by Emily Mayer
“Stop it! You’re not awkward! You’re just shy. And anyone who deserves to be with you is going to look past your shyness and work to get to know you.” Paige’s voice had softened by the time she finished.
“Now you sound like my mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. I figured I was allowed to be a little petulant since this was my pity party and she was technically a party crasher.
“Mama Walker knows her stuff.” Paige jabbed her fork in my direction. “You’re not going to meet any of the misters sitting on your couch watching old TV shows.”
“Misters?” I asked through a mouthful of cake.
Yeah, you know—Mister Right, Mister Right Now, Mister Great in Bed. All the misters,” she said matter-of-factly, like this was all common knowledge. “Like how Harrison is Mister Right and Jimmy is Mister Right Now. But at the rate you’re going, your misters are going to have to be food delivery guys.”
“Hey, I go out!” I exclaimed, suddenly feeling the need to defend myself.
“Yes, you physically leave your apartment, but you don’t go out with the intention of meeting new people. If you meet new people, it’s an accident.”
“I go to your yoga class once a week,” I pointed out.
“Yes, and you sit in the back of the room and don’t mingle before or after class,” Paige responded flatly.
“Do you have to be so reasonable right now? Can’t you just tell me that Theo’s an idiot for not being in love with me? Or that he’s going to realize Sam is actually a mutant and I’m the one he is supposed to be with?” I whined, shoveling more cheesecake into my mouth.
“Theo is—” Paige suddenly sat up straight. “Wait. OMG, Lennon! I have the best idea!”
“Oh no. Whatever it is, thank you but no thank you.” I shook my head. Paige’s eyes were lit up like a Christmas tree and I did not like it one bit. She was wearing the same expression she’d had right before I agreed to go with her to get a bikini wax.
“You have to promise to keep an open mind, okay?” She plowed on valiantly, not even waiting for me to respond. “Tamara got a bunch of tickets to check out a new club opening Saturday and she gave me four of them. Jimmy’s coming and you should totally take one of the extra tickets.”
“A club? That’s your great idea? Paige, no. I can’t go to a club. It’s literally a loud room filled with strangers. How is that better than online dating? It’s not. It’s worse—so much worse.”
“Because you’d be going with a group of people you know! And I’ll be there to help when you get nervous.” She smiled triumphantly. “We’ll go shopping and get our nails done Saturday afternoon! It’s perfect.”
I scrambled to come up with an excuse. “There’s a new Marvel movie coming out Friday. I was going to invite you—”
Paige interrupted. “Does it have a Hemsworth in it?”
“Nooo,” I drawled.
“You know my rule about superhero movies. No Hemsworth, no Paige.”
I decided to exercise the nuclear option. “I’ll get Harrison to go on a date with you.”
Paige was in love with Harrison. She’d met him when he was picking me up for dinner one night, and it was the one and only time I had ever seen Paige at a loss for words. Harrison largely ignored her presence in typical Harrison style, so her newest plan to get his attention was to book a tattoo appointment with him.
“Tempting, but no. When Harrison finally asks me out, I want it to be for real and not as a favor to his sister. I’ll stick with Mr. Right Now until then—and you are going clubbing.”
Who knew defeat would taste like Moscato and cheesecake?
“Fine,” I relented. “I’ll go with you.”
Paige bounced up and down, clapping her hands.
“We’re going to have so much fun. I can’t wait!”
I could wait. Preferably a lifetime.
3.
Thursday seemed to come and go faster than normal. Even Friday seemed to be moving at an unnatural speed. Usually work on Friday started to drag the closer it got to quitting time, but I swear I blinked once and the day was over. Even the new data sets I was reviewing weren’t enough to distract me from my looming doom. My mind didn’t seem willing to focus on the equations I usually found soothing. Instead, it was busy dreaming up new ways Saturday could go wrong. I had no idea I could be so creative! Or such a pessimist.
