15. Lizzie
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIZZIE
The first thing I learn about being promoted to the Regulatory Affairs Department Chair is that everyone has their own interpretation of what being “safe” means.
For instance, Jessie from HR thought it was “safe” to surprise me with a small celebratory party in the cafeteria.
Somewhere between the paper hats and the sheet cake that said “Congrats Lizzie!” in bright pink icing, I nearly tripped over my own feet and face-planted in front of the entire room when someone yelled, “Speech!”
See, surprise parties—and speeches—are not my definition of safe.
They’re my definition of an ambush.
What’s safe?
Safe is wearing heels low enough to walk like a confident woman and not a newborn deer. Safe is visiting my new office during lunch hours when most people are busy debating whether to get an extra brownie or eat the salad. Safe is then returning to my old office, packing up my solitary cardboard box of personal belongings, and going with Marty, the Interdepartmental Secretary, and over to my new promotion.
Those are things I can plan. Things I can dress for, so when I walk in and meet the other department heads at yet another group gathering, I don’t feel like I’m going to lose my lunch. Or, in this case, breakfast, as I skipped lunch in favor of stalking out my new digs.
Four walls.
I work not to squee, because ChemTech is not the place for squeeing. Honestly, the fact that there are two parties on a Tuesday is the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen a bunch of chemists do.
“Ken,” Marty says. “This is Lizzie Trenton. She’s our new Regulatory Affairs Chair.” He beams at me like I’ve cured cancer.
“Hey.” I extend my hand and shake Ken’s. “What do you do?”
“I’m Sustainability,” Ken says, and I wonder if I’m going to have to start introducing myself like that.
Not I’m Lizzie, but I’m Regulatory Affairs.
Hey, it could be worse. I could be Process Engineering or Supply Chain.
I used to work in the Environment, Health, and Safety Department as a compliance officer, and that department chair would be EHS.
Like, eh, no one knows what I do for a living. Just keep smiling and let’s move the topic to something else.
Yes, meeting men and telling them I work for ChemTech is a real mood-killer.
I meet a parade of men, from Sam in Sales and Marketing to Phillip in that Supply Chain Management role to Jeff in Legal and Compliance.
I’ll work with him a lot, and it sure does seem like there are a lot of safety, regulation, and compliance departments at this company.
That’s because there are.
And as I look around at this stale-cake party, I realize I’m the only female in the room. I’m wearing the cutest black pencil skirt ever, as it has a rippling fabric called crêpe.
I don’t feel unsafe here, but I can’t wait to simply unpack my stapler, the framed photograph of me and my roommates sitting on the porch at the Big House one day last summer, licking ice cream cones, and go fill my water bottle from the Department-Chair-Only lounge.
Oh, that lounge. I’ve coveted it since the moment I heard about it from a friend. See, Matt got promoted to the Process Engineering Department Chair a couple of years ago, and we stayed in touch for a while there. Then, as all good things do, the texts slowed and Matt had other friends here at ChemTech .
I suffer through the boring party—only chemists can make frosting un-fun—and finally escape to my office after thirty minutes.
“I’ll let you get settled in,” Marty says as he leads me into my office. It has a window, and while the view isn’t super spectacular, it does give me a fifth-floor view that lets me see out past the western edge of Cider Cove, where our company is located.
“Oh, look, Jessie brought over the cake from EHS.” Marty beams at the messy dessert, claps his hands, and turns to leave. Over his shoulder, he adds, “Jaden from IT will be in to help you get your computer set up.” He’s like a golden retriever on Xanax, and I’m not sad to see him go.
In fact, after I set my box next to the cake I’ll be trashing as soon as I can find an acceptable bin, I hurry over to the door and lock it. I rest my back against it and let the grin I’ve been holding back for three weeks finally surface.
And fine, I squee a little as I dance over to the window and stand there, looking out to the west, where I imagine the best sunsets in the world will take place.
But I can’t stand there all day, and I turn to go check out the Chair lounge. Surely the trashcans in there will be able to hold half of a sheet cake that looks like some hungry wolverines got into it. Seriously, who cuts a cake on the diagonal, and why can’t people just take a whole piece, even if they only eat half of it ?
