by Ellie Hall
“Amanda, I—”
The door swung open. “Ah, lovely Americans. You’re still here.” Mrs. Gaffer held a fuzzy black ball in her arms. “I’ll take the dollar. This is much better.” She shoved it into my arms, snatched the dollar away from Calvin, and shut the door again. From behind it, we heard Good luck! followed by a cackle.
The warm fur in my arms began purring.
12
Calvin
We’d accidentally bought a cat. The timing was uncanny!
As expected, no one in all of Arrowhead—or beyond—was willing to trade for a kitten. Not that I’d tried very hard. Got enough pets, thanks, was more or less the broken record response at all two doors we knocked before I couldn’t do it anymore. It felt wrong to try and get rid of it.
“What are we going to do?” My Mandy kept shoving her hair behind her ear and it kept falling. The kitten batted at it. Very cute. I couldn’t stop watching them.
“We basically bought a kitten for a dollar. Ellen won’t be impressed when we describe our series of trades.” We were totally going to lose this round.
“No, I mean with Lego, after the game ends.”
“Lego?” She’d named the kitten already? Uh-oh. “So we’ll avoid stepping on it?” Truth dawned quickly. “Ah, short for Legolas.”
“He’s a warrior of a cat.” She petted his back and he purred like a lawn mower.
Smart cat. I’d do that under her touch. “Do they allow pets in the hotel?”
Lego crawled up on her shoulder and pawed her curls. “I’ve never asked hotel rules—or plane rules—with a pet.” She pulled him down and rubbed his neck.
Plane rules! “We’re a long way from home.” I knew she wanted something from me—a show of commitment. But could I commit to a cat in another hemisphere?
“Lego needs us.”
I reached for the kitten. It clung to me. Oh, dear. “Come here, Lego. Le’go win this game with your cuteness.”
Amanda beamed at me. It’d happened. I’d become the pun guy. And I loved it.
13
Amanda
Lego had won us the game, but I couldn’t smile.
I adjusted the golden crown on Ellen’s teenage sister’s head. “You have the perfect hair for this, Lettie. Straight and silky. You’re so lucky.”
She reached up and boinged one of my curls. “We always want the hair we don’t have. I’d kill to have natural curl like yours.” She spun in Tessa’s dress in front of the mirror. It looked exquisite with the gold braid and brocade atop the green low-pile velvet. “But you’re right. This does look good with my red hair.”
Take that, Calvin. It wasn’t a lame thing to bring massive piles of luggage across the ocean after all. Not if it made a teenager feel this beautiful.
“Did your mom talk Ellen out of changing the language of the vows?”
“Yeah, but there were tears involved.”
“Your mom would probably have blamed me forever if I’d influenced Ellen and Parley to say their vows in Elvish.”
“No kidding.” Lettie crinkled her nose. “There are limits.”
I held up my camera. “Let’s remember this moment.” I took the pic then shot it in a quick thank you text to Tessa. “You look gorgeous.”
“I feel gorgeous.” She colored. “Not as gorgeous as you. It’s no wonder Calvin’s crushing on you.” She sighed. “You’re so lucky. Calvin is the total package. Gorgeous, brilliant, and he melts my heart when he holds Lego like that.”
I stifled my sigh. Calvin had indeed looked like a dream come true with the kitten he’d let us keep. Maybe he was capable of commitment after all. If so, could I let him into my life, trust him, believe in him?
Yes. How he committed to a kitten was probably an unconventional—read: crazy—litmus test for whether I could trust him. I knew that, but I wanted to trust him.
I want to love him.
If I trusted him, I’d even share why I had the hobbit picture on my cubicle wall. I’d almost done so at the waterfall but chickened out.
But then Lego happened. Receiving Lego had changed everything.
My insides twirled. Was this love? If so, I wanted it. With Calvin, my own VelvetElvis.
“See you downstairs.” I shooed Lettie out of my hotel room so I could finish getting dressed. Nothing exotic, just my little black dress and a pair of standard black pumps.