Social interaction was not one of my strengths. It wasn’t that I didn’t want friends or didn’t like people. I wasn’t antisocial. I envied people who were at ease no matter what situation they were thrown into. I had to carefully plan any event that was even remotely outside my comfort zone, analyzing the likely outcomes of all the possible variables in any given scenario. I even came up with lists of possible conversation topics based on occupation, hobbies, general interests, and so forth.
My problem was that I had grown up being largely socially isolated. I was born with VSD—ventricular septal defect, or in less fancy words, a hole in the wall between the two lower chambers of my heart. In most babies, it’s just a scary little blip for the parents; the hole is small and closes on its own as the child grows. But a lucky few like me have pretty big holes that don’t close.
A few weeks after I was born, my mom noticed I was losing weight and passing out while feeding. The doctors heard the telltale murmur in my heart during a physical when I was about six weeks old. My stubborn heart just didn’t want to follow the normal path: The hole in my heart got bigger as I grew instead of smaller. When I should have been running around with other kids, I was stuck inside reading, playing video games with Harrison, or hanging out with my grandpa.
We lived in a small town more than an hour south of Los Angeles, so my mom and I had to travel to see specialists at the UCLA Children’s Hospital every month. I would have missed too much normal school going back and forth to doctors, and I eventually went into mild congestive heart failure, so I was homeschooled. Alone. Harrison got to go to regular school and have all the normal experiences. I lived vicariously through him.
I spent a lot of time with my grandpa tinkering in his garage. He was probably not the best influence for an adolescent girl, but I did get my love of engineering from him. Grandpa Walker owned a repair shop that mostly fixed cars, but also the occasional toaster or microwave. After he retired, our garage became his workshop. I spent countless hours assisting him with repairs and learning about engines of all kinds. He was the one who convinced my mom to let me get a computer, and he helped me build my own PC. The internet was a game changer for a lonely kid like me, let me tell you.
When I was fifteen, I had open-heart surgery to repair the hole. It was as miserable as it sounds, but the patch job meant I could lead a normal life. The next year I enrolled in high school. I had been dreaming of going to school for years, watching wistfully as Harrison walked to the bus stop every day. He told me it was completely overrated, but I always thought he was just saying that to make me feel better about missing out on so much.
Turned out he wasn’t lying. High school was no place for a shy girl whose cultural references came mainly from her sixty-year-old grandfather and public broadcasting. Even Saved by the Bell hadn’t prepared me for walking into the cafeteria on my first day. Tardis lunch box in hand, I scanned the room looking for a friendly face. My heart pounded in my chest and my lungs didn’t seem to be able to take in enough oxygen. For a second, I thought the patch had failed and I was having a heart attack. I finally worked up enough courage to ask a table of girls if I could sit with them. The ringleader looked me up and down, her gaze landing on my lunchbox, before telling me she was sorry but their table was full. I proceeded to cry in the bathroom for the rest of the period and ate lunch alone in the library for half the year.
Eventually, I made a small group of friends. We were all on the robotics team together and some of them were on my mathlete team. It was easier to make friends in college, where I was surrounded by people with the same interests as me and who were more than willing
to let me join their proverbial lunch tables. But I still felt the knowledge gap between my peers and me. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have mild panic attacks when I went anywhere large groups of people tended to congregate. I still preferred the predictability of numbers over the inconsistency of people.
Leaving my nerd herd behind to move to LA was difficult. I didn’t relish the idea of starting all over again, but the engineering job with Spatium was literally my dream job and I wanted to be closer to my family. Plus, have you ever experienced a Massachusetts winter? No thank you. Making friends in the adult world was turning out to be just as challenging as I’d thought it would be, too, so it wasn’t all that surprising that I spent a lot of Friday nights helping Harrison at Bad Wolf. Friday and Saturday night were the busiest times so Harrison never minded me helping out, and working the front desk was good practice interacting with strangers. I also genuinely liked everyone who worked here.
