded sagely. “True. You dish out a lot of it. You are a terrible person.”
“Hey! I am a wonderful person.” I poked his side, making him yelp and grab my wrist. I continued to jab at his ribs, just to mess with him. He grabbed my other wrist, leading to an odd wrestling pretzel-person configuration. “Everybody loves me!”
Mr. Leavitt’s door swung open. “Sadie, are you all right?”
Josh and I froze in place as my elderly, disapproving neighbor stepped onto the porch in his robe and slippers. Bald except for a thinning white fringe around his ears, with a long nose that reminded me of an eagle’s beak, Mr. Leavitt was not a senior to be trifled with. And what a trifling tableau we made—disheveled, grown adults seemingly tickling each other on my front porch in the middle of the night. Josh burst out laughing and dropped his forehead to my shoulder. I called out, “We’re fine, Mr. Leavitt. Josh was just leaving.”
“I was,” Josh promised solemnly.
“Well, then, I suggest you say good night and get movin’.” Mr. Leavitt gestured toward his rheumy blue eyes as he walked into his apartment. “I’m watching you, pretty boy.”
“He really is,” I promised Josh solemnly.
Josh released a long-suffering sigh. “I know when I’m not wanted.” He released me and nudged me toward the door.
I batted his hands away gently. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Mr. Leavitt’s muffled voice came wafting through his closed door. “I would!”
• • •
Once again, Josh and I managed to stand the office environment on its ear. The coworkers who had frozen like wildlife in the headlights when we were at odds were now equally confused by our chatting cheerfully over coffee in the break room. Our wild dance of victory when Kelsey’s desk disintegrated as she set her coffee cup on it nearly sent Melody into a panic. Charlie seemed quite miffed that instead of helping Kelsey as her office collapsed on itself, we were laughing our butts off. So he switched his loyalty from either of us to Team Kelsey.
We didn’t kiss again, or, more importantly, talk about the kiss. And we didn’t exactly braid each other’s hair, but we were friendly and cooperative. When Josh realized that we didn’t buy into the “Blue Steel” persona, he stopped trying quite so hard with the wardrobe and the hair products. He actually came to the office without a tie one morning, but he got so antsy he ran out to his truck for his emergency tie before lunchtime. And when Melody ordered lunch for the creative team, we sat next to each other while we ate and exchanged undesirable salad elements.
We bounced ideas unrelated to the state fair campaign back and forth across the hall, to the point that Kelsey insisted on us using the office’s instant-messaging system because we were driving her nuts. We reminded her that she’d locked us in a confined space for four hours, and therefore preserving her sanity was not a priority for us.
Ray was thrilled with this progress and, having no idea what Kelsey had done, credited his own insistence that we work together on the Civil War promotion. And since we were “buddies” now, he had a new project to make good use of our newfound working relationship.
“I give you Sammy the Squirrel,” Ray said, spreading a large “Sammy” poster on the conference room table with a flourish. Sammy, the mascot for the Kentucky Forest Conservation Council, was a happy little squirrel with a green backpack slung over one shoulder and a bright blue baseball cap tilted jauntily over one ear. He was always facing right with his left foot raised, as if he were sauntering down a trail, humming his signature jingle, “Be Good to the Woods!”
“Aw, I love Sammy the Squirrel,” Kelsey cooed, setting aside her notebook to get a better look at the poster. “He was the first costumed mascot I ever met.”
“How many costumed mascots have you met?” Josh asked while I stood behind Kelsey, shaking my head vehemently. He was not prepared to hear Kelsey’s tales of dating Western Kentucky University’s Big Red in college. There were elements of that story I wished I could unhear.
Exasperated with us, Ray cleared his throat and said, “Children.”
We straightened up and Ray handed each of us printed copies of a petition to remove Sammy as the council’s mascot. The petition, which was being circulated by the United Parents Against Obscene Mascots, stated that the Sammy logo was a sexually inappropriate image and should not be viewed by small children.
“What?” I cried. “Why? What?”
“United Parents Against Obscene Mascots? UPAOM?” Josh snickered. “Sounds like something you’d order with Thai food.”
Ray cleared his throat again, giving Josh a stern look. Josh bit his lip. “Right, sorry, there is absolutely nothing funny about this. Squirrel sexuality is a very serious matter.”<
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I slapped my hand over my mouth to prevent my giggles from escaping while Kelsey buried her face in her ever-present notebook and guffawed loudly. Ray scowled and chose to ignore all of us, saying, “Apparently there is a parents’ group that believes that the cartoonist who drew Sammy thirty years ago was some sort of pervert who intentionally included a penis in the image.”
“Oh, come on, now,” Josh scoffed. “Thousands of people have looked at that image over the years and none of them saw a penis, but suddenly a bunch of soccer moms— Oh my God, there it is!”
I followed Josh’s line of sight to Sammy’s furry legs. Unfortunately, Sammy’s paw was raised at such an angle that one of his larger toes seemed to be protruding from his crotch. And because of the bend of his toe, Sammy seemed pretty excited.
“Oh,” we chorused. Kelsey clapped her hand over her mouth and we all exclaimed, “OH!” in varying degrees of distress.
“The placement of one of the toes looks a little too . . . suggestive,” Ray said.
I gaped down at the poster, torn between laughing and wanting to bleach the interior of my brain. I’d been looking at this image since I was ten, and I’d never seen Sammy as anything but a plucky little forest creature. And now, I couldn’t avoid seeing his “toe.” Ugh. Another childhood memory ruined.
“So far, the petition is just an online phenomenon, being circulated among the various blogs and forums. As it typically takes traditional media a few months to catch up, we have a small window of time to fix this,” Ray said. “UPAOM has demanded that the logo be stripped from all conservation council promotional materials, particularly those placed where children can see them. Considering that Sammy visits more than two hundred elementary schools every year to distribute pamphlets, that’s going to mean a lot of recycled paper. The only reason UPAOM hasn’t taken their ‘cause’ to the media is that the council has agreed to the redesign and has remained cooperative. Debbie Jo Vargas, the head of the council, asked for our help personally after seeing the mascot Sadie came up with for the Waterways Safety Month campaign.”