Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
HAPPILY EVER BEFORE
Arden
Offices echo. Don’t they realize that? The way their voices carry around corners and through doorways, bouncing off glass walls and landing right where I’m pouring myself a cup of coffee.
That's how I hear them, Brent and Michael, their voices drifting over the partition of their cubicles like they've forgotten sound travels.
Or maybe, they just don’t care.
"Her Thompson plan is never going to work," Michael says, in a strain of corporate condescension that I’m tired of translating. "But you know how she gets when she thinks she's right."
I freeze. My coffee cup halfway to my lips. Afraid if I actually take a sip I’ll end up with a spit take of coffee. The coffee was mediocre at best before. Now? It’s practically sweetened with printer toner. Whatever that actually is.
“Yeah, but Victor likes her.” Brent replies.
“Victor likes to look at her, there’s a difference.”
“Can’t fault him for that.” And they laugh like there’s a joke in it.
It’s me. I’m the joke. The punchline they've been waiting to deliver since I first walked through these doors. I've played their game. Giggled at their jokes. Nodded along to stories about their weekend boats and weekend women. I made the right small talk at happy hours while carefully counting my drinks. All while they looked at me like my education was just an MRS. degree and expensive hobby to fill the time and get a diamond ring.
I thought if I played it right, the perfect balance of competence and compliance with just enough ‘one of the boys’ they might actually see me as an equal. But here they are, voices carrying across corporate carpet, revealing what they thought all along. I'm just another girl who dared to think she could sit at their table instead of serving drinks at it.
“We just have to go along with it, let her prepare to present the pitch for Vulcan, and when it's D.O.A, we’ll have our plan."
I've spent weeks on this proposal, sacrificed weekends, skipped plans. And here they are, dismissing it like it's a child's art project they'll hang on the corporate fridge out of pity. All while patting my head, or my ass, telling me ‘good job’ not meaning a word of it.
My phone vibrates on my desk, another text from Will.
After dinner, or actually breakfast , I stopped avoiding him. Our agreement, that we will just ‘see where this goes.’ And that seems to end up with some pretty aggressive public displays of affection around friends and strangers alike. For now this casual yet consuming way we want each other, is insatiable. While I have a pretty solid idea of where this will go eventually, he will fall in line as men always do for opportunity, move on to chasing someone or something else, and I’ll be left here clamoring on my own.
Our conversations have become run-on. Much like we are. Anytime we are within feet of each other, picking up the end of the previous moment like there was no gap in time or space.
I should be focusing on the Vulcan account, on finally securing that associate position that's been dangling just out of reach. Instead, I'm thinking about the way his hands crawl up my body like they are memorizing the paths of each curve like it was sculpted.
And that is exactly the reason it can’t be anything more than whatever it is.
It’s not about the distraction now, but the one that will result in me being absorbed into my bed aching at the idea of him and crying about a future I was foolish to hope for.
I’ll just run out to grab lunch and come back and eat at my desk with Pricktor , who sadly is not doing super well despite his ice cube breakfast.
The cafe is busy with the lunch rush when I arrive, all the pre-made sandwiches from the display case are cleaned out. Of course. But there's one perfect, golden-brown chocolate croissant left. As I reach for it, another hand appears in my peripheral vision.
"Oh, sorry!" she says, though she’s not sorry at all , snagging the last croissant. And then laughs in that awkward way strangers do when they're trying not to be rude.
The other woman has the kind of hair that suggests she's got better things to do than worry about it, a laptop covered in stickers, and she's wearing a sweatshirt that reads ‘Practice Shelf Care.’
“Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have…” I check my watch “exactly seventeen minutes to scarf down anything I can to power me through the rest of my day, which sucks by the way , so I’m really going to need that…” I say, pointing to the croissant in her hand.
She purses her lips and moves them side to side in thought.
"This would make a great meet-cute," she says, then immediately blushing. "Sorry, I'm a writer, or going to be, or am in the process of becoming one,” she rambles at me while grabbing two small plates from the counter. “You see, I’m working on my first romance novel. So, everything's potential material.”
She finally takes a breath.
“I’m Amanda," she says, grinning. "I'm absolutely putting this in a book." She doesn’t give me a chance to protest, taking the croissant and splitting it down the middle for us to share. We claim a tiny table, the croissant divided into precise halves between us as Amanda pulls out her laptop and starts typing. Perhaps documenting a version of this encounter for her main characters.