I pushed through the door and was greeted with the familiar scent of antiseptic, cologne, and stale cigarettes. It was a strange combination, but I loved it. Kay spun around in her seat behind the reception desk and gave me a wide smile.
“Lennon! Girl, am I glad to see you!” Kay hopped up and walked around the desk to give me a quick squeeze. “Teddy has the stomach flu so we’re all covering the front desk. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s been ugly. These guys are Neanderthals. It’s like they’ve never seen a computer.”
I laughed, slipping my purse off and heading around to the empty seat. “What do you need me to do?”
She leaned over and indicated a stack of mangled slips of paper and sticky notes. “This is going to shock you, but Lou messed up the scheduling software. These are all the appointments that need to be entered from today. It would also be helpful if we could see the rest of the appointments lined up for the night, so we can accommodate walk-ins.”
“No problem.” I smiled up at her. “I can get you guys back up and running in no time.”
“You’re a lifesaver. Pretty sure your brother is about to have a stroke. Or kill Lou. Could go either way,” she said, tucking a strand of silver hair behind her ear.
Kay was basically the epitome of cool. Besides the fact that she was a super talented tattoo artist, her hair was dyed an amazing shade of silver and she had a tiny nose ring that made her look trendy and edgy at the same time. She wore a lot of black, which, instead of looking goth, showed off the amazing colors in the intricate tattoos that covered one of her arms. She took no nonsense from the men who worked here, or the ones who came in looking to get inked.
“Tater tot!” Lou’s voice called out over the music. He slapped his hands on the desk and gave me one of his signature grins. “What’s happening?”
“Not too much, just saving your life.” I returned his smile with a smaller one of my own. I loved Lou. He was a gigantic goofball who had a talent for making me laugh and driving Harrison insane, which incidentally was one of the things I liked best about him.
He groaned, looking up toward the ceiling dramatically. “Lies, Lennon, all lies. Don’t listen to Kay. She’s just bitter I keep turning down her advances.”
“In your dreams, Louis,” she called out over her shoulder as she walked toward her station.
“Don’t worry, Lenny Lou. I only have eyes for you.” He leaned forward to place a kiss on my cheek before he was yanked back. I smiled at Harrison, who had appeared behind Lou wearing his signature scowl.
“Don’t you have something better to be doing than bothering Lennon?” Harrison asked, turning that scowl from me to Lou. Lou just shrugged his shoulders, totally unfazed by the burly man shooting death rays at him.
“Nah, my next client won’t be here for another twenty minutes.”
Harrison grunted in response. He was definitely more of a nonverbal creature and could communicate a wide range of emotions through his grunts, frowns, and sighs.
“Did you eat dinner?” His green eyes, the mirror image of my own, turned back to me. “Something with actual nutritional value?”
I rolled my eyes at his overbearing question. It was like he still expected me to drop dead from heart failure at any moment. It was unclear how he thought I had survived six years on my own all the way across the country. I tried to remind myself not to get too frustrated with him. I knew it hadn’t been easy for him to watch his little sister get sicker and sicker; he had walked away from the experience with a few nasty scars of his own.
“Yes. I had three slices of veggie pizza from Leonardo’s,” I answered honestly, even though I was confident veggie pizza was not the answer he was looking for.
“Veggie pizza is not nutritional,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
“But it had vegetables on it,” I offered weakly. Lou snickered from his spot on the couch in the lobby. Harrison ignored him, his wrath solely focused on me for the moment.
The door swung open, saving me from a lecture about the importance of the bottom half of the food pyramid. Two girls dressed in tight skirts that barely covered any of their important parts sauntered through the door, their sky-high stilettos only emphasizing how little skin their skirts covered. Both of their gazes skipped straight over me and landed on Harrison.
Objectively speaking, I understood that my brother qualified as extremely good-looking. His whole aloof, bad-boy vibe was like catnip to single women.
