Sneak Peek! A Very Friendly Fiasco Chapter One Lizzie
I sink into the salon chair and meet Morgan’s eyes. “I think a little darker.”
She runs her fingers through my hair, eyeing it in that way she has. “Darker? Are you sure?” She looks up, and I see the lightning-idea in her eyes.
“What are you thinking?”
She flops my hair over the back of the chair, sweeping the sides off my face. “I think you’d be an amazing redhead. And we’ve got your blonde to the point where we can do it.” Joy rides on her face, and there’s nothing Morgan likes more than reaching for new hair colors.
“A redhead?” I finger the ends of my hair. “Not orange, though, right?”
“Nowhere near orange,” Morgan says. “Let’s do it.” She claps her hands together. “Please? ”
I grin at her, and since I need a fresh start in so many ways, I might as well begin with my hair. “Let’s do it.”
Morgan squeals, bounces on the balls of her feet, and says, “I’ll go mix up your color. Need a water? Diet Coke?”
“Water’s fine,” I say, though I’ll get a giant soda pop on the way to work this afternoon. I’ll need it to go over forms I need to turn in by Friday. My job is a blight on my existence, and I’m considering a big change in the New Year.
Or I was, until I got promoted a few months ago. I’m still settling into a leadership role. I’m still learning the ropes in the Department Head hall, especially with Matthew Giles just down the hall.
Fine, he’s right next door, and the man dominates my thoughts even when I’m not at work. Like right now.
His cologne sits in my nose, though ChemTech is about as far from the salon as I can get and still be in a suburb of Charleston.
A knotted ball of unhappiness sits in my gut, though I laugh and smile with Morgan, tell her all about Claudia’s wedding, which has happened since I came in last time. She and Beckett have been married for about three months now, and fall has started to fall here in South Carolina.
What hasn’t happened is anything between me and Matt, though he said if there was any woman he’d go through a packet of red-tape paperwork to date, it was me.
I’m so sick of men saying one thing and doing another.
A couple of hours later, Morgan has me sitting with my back to the mirror, and she’s called over four of her co-workers at the salon. They all have their phones out, and Morgan grins at me. “Are you ready for the reveal?”
“So ready,” I say in a deadpan.
She ignores my sarcasm, because she’s so used to it. It does take a moment—or a day or a week—to get used to my style of humor. Morgan turns me around and her assistant fluffs out my hair, letting it fall over my shoulders.
There’s nothing sarcastic about the gasp that cuts through my throat. “Morgan,” I breathe. I reach up and touch my hair, just to make sure it’s attached to my head. It is, and it’s glorious.
“You’re a queen,” Morgan says. “With a crown of hair on fire.”
My hair is red, but not the orangey-red I was worried about. This is a soft brownish-red with plenty of shine and ruby-ness to it. “I love this,” I say. Who knew I was a redhead?
Morgan giggles and unsnaps the drape around my neck. “I’m so glad.”
I stand and hug her, and she says, “Mm, I love you.” She beams at me when she steps back. “Thanks for trusting me with your hair.”
“It’s amazing,” I say. “You’re amazing.”
I check out, make my next appointment, as keeping up this new hair color will require regular visits, and head out to my car. Things had lightened there for a couple of hours, but now I have to go to work.
I drive through a sandwich shop and get lunch—and my giant Diet Coke with cherry and vanilla—and head west toward ChemTech.
“Do you really think you can quit?” I ask myself as I leave the city behind. I like talking things out, and sometimes I just need to hear myself say something before it makes sense. I look left as a car passes me. “Why not?” I ask. “We have a ton of savings, so we wouldn’t have to work for a few months, at least.”
And then what? I ask myself as I glance right.
“Then, we find something that makes us happy, the way Em quit her job and bought the flower shop. She pursued something she’s passionate about, and we could too.”
And what are you passionate about, Elizabeth? That question flows through my mind in my daddy’s voice. He always calls me Elizabeth and not Lizzie, and I pick up my phone and tap the microphone icon. “Call your daddy tonight and see if you can go to dinner this weekend.”
My daddy is my hero, and because he lives an hour away, I don’t see him as often as I’d like. Or as often as I should. My momma died over a decade ago, and Daddy’s found a way to live alone, something I still haven’t mastered.
I reset my phone in my cupholder and get back to thinking about what I’m passionate about. I love fashion, but I don’t want to design or sew my own clothes. I love the modeling I do, and perhaps I could do that on a more full-time basis if I wasn’t at ChemTech.
I love animals, and one of my favorite things about going home to see my daddy is that I get to walk through his five acres with his dogs, cats, goats, chickens, and donkeys. Maybe I should buy some land out in the middle of nowhere and try my hand at homesteading.
But that would require me to be alone…and I’m not super good at that.
My thinking always circles like this, because the real problem is, I don’t know what I’m passionate about and want to spend my whole life—years and years—doing. I was good at math and chemistry in high school, and it felt natural to continue on that path in college and life.
I’m the Regulatory Affairs Department Chair at a chemical company that does everything from research, to development, to sales, to manufacturing. I have a lot of responsibilities, but today, I need to get the paperwork done for a state-required regulation of toxic materials.
Sounds exciting, right?
Trust me, the only bright spot in my day is knowing that Matt is working on something equally as boring next door. And the lunches we share on a near-daily basis.