I looked … normal. I was done tormenting Calvin—partly because I liked him, and partly because I needed his recommendation if I was ever going to get the spot on the creative team for Amzaz. It was time to act like a professional instead of a goofball.
A knock came on the the adjoining room door. When I opened the door, I found him on the other side, looking equal parts gorgeous and sorry.
“Can I escort you downstairs?” The wedding was being held in the back yard of the hotel. “We should arrive as a couple.”
“Calvin. What’s wrong?”
He clouded over. “The hotel staff said no cats.”
“What!” My stomach turned. “Not even kittens?”
“Lego scratched some furniture in my room.”
“I’ll pay for it.” My mind raced. “Where’s Lego? I’ll … camp in a tent until we leave for the plane. Lego and me, we’ll be fine in the wild. Tell me where—” I coughed and my dream ended. “We have to go to the wedding, I know.”
He nodded grimly. “They didn’t give us a choice.”
No choice!
We walked downstairs.
I cried during the wedding, but not for the same reason as Ellen’s mom and grandma did. They were losing a daughter. As for me, I’d lost faith in Calvin.
He hadn’t fought for Lego.
He wouldn’t fight for me. I’d always be the one that got left behind. The one that no one valued enough to commit to.
The bridesmaids looked lovely, if blurry through my tears. The vows were nice. Not that I heard any of them. If they’d been in Elvish, it wouldn’t have made any difference to my comprehension.
When it ended, we stood for the exiting couple, clapped, threw confetti after the reception, and then I went back to my hotel room and cried for Lego. Where was he now? I called the front desk and asked, but no one could tell me.
“Amanda?” Calvin’s knock came again and again. I didn’t open. I turned off my phone, too. Texts and calls weren’t going to help. Nothing he said could assuage my disappointment.
“Our flight is leaving soon.” His voice came through the door next morning. “Would you like help carrying your luggage down?”
I took it myself and even loaded it into the back of the rental. “You don’t have to put me on the Amzaz team, Calvin.”
“About that …” He sounded more miserable than the day before. “Like I said, I don’t get to make those decisions.”
Impending doom music cued up in my brain. “You heard from SolutionX.”
Calvin kept his eyes on the road, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “They haven’t seen your creative work, Amanda.”
The excuse! Now, my tears rolled hot enough to leave burn streaks down my face. “I shouldn’t have expected anything from you. That was my first mistake.” I sniffled once. “You’re just an empty suit.”
There was nothing I wanted from him at our parting. In Galadriel’s words, darkness would flow between us now. We will not meet again.
The ability to sleep soundly on a long flight had never seemed like a superpower. Until then.
14
Calvin
“Georgia, I’m begging you to reconsider.” I paced the CEO’s office. “You haven’t even looked at her portfolio.” I’d wear a rut in her carpet if I had to, but I was going to make her listen to me about Amanda.
“Nope, Calvin. Don’t even show me. She’s been too valuable in formatting and layout. I wouldn’t remove my best worker from that key sector of SolutionX, no matter how good her art skills. However, I must admit, the point is moot now.”
“Moot?”
She hadn’t heard me. “But even if not, I wouldn’t be interested in rocking the boat because you took a long vacation with this woman and fell under her spell.”
I stopped short. That was exactly what had happened to me in New Zealand with her. I’d fallen completely under her spell. “At least glance at her Amzaz concepts.”
“Calvin, you know I love you.” Georgia sounded like I was wearing her down. Or out. “At the risk of breaking confidentiality here, Amanda Starkey will soon no longer be employed by SolutionX. She gave notice.”
My head spun around sixty times like I’d been possessed. “She what?” My voice sounded like I’d drunk a cup of sand. So that was what she’d meant by moot.
“As much as I’d appreciate ideas to take to the pitch meeting with Amzaz, we don’t contract with solo artists.”
“Pitch meeting? I thought hooking Amzaz was a done deal.”