I pick up the cardboard tray holding the cake and head for the door. But I can’t unlock it with my sensible heels, so I have to return to my desk, put down the cake, and go unlock the door first. I prop it open, then return to get the dessert.
I don’t know where this magical lounge is—and just the fact that I’m excited about an ice and water machine in a lounge tells me I might be as dry as some of the other chemists around here—but it’s not that hard to find.
The giant lettering that spells out LOUNGE on the door helps too.
This door is also closed, but I can toe my way through it, which I do. Sure enough, there’s a pretty significant garbage can across the room, near a sink, a long counter top, and two fridges.
Two fridges.
I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.
This lounge also has carpet, even if it’s the industrial kind that I grew up with in my church. My knees sting just thinking about how many times I fell and skinned my knees. Rug burns on industrial carpet are the absolute worst.
I shouldn’t be thinking about my childhood, old churches, or how many fridges this lounge has. Not when I’m walking with a large cardboard tray of mangled cake, which now reads, “Rats, Zie!”
That’s not safe.
And you know what else isn’t safe ?
The speed at which the brown-haired man enters the lounge. Or the volume of his laughter. Or walking with his cell phone pressed to his ear, so he doesn’t even see the best-dressed, new Department Chair—or my cake—in this amazing lounge.
“Whoa,” I say, as if he’s a horse. Or I am.
He does turn toward me then, but it’s too late. I can’t slow my roll, and the only thing I can do is try to make the cardboard tray smaller.
I tip it up so it won’t hit him, and that blocks my view.
And then I slam into his very solid body anyway.
That smashes the cake into my jewel-toned teal blouse, a garment I’d chosen specifically to make my blue-green eyes pop on this very special day.
And let me tell you, icing is cold as it touches cleavage. Maybe that’s why they call it icing.
I drop the cardboard tray and hold my arms out to my sides, my irritation combining with pure humiliation and horror as I look down at myself…and the vanilla cake now heaped on the floor.
“Why’d you stop?” I ask, of all things. “You were flying just a second ago, not even watching where you’re going, and—” I cut off when my eyes meet his.
He’s dropped his phone, and he’s staring at me wide-eyed, blinking far too fast for someone who doesn’t have a dry-eye condition.
“Matt? ”
Matthew Giles.
Owner of the most impractical laugh, purveyor of mismatched socks, and one-time lunch buddy when we were both working on the EHS team.
I haven’t seen him in months. Fine, years, which explains why I’m not prepared for the way he fills out the striped button-up and dark slacks. Or his perfect hair—a shaggy, chestnutty brown that looks like it belongs in a shampoo commercial.
My heart races.
His hazel eyes possess the precisely perfect combination of green and brown, and they crinkle into a mix of concern and amusement as his gaze drips down my body the same way that cake does.
“Lizzie.” He’s not asking, and how does anyone work for this man? His voice is made of melted, dark chocolate mixed with sunshine. He holds up his phone. “I’m so sorry. I was focused on my call.”
“Obviously,” I bite out, my tone the complete opposite of his. I look behind him to the counter. “Does this magical lounge have any paper towels?”
He laughs, which only ignites my attraction to him as much as it irritates me. “I’m sure we do,” he says. “Let me get them.” He starts banging through cupboards while I stand there, completely cake-i-fied and helpless. Again, my heart pounds in a strange way.
Not an embarrassed way.
Not an angry way .
In a totally unsafe way, for sure.
Because I want to know if Matt has a girlfriend, and if he doesn’t, how I can get him to ask me to dinner. Perhaps he’ll want to celebrate my new promotion.
“What are you doing over here?” he asks, finally turning with the price—a roll of Brawny. Instead of handing it to me, he tears off a long string of paper towels and starts to dab at my chest.
“Matt,” I say.
“I had some meetings in Lexington,” he says, and I look at him to try to figure out what the devil is going on. He’s staring at my torso, still dab-dab-dabbing away, hardly taking any frosting with him.