Today, though I eat as I drive, and I pull in the employee parking lot and move to the closest row, where I now have a dedicated parking space. I sigh as I park and reach for my bag. I refuse to carry a brown or black briefcase bag, but I do have a bright teal bag for my folders and documents to travel back and forth in. It doesn’t always match my outfit, but it’s the cutest bag I’ve found that still looks professional.
I get out with my bag and find my balance before I duck back down inside to get my soda cup. From there, I click in my heels down the sidewalk to the entrance of ChemTech. I press my badge to the elevator scanner, and I ride up to the fifth floor, where all the Department Chair offices are.
It’s past lunch, and I work with all men. Routined men, so they’ll be out of the lounge and onto their afternoon meetings and tasks. Thankfully. Because I can guarantee that the first man I see will ask me where I was this morning. Then he’ll look at me like he knows there’s something different about me, but he can’t figure out what.
I brush my amazing hair over my shoulder as I step onto the fifth floor and turn toward my office. As predicted, things are calm and quiet, with literally a printer hum hanging in the air. So normal. Mundane. Sleep-inducing .
Someone’s on the phone in one office, with another Department Head clacking away on his keyboard in another. I steadfastly refuse to take a peek in Matt’s office as I mince my way by, and I turn into my space right next door.
Blast Matt to the moon, because his cologne is stuck in the air in here, and I frown up at the ceiling for its lack of a fan.
“There you are.”
I yelp and do the only thing that makes sense in that moment—I throw my forty-four-ounce soda pop in the direction of the voice.
Unfortunately, I do this before I realize Matt has parked himself in front of my desk. “Toledo,” I say as the cup hits his calf and explodes all over the floor. At least it didn’t do that at a higher elevation and get all over my desk and laptop.
“What was that?” Matt looks down at his pant leg, which is drenched in Diet Coke. He looks at me with plenty of teasing in his eyes, and oh, how I wish he wouldn’t. He bursts out laughing in the next moment, and through his gasping wheezes, he says, “You threw…your Coke…at me.”
At least he’s laughing and not marching down to HR for a complaint form.
I enter my office fully, my pulse settling back to its normal beat. “Why are you loitering in my office?”
He sobers quickly as I put my teal bag on my swooping, curly, two-sided desk. “Loitering?” He presses one palm to his heart like he’s going to start reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “A man of my stature does not loiter , Lizzie.”
I sit down, my chair squeaking in a way that says it doth protest to my size-sixteen flop into it. I ignore it and meet his gaze. Mistake , screeches through my soul, and I look away. “Well, you’re here when you surely have something to do in your own office.”
Matt clears his throat and says, “Your hair looks amazing.”
That draws my eyes back to his. “Thank you,” ghosts out of my mouth. Biloxi —a US city swear—streams through my mind. Matt has the most beautiful eyes in the world. They’re hazel, so this unique color of brown mixed with green, and I swear every fleck is different than another.
He gets up and closes my door, which makes my pulse start to pound like a big, bass drum. I played the flute in the marching band growing up, and I dated a drummer. I know beats and rhythms, and this one currently throbbing through my chest is no bueno.
Matt turns to face me, pressing his hands behind his back as he leans into the solid door. I want to ask him what he’s doing, but my voice has gone on vacation.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he says. He doesn’t seem to have a problem getting his vocal cords to work, but he sure doesn’t come over and re-take his seat in front of me.
Okay , I say, but only in my mind. I manage to nod curtly one time, and Matt stands up fully and tucks his hands in his pockets.
“They’re doing concerts in the park until Thanksgiving,” he says. “I went to one last weekend by myself, and I can’t do that again.”
“Okay,” comes out of my mouth, because I don’t know where this is going.
“I was thinking of taking a friend.” His eyebrows go up.
Every cell in my body rebels at his words. He knows I want to go out with him. I said it right out loud at Claudia’s wedding. The man standing ten feet from me held my hand, and my fingers vibrate with the memory—and the desperation to do it again.
“Are you asking me out?”
Matt grins and shakes his head. “No, because if I ask you out, I have to go get another packet from HR and fill it out.”
“ Another packet?”
“That’s what you heard?”
“What happened to the first packet?”
Matt shrugs and advances toward me. He bends and picks up my leaky soda cup and drops it into the trashcan. “I threw it out.” He sits back down and smile-stares at me. “I was thinking we could go as friends. ”
I want to throw something else at him, and I look around my desk for the right object as he adds, “At least for all outward appearances.”
My chin lifts instantly. “Outward appearances? What does that mean?”
“I’d love to go to dinner first,” he says almost nonchalantly. “Those concerts last a couple of hours, and they only have popcorn and candy and soda there.”
Dinner and a concert in the park. A couple of hours each. On a weekend.
“That sounds like a date.”
“Only if that’s the label we give it.” His eyes turn a tiny bit hard. “I’m asking you to go with me as a fake-friend, so we can circumvent the fraternizing rules here at work.”
“A fake-friend?” I’m going to start swearing with that instead of US cities. “That sounds…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
Dangerous to my health , I think.
A fiasco runs through my mind too.
“Like a way to get past HR and still go out together,” Matt supplies. “Is what it sounds like to me. So what do you think?”