Chapter 12 #2
Zoey opens the door to a small office off the kitchen and I step inside.
As far as having an office about the size of a broom closet, it’s rather cozy.
A couple of plants, a pink-and-white lamp on a dark wood desk, some scattered water bottles, a framed picture of her and a few folks outside of the bakery, and two chairs.
She rolls a chair my way and slumps into the one at her desk with a very heavy sigh.
“What a day.” She plucks off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Now that the fun part is over, there’s so much to do. I’m not even sure where to start.”
I ease into the chair and am keenly aware of how small the space is. If I scooted just a foot closer, we’d be touching. “Didn’t I tell you I specialize in this? I’m on it. And I kind of love it.”
“Seriously, what job did you have in New York?” She puts her glasses back on and rolls back at least a foot.
Message received. I push myself back to give her more space.
“I’m so curious what your life looked like there,” she says.
I can’t imagine she really wants to hear about my time in New York.
She probably wants to hear about the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square, or Central Park, or about random run-ins I may have had with celebrities, which only happened once.
Scarlett Johansson. Swoon. But she was so totally normal, had no paparazzi following her or band of fans, that I only realized who she was a block later.
No chance Zoey wants to hear about the terrible coffee in the breakroom, me crying in the bathroom after my boss yelled at me, sitting on the subway next to men who take up too much space, or listening to our neighbors banging it out after a fight.
“You don’t really want to know about my time there. ”
She looks at me with so much sincerity I can tell she really does want to know.
She props her elbow on the table, rests her chin in her palm, and something inside me clicks.
Yes, Frankie and Morgan are interested in what I do.
They always check in to talk about the details of my day, convinced me to finally leave my terrible job after one too many sobbing phone calls, ask me on the regular about updates on the farm.
But outside of them, I haven’t had this—someone who wants to know anything about me outside of the bedroom.
Sure, I choose women who are as equally allergic to commitment as I am, but still, this fills me with a warmth that I wasn’t sure that I needed.
But now that I have it, it feels really fucking nice.
“Yes, I absolutely want to know,” Zoey says, readjusting her foot to elevate it on a box.
“Like what does day-to-day look like there? Do people eat breakfast and go to the store, and stop for Sunday visits with family like we do? At the office, do you sprint from one room to the next like they show in the movies? I want to know it all.”
A grin fills my face. A much goofier one than I intend, but here it is, ransacking my cheeks with no regard to reason. “I have an idea. I know I’ve eaten like ten cupcakes today, but how about we order pizza, go through the stuff we need to do for your shop, and I’ll tell you all about New York.”
“Perfect,” Zoey says, lifting her head from resting on her palm. “Pepperoni good?”
“Yep, and anchovies.”
She scrunches her face so hard that her glasses almost fall off. “No. You? Really? That’s fish. Fish on pizza? Sounds truly terrible.”
“It is fish, but really it’s more like a salt bomb.” I lick my lips with a dramatic flair. “It just splits that tongue right open and deposits the goodness. Heavenly, I tell ya. You cannot knock it until you try it.”
She giggles, but her eyes drop, just for the briefest of moments, to my mouth and the movement halts me.
Nope. I am not doing this. I’m not ruining the first friendship I’ve made in Minnesota, the first friendship I’ve made in forever, by messing it up with sex.
I’ve never mixed the two and don’t plan to start now.
Sure, I tried to date. But either the dates were so conversationally stimulating that the sex was boring, or the sex was so hot that I didn’t care about the conversation.
It probably makes me sound like a terrible person, but I can’t help it.
Closeness, intimacy, all of that makes me queasy.
Not queasy in some melodramatic way, but genuinely physically ill.
I don’t know how to act around a woman that I both really like and am sexually attracted to.
Do I flirt? Be myself? By the time the evening ends, I’ve worked myself into a total tizzy.
It’s not that I don’t like the women I sleep with.
Mostly, I do. I just don’t want to combine emotional and physical intimacy.
It’s one or the other and never both. I’ve never had what Morgan and Frankie have.
I’ve never been so in love that it took years to get over, or so in love with a past partner that I reconnected as an adult like Frankie and Morgan.
I’ve never had that “person,” the one that I want to walk down the sidewalk with and hold hands with and snuggle up with a cat on a couch and watch movie marathons.
That type of love is not in the cards for someone like me.
I’m a little fucked-up. I know this. So no, I’m not giving Zoey the same whisper of gaze she just gave me. Zoey’s an innocent. Someone too pure for this world. And I’m not.
“How about this,” I say and cross my legs. “We’ll get anchovies on the side, and you try one little bite. And if you hate it, I’ll do something.”
Her mouth twists. “Hmm. You’ll do something? I mean, we’re talking about fish. On perfectly good pepperoni. I think I need you to be more specific.”
Ugh. If that cute little teasing tone doesn’t do the tiniest thing to my insides. “Specific? I’m fresh out of ideas.”
Several long moments pass before the corner of her lips tugs into a playful grin. “You have to Cusack me outside my window.”
I have less than zero idea what she is talking about. “Cusack you? What does that mean?”
She pushes herself back from the table and crosses her arms. Her blue eyes are dancing underneath the light in the office, sparkles of cobalt and aqua mixing in a beautiful hue.
“You’re telling me you call your vehicle ‘Truck Norris,’ but don’t know the Cusack reference?
” She laughs, a pretty, airy laugh. “So there’s that movie Say Anything…
from the eighties, right? And John Cusack holds the boom box high above his head and blasts ‘In Your Eyes’ outside of Ione Skye’s window, and it’s like the most romantic movie scene of all time. ”
This is all vaguely familiar, probably off some social media reel I saw, but based on Zoey’s grin, I’m sure as hell going to google this later.
“So,” she says, crossing her arms in a solid, definitive motion, “if the anchovies are terrible, you have to Cusack me.”
I love everything about this. Even if I don’t know what it is exactly. But right now, to keep that smile going, I might agree to just about anything. “I don’t even know where I would find a boom box.”
Zoey rolls her eyes. “We don’t have to get super technical. You can use your cellphone.”
I reach over to shake her hand. “Deal.” And if I am not mistaken, she holds on a moment longer than I do.
“Okay, I’m going to go grab my phone up front and order.” She lifts herself and limps towards the door.
Ugh, I should have noticed that today’s activities pushed her too hard.
I would’ve delivered the treats on my own and let her rest if I had noticed.
From here on out, until I leave tonight, I’m making it my mission to get Zoey to relax as much as possible.
“I’m going to jot down some notes. Do you have a few extra pens? ”
She steps outside of the room and points at the desk. “Yep, in the drawer. I think I have an extra notebook in one of the drawers, too.”
After she leaves, I roll the chair to her desk and dig through a few drawers looking for pens and a notebook.
When I reach the bottom drawer, my breath catches in my throat.
In front of me lie unopened, soft yellow and blue envelopes with Zoey’s name written across in beautiful penmanship.
The return address says Josie Bakersfield.
I don’t know who that is, but the loopy letters, the heart in the corner, the way the envelopes are all resting in the drawer like a memory box, makes me feel like I stumbled upon an underwear drawer.
But not in a good way. I’m invading something, and I’m way too curious, and I should not be this curious for a friend.
Footsteps approach. I grab the notebook and slam the door.
“They’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” Zoey says and grabs her keys from the desk. “Want to go to my place?”
I do. Too much. Which is a problem I’ll deal with on my own. But something about seeing those envelopes is so unsettling that I almost don’t want to go anymore. I swallow back my thoughts and hold out my arm. “Yep… After you.”