“Matt,” I bark. He flinches, freezes, and I grab the roll of paper towels from him. “Maybe you could handle the mess on the floor.”
He looks down at it as if seeing the two-foot square cardboard tray with more spattered cake on it for the first time. “Oh, sure.”
I tear off a bunch of paper towels and just go all-in, smearing the icing as I try to claw it off my skin and blouse. I just have to get cleaned up enough to make it to the bathroom without flinging frosting everywhere as I walk.
“So…” he says. “You’re over in the Department Chair lounge because… Did I miss a party? I feel like I got a text about it as I got off the plane.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You missed a real roof-raiser.”
He reaches for the paper towels, grinning like a fool, and I hand them to him.
“We had a party—well, I had to attend two of them—because I got promoted to Regulatory Affairs.”
His face lights up. “You did? That’s fantastic, Lizzie.” He stands, laughing again, and pulls me into a hug. He immediately releases me as if my chest has caught fire, and groans as he looks down at himself. He keeps his head down, but lifts his eyes to look at me.
“Oops.”
I grin now, because he’s just so fun. And for a chemist—and an engineering chemist to boot—that’s something. “You caked yourself,” I say.
“So did you,” he points out.
“Because someone came out of nowhere.” I step over to the sink, dropping my used paper towels in the trashcan as I do. Thankfully, the water works in this sink, but it is ice cold.
“Regulatory Affairs,” he says, joining me at the sink. “That office is right next door to mine.”
As if I hadn’t noticed that during my lunchtime stake-out. “Is that right?” I ask. “I just got here an hour ago.”
He nudges me with his hip. “I can’t believe we’re going to be neighbors again.”
“Yeah,” I say, my mind whirring as I scrub frosting from my fingers. “Neighbors.” I hope my voice sounds calmer than I feel. “Tell me the truth now: Are you the kind of neighbor who borrows a cup of sugar and says thanks, or the obnoxious guy who thinks eight a.m. lawn mowing is acceptable on a weekend?”
Matt chuckles, deep and resonant, and I sink into it like relaxing into a hot tub on a cold night. “I’m more the guy who’d probably try to fix something, break it in the process, and then show up sheepishly asking to borrow your toolbox.”
I close my eyes briefly, channeling every fiber of determination not to laugh. Because laughing will only encourage him. But then a mental image of Matt standing on my doorstep with mismatched socks, holding a broken lawn gnome, drifts into my head, and I make the grave mistake of snorting.
“I didn’t know you had a penchant for breaking things, Mister Engineer.” I raise an eyebrow at him as we stand at the sink together, the water running but neither of us using it.
“Engineers don’t break things,” he corrects me with a slight wag of his finger. “We create…opportunities for innovative solutions.”
In that moment, I realize we’re standing so close, I can smell his cologne. It’s warm and woodsy, with a faint hint of something citrusy. Or maybe that’s the frosting.
No matter what, it’s in no way safe for my heart rate.
He’s staring at me too, and he seems to notice about when I do. I take a breath and he startles away from me. “Well, welcome to the neighborhood—I mean, office. My door’s always open if you need any…opportunities for innovative solutions.”
And with that, he saunters out of the lounge, using a different door than the one he came in, or the one I came through.
“Innovative solutions,” I murmur to myself, feeling both frazzled and flustered in equal measure. I can’t believe I’m breathless, because there’s no way a man like Matthew Giles is single.
It’s just the surprise of smashing cake into myself. The chaos of today’s parties and my move from a cubicle at EHS to a walled office in Department Chair Row.
So our quick exchange reminded me that I miss talking to him. He’s fun and funny, and trust me, that’s hard to find at ChemTech.
I finish cleaning up and return to my office, ready to get my space decorated for success. As I sit at my now-cake-less desk, I realize my pulse is still racing at an unsafe level.
I look to my right, where Matt’s office sits just on the other side of the wall. Oh, no, it is definitely not safe for me to be thinking the things I am, and I’m going to have to put regulatory sanctions on myself if I have to work next door to Matt for any length of time.