“Hey.” One of the girls gave Harrison a ridiculous little wave, followed by a giggle. My gaze found Lou’s and we shared an eyeroll. “I have an appointment with Aaron at seven. Sheri.”
A look of relief washed over Harrison’s face, but was quickly replaced by his customer service look—which was just a tiny little uptick at the corner of his mouth.
“Great, Sheri. Lennon will get you checked in and show you where Aaron’s design books are if you still need some ideas.” He gestured to me with one hand before abandoning me to the she-wolves.
I gave them a tentative smile, reminding myself to maintain eye contact while I ran through the standard check-in questions. Aaron appeared from his station, chatting with his client. I watched as the two girls got their first look at him and then turned to each other with wide eyes.
Aaron was stupid hot—as in, he was so attractive that it rendered one stupid. It had taken me three months to be able to look him in the eye and form coherent sentences, though I still couldn’t accomplish that feat without turning red. Lou mimed swooning on the couch, fanning himself as he sprawled out on one end.
“Hey, Lennon,” Aaron said, the corners of his chocolate-brown eyes crinkling. “Can you get John all checked out for me? I already went over aftercare with him.”
“Sure thing,” I said, briefly meeting his eyes before gazing back at the computer screen. I could feel that telltale heat creeping up my neck. “Sheri’s here and all checked in.”
“Awesome.” He turned his gaze to Sheri and her friend. He shook John’s hand with a “Catch you later, man” and then waved the girls back. “I’ll catch up with you later, Lennon.”
I made a strangled noise in response—definitely not my finest moment. I recovered enough to get John all checked out and schedule his next appointment to finish the massive piece of work on his back.
The shop got pretty busy after that and between helping people and fixing the schedule, I barely had time to worry about Saturday.
I stifled a yawn as I checked out Harrison’s last customer of the night. Lou and Kay were sitting on the couch eating tacos from the taco truck parked down the street.
“Why don’t you take off.” Harrison’s question came out sounding more like a command. “We’re almost done for the night and you look like you’re going to fall out of your chair.”
“Okay,” I said around a yawn. I stood up, stretching my arms over my head.
“Are you okay to drive home?” he asked. I nodded my head in response, too afraid to open my mouth and let out another yawn. Harrison pulled me into a hug. “See you tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so. I’m going to some club opening with Paige,” I said, pulling out of his embrace and grabbing my purse.
The shop had descended into complete silence; even the buzzing of Aaron’s tattoo gun had stopped. Lou had paused with a taco halfway to his mouth and Kay’s mouth was hanging open a little.
Lou recovered first. He lowered his taco and placed a hand behind his ear like he was trying to listen. “Ex-squeeze me, but did I just hear you say that you were going to a club?” he asked, skepticism lacing his voice.
Well, that was the boost in confidence I needed.
“What club?” Harrison barked before I could answer Lou.
I shrugged casually, trying to act like it was no big deal. “I don’t know the name. Paige’s friend Tamara got tickets for the opening or something. I’m going with them.”
“Who the fuck is Tamara?” Harrison asked, half-growling.
Kay literally sprang into action, jumping up from her spot and coming to stand next to me in a show of support. She shot a look at Harrison, silently warning him to back off. It would have been humorous, watching tiny Kay stand up to my hulk of a brother, if I hadn’t been getting increasingly annoyed.
“That’s great, Lennon! You’ll have to text me all the good details after.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “And send me a picture of your outfit!”
“I will,” I said, fidgeting with my purse strap and trying to avoid the glare Harrison was aiming our way.
Kay gave me a quick hug, pausing close to my ear so no one else could hear her hushed words. “You can call me if you get nervous.”
I smiled gratefully at her.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” I tossed the words over my shoulder in the general direction of Harrison, who was still standing with his arms crossed and a scowl firmly in place. “Love you.”
I was a firm believer in always telling people you loved them, even when they were making it hard to remember why. It was probably a leftover from being the sick kid whose heart was slowly failing.