“We are negotiating.” Georgia’s face closed. It was time for me to leave.
I trudged out of her office and down the hallway of SolutionX’s new building. I passed the fully operational elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell.
“Mr. Turner?” one of the women I’d taken to dinner once called. “Are you okay?”
No. I wasn’t okay. I might never be okay.
I’d lost the girl who I’d lost my heart to.
Was there any way to get her back?
Sixth floor, fifth floor, fourth floor. My brain ran on a hamster wheel. Aw, which only made me think of the human hamster sphere I’d spent time in with Amanda. Amanda and her ridiculous elf crown that had popped the inflate-a-ball. She’d looked beyond gorgeous in that dress, like a queen. She deserved a king.
Was there any way to convince her I could be one—for her?
15
Amanda
“Yes, I’d be more than happy to come in for an interview.” Whether or not my tone of voice agreed, and despite the hiccup that followed my reply. “Thank you for taking time to look at my resume and portfolio, Mr. Dryden. I’d love to work for IntelliMax.”
I hung up my phone and lay back on my sofa, staring at my apartment’s popcorn ceiling with the flecks of silver glitter. Glitter that looked like stars in the night sky over Queenstown, New Zealand. Conversations with Calvin flooded back. Feelings resurged, unstoppable like the rising tide.
Oh, no. There I went again. Wasn’t it enough that I’d quit my job at SolutionX? That I’d finally gotten annoyed enough with that dead-end job and its progress-stopping culture to put myself out there for a job change? Did I have to feel bad about losing the chance to see Calvin every morning, too?
The sniffling into my couch’s throw-pillow would say no. Not yet. Instead, life without Calvin felt like I’d been hit by an asteroid, and all that remained was a crater, smoking and dusty.
I opened up social media and, out of habit, logged onto Awful Art in Thrift Shops. Ah, there was VelvetElvis’s post right at the top—the art we’d found in New Zealand. Ugh, he’d posted it before I got the chance. Curse him. I typed a nasty comment below it but then backspaced it out.
I may have been irritated, but I couldn’t turn into someone with bad manners. Mom had taught me better than that. Then I typed, I miss you. Before I could erase it, my phone’s battery died.
I plugged it in, but it’d be an hour before I could get enough juice in it to erase the comment. Fabulous. Oh, my life was fabulous.
From the coffee table, I picked up my personal thoughts book. Thumbing through, I found some good quotes, but then something caught my eye I’d written a while back, right after re-reading Tolkien.
I’m a little like a hobbit, I guess. For one, I think there’s an adventure for me—although I’m not sure I want to take it.
Well, life had handed me one—in the stomping grounds of Middle Earth. How about that?
I value things that are precious—beyond gold or power. When I finally identify them, I hold to them and never let them go.
That had been true all my life. I’d learned to cherish good friends, my education, the chance to express myself artistically. Luckily, life had reminded me to value my art again. I’d been lost for a while.
I was about to write a new observation in my book, but my pencil hovered in midair. A hissing whisper, like that of a ring of power, penetrated my mind and soul, striking with force. It said, Life itself didn’t teach you to value your art again. Calvin Turner did. He believed in you—even when you’d forgotten yourself. He urged you to share your portfolio, to stop hiding your talents, to shine. It was Calvin who made you better.
Oh, shush, voice! Calvin had made me worse. He’d made me cry, for heaven’s sake.
But without the trip to New Zealand and Calvin’s bumbling help—even though it hadn’t turned out the way I’d asked him to make it happen—I never would’ve had the courage to branch out, or to get away from the stifling management at SolutionX.
The voice wasn’t wrong—Calvin had believed in me. He’d made me see myself in a new light. He’d irked me enough to get me … unstuck.
Calvin didn’t deserve my derision. He deserved my thanks.
Well, if I ever saw him again, I’d at least tell him thank you. Then I’d probably buckle, plagued by memories of the best kisses and most connection I’d ever felt with anyone in my whole life.
Of course, then he’d pat my head and cast me aside just as he had Lego.