My phone lights up the space between us with a vibration that is less discrete than the actual ringer.
Will: Someone seriously just argued that Sargent was overrated. You'd appreciate the audacity.
She looks at me like she can read the pining that’s written on my face as the message comes in. Perhaps she can.
“Boyfriend?” she asks as if it's that simple. I let out a chuckle and huffs of air rather than words.
“No. Definitely not.”
“That face coulda had me fooled, but what do I know, I just write happy endings,” she says with a shrug.
“We’re just, seeing each other . I have other priorities, and he has…” I don’t even know how to explain what he has. Pressures from family? A likely exit strategy when the time comes? So I continue as if she’s asked for the whole story. "I have this promotion to focus on. And my bro-workers are already waiting for me to fail. Chanting for it even. So this thing with Will..." I pause, picking at a croissant crumb, "I can’t afford for it to become a real something, because real somethings fall apart. I've done the falling apart before, and it’s not great for productivity."
Amanda slides a business card across the table that says her name and ‘Author of Works in Progress’ beneath it.
“What’s this?” I ask, twirling it between my fingers.
"I write romance novels because I believe in love. Not the perfect, fairy-tale kind, but the messy, wild, cant-get-enough, kind. The kind that shows up when you're busy making plans and it refuses to be ignored… and it sounds like you could use a friend,"
And with that, my phone buzzes again against the tabletop exactly in that can’t-get-enough-refuses-to-be-ignored kind of way.
I haven’t stopped thinking about him. I called Stella and left her a series of voicemails explaining what happened. The one I finally got in response was just a scream of excitement as she hopped on a moped clinging to the back of someone, promising to ‘catch up soon.’ Though we both know it’s the easier lie.
Will and I are tangled in a game of lust, and we are both playing it between rounds of real life. I think we’ve seen each other daily in the pockets of time we take as breaths as we run.
Despite every self positioned obstacle we haven’t stopped messaging. A long thread of commentary about our days, about each other. He isn't testing the waters in a coffee shop and asking me my favorite color. He tells me how he’s desperate to see me. I don’t ask him his middle name. I tell him I want to feel him between my legs again. He agrees to be free of labels which is ironic considering how this all started. But it’s for the best, we both are clearly focused in other areas, and based on the little context I have, it sounds like his focus will be shifting soon anyways.
I remember when I was sure I knew it all, when I had everyone around me figured out. How is that possible when now, with each day, I’m sure I know less than the day before. Including who I thought I would be. Maybe it was because I didn’t realize how much there was to know.
Sitting at my desk moving formulas around an excel file has become background noise to the thrill of seeing his name flash across the screen of my phone. It’s a sense of all-consuming obsession you think is reserved for first-loves. But there’s not a single vibration that I don’t hope is him. This type of passion is just that.
Vibrations.
An oscillating phenomenon deep within me. And when I gave myself the freedom to experience it, I remember what it’s like to have someone look at you like that. It’s beyond interest, beyond desire. It’s engulfing. I’ve seen it. Remember it. But the safety I thought I was experiencing by keeping the fire small, was stifling. When I was younger, I knew everything even if I didn’t, and because of that, I let myself experience so much more than I do now just because ‘I know better’ now. It’s all bullshit.
This feels like one of those pivotal moments where you stare at yourself in the mirror, or in this case computer screen, repeat some affirmations, ‘I’m thirty and flirty and thriving,’ or something. Except, I’m not thirty. And is anyone really thriving? Am I one of those people who loves their job? Not yet. But I will be. Right?
Will does, Ethan does, Amanda, whom I’ve barely known longer than a sneeze, does, and Stella? Even Stella just loves. Whereas I feel a combination of inadequacy and resentment I was never expecting.
I look around the office and see the gaggle of mid-twenties post grads gathering around the water cooler. What a cliché representation of men in the wild. Here I am. At my desk. Actually working while they talk about their golf swing. Come-on it’s so clearly a metaphor for your dicks.
I am like most people who find themselves post college, pretending that the grind and the hustle are really all they are cracked up to be.The normal text I would send would have three-thousand miles to travel to the west coast. Reid has had some passive consistency in helping me through situations like this. But I can almost predict what he’ll say. He’ll tell me that this is pretty standard. That I’m smart and doing a good job. He’ll tell me not to rush decisions.
But today sucks. It’s actually that simple, so I send a simple text.
me: I hate my job
Will: meet me after work. we’ll celebrate