It was much better if I forgot all about Calvin and everything that might have been. I closed my eyes and went to sleep, where I dreamed about lost black kittens mewling in the night.
16
Amanda
Five interminable days of unemployment. Five days since I’d interviewed with IntelliMax. Five days of dabbling with my art and getting frustrated.
I was not cut out for the idle life—especially because my brain kept conjuring images of Calvin or sad kittens every time I blinked.
Stupid gray matter. Where was the brain-eating zombie hoard when I needed it?
I had to get out of my apartment, so I went for a walk. By force of habit, I took the route down Reedsville’s main drag toward the Blanik Building. The fall leaves blew around my ankles, making me miss the spring blossoms I’d been surrounded by in Queenstown a couple of weeks ago. Eternal weeks.
“Hey, Amanda.” The bike courier who’d brought things to my third-floor cubicle slowed to a halt. “I thought SolutionX moved. Why are you in front of the Blanik Building? You’re not working for IntelliMax, are you?”
Could Mike on a Bike see into my very soul to know what to ask to wound me most? “No, actually.” I didn’t bother telling him about the crickets after my interview.
“Well, it’s weird that SolutionX’s biggest competitor is who bought the Blanik Building, eh?”
“Yeah.” Actually, that was pretty weird. “Super weird.”
“Take care.” Mike on a Bike pedaled away at his usual light speed.
I craned my neck, staring up at the Blanik Building’s Art Deco styling, its pillars beside the various windows. It had charm. I missed the place—including Bessemer with all his quirks.
Even Calvin. Okay, especially him.
My knees wobbled. Bessemer had been the scene of the crime. I righted myself and turned around, heading back toward my apartment where I would be safe from crimes of the elevator kind.
My phone rang.
“Amanda Starkey? This is Dean Dryden from IntelliMax.”
What? He had to call me now? When I was standing in front of his new building like a creepy stalker driving past someone’s house to see if the lights are on? I coughed behind my hand. “Sure. Yeah. Nice to hear from you.”
“I should say the same to you. Or, to your rep, that is.”
“My rep?” What? I was the last person on earth to have or need a rep. “Can you catch me up?”
“The drawings your rep sent over are incredible. They’re exactly what we were hoping for. They’ll be sure to land the Amzaz account, an
d I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of giving the client a sneak peek. When I did, they wanted to sign with us immediately. I’ve spent the past couple of days with HR and our legal team drawing up contracts to use your work and to hire you starting at a salary I think you’ll like.”
Salary? A different bicycle courier nearly knocked me over, and my ankle got tangled in the leash of a dog-walker’s Chihuahua. “Are you saying you’re hiring me for the concept design team?” I extracted my foot and dog and walker left.
“That too, but we’d like you to be the project director for the Amzaz candy packaging and advertisement design account first of all. If you’re interested. That salary was just a starting point for negotiation. We’d like you to bring your rep in as soon as possible and we can sit down at the table and talk numbers.”
My rep. Again, with the rep. “Did my rep happen to drop a name?”
Dean burst into laughter. “You’re so funny. I’ll text him.” There was a pause, presumably while he texted my rep. “He says fifteen minutes. How soon could you be at our new location? The Blanik Building. Oh, ha-ha. You probably know your way around it. Don’t worry. The elevator has been repaired.”
The Blanik Building stretched skyward. “I’ll be there soon. Very soon.”
My stomach churned like it was turning cream to butter. My rep could only be one solitary person on this green earth. And he was going to meet me in the Blanik Building in fifteen minutes.
17
Calvin
The terrazzo floors of the Blanik Building gleamed, but nothing shone so bright as the woman standing beside the elevator doors. Actually, her face was an electrical storm—and the lightning might’ve struck me down.
“Amanda.” My stride lengthened as I walked toward her. My legs wanted to run. I restrained them. “I came the minute I heard.” Actually, I’d sprung into mental action the second I’d seen her I miss you post on Awful Art.