Chapter Four
Mike hadn’t been by in days.
He’d sent a few texts, mostly about Kristina, but otherwise Celeste hadn’t heard much from him.
She didn’t know what to think of that. It wasn’t that she never went a day without talking to him.
It just didn’t happen that often, especially in the months since she’d officially become an empty nester.
“I could make Christmas cookies and invite him over.” She would enjoy the cookies; she would enjoy his company even more.
Celeste pulled out her phone and sent off a text. I’m making cookies. Want to come over and have some?
She pulled on her apron and dropped her phone into the pocket. Mike liked chocolate chip the best, so she gathered up the necessary ingredients. She liked baking. She hadn't done it as often since Kristina left for college.
Mike had told Celeste that one of the challenges of suddenly having no kids at home was figuring which things she’d done primarily for the kids and which things she’d done at least partially for her own sake. Maybe baking was one of those things she’d enjoyed as much as they had.
Her phone chimed. Celeste smiled as she pulled it out of her apron pocket. Mike, just as she’d assumed.
I’m at the annual holiday work party. Give me a rain check on the cookies.
She read it twice just to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood.
She had gone with him to that party the last couple of years.
Everyone else, he’d explained the first year, brought their spouses or significant others.
He hadn’t wanted to be the only one there alone. Why hadn’t he invited her this time?
I hope it’s not too miserable, she typed back. She stood at her counter, the cookie ingredients laid out but nothing actually mixed yet.
Her phone chimed. Amy from accounting is here alone, too. So, not too bad.
Amy from accounting? Why would Amy from accounting make his evening better?
Mike had only ever mentioned her in offhand ways, things like “I need to get my expense report in to Amy from accounting before the weekend” or “The last person I would want to watch a fake YouTube concert with is Amy from accounting.”
Celeste stared at her phone for a long, drawn-out moment.
She didn’t know how to respond or even if she should.
Interrupting a date was rude— not that Mike was on a date.
He and Amy were only at the party together by chance, really.
It wasn’t like Mike had gone over to accounting and asked Amy to sit with him at the party. Right?
Ask Amy if she knows where to find vintage jeans that'll fit a vintage-age person. LOL
The moment she sent the text she realized how stupid it probably was.
And a little pathetic. She was trying to spend the evening via text with a guy who was already spending the evening in person with someone else.
And she’d typed LOL, something she’d always sworn she wouldn’t do; it felt too… stupid.
In the end, she couldn’t say if Mike agreed that the message was pathetic or the acronym stupid. He didn’t text back.
A batch of cookies later, he hadn’t texted back.
She strung a strand of lights on the front porch. Still no text.
She pulled the tabletop Christmas tree out of the attic and set it up on the end table in the front room. No text.
She even found and ordered a pair of jeans in her size on Etsy that she would have drooled over twenty-five years earlier. Still nothing from Mike.
There was nothing to be done but turn on A Christmas Carol and have some cookies and hot chocolate.
Watching George C. Scott transform into a decent person was usually very cathartic, one of the highlights of the season for her— why had she ever thought that skipping these things would make her happier this year? — but it fell a little short this time.
“I’m Scrooge,” she said to the empty room, “no family around, no friends, all alone at Christmas.” Except Scrooge had been happy about it, at first anyway.
“I was, too. A little bit.” She had been looking forward to a very low-key Christmas.
Mike had turned that into a fun scavenger hunt, and she couldn’t be satisfied with the quiet any longer.
“That’s what friends are for, making a person dissatisfied with the status quo.”
Speaking of status quo: why in the world was he at his annual work party with Amy from accounting? He always took Celeste. Always.
She felt like she’d been stood up. Or overlooked. Or something.
Not that the work parties were dates or anything.
She and Mike were just friends. Friends who were free to date…
accountants. Except, Mike worked in IT. An accountant didn’t seem like the best match for a computer geek.
A lawyer would be more likely to offset the geekiness.
Not that Mike was super geeky. Or that she was looking to date him.
Then what was her problem? She was upset about him being out with someone else even though she wasn’t looking to be anything but his friend?
Was “friend jealousy” a thing? She wasn’t jealous of his other friends.
She knew most of them; she liked them. She enjoyed hearing about the things Mike did with his other friends.
Just not Amy from accounting.
***
Mike had never before wished that texting wasn’t a thing.
But, there he was, making his first attempt at accepting his spot on Celeste’s designated friend list, and he’d spent the whole night getting texts from her.
Friendly texts, but a lot of them. There wouldn’t be any distance between them to make giving up his pursuit any easier.
Amy had been good company that night. Her husband was at home with a sick child, so she’d come alone. They’d spent most of the party talking about childhood illnesses and injuries, and his hope that he’d eventually have grandchildren to spoil.
“Is everything okay?” Amy asked.
“Have you ever tried to break up with someone you weren’t actually dating?”
Amy did a double-take. “What?”
“The woman I usually bring to these parties, Celeste. I think I need to break up with her, but we aren’t actually dating.”
“Then what are you breaking off? Friendship?”
He shook his head. “I guess I’m breaking up with the possibility of being more than friends. I’ve been hoping for a while, but I’m finally admitting to myself that she isn’t interested.”
“That sucks.” Amy was an enthusiastic listener. She reminded him of his daughter-in-law. She was about the same age and of a very similarly energetic disposition. “And you’re sure she’s not interested at all?”
“She’s my best friend, but every time I even hint at anything more, she—”
“Panics.”
He was going to say “rejects me” but “panics” actually seemed like a more accurate description. “She certainly changes the subject fast enough.”
“My husband tried for three years to move things between us from friends to something more. He tried everything from being the friendliest friend in the world to asking me out every chance. Neither approach worked.”
That sounded horribly familiar. “So what did work in the end?”
She held up a finger and dug into her purse. She pulled out her cell phone. “I think you should ask him.”
Mike had only interacted with Amy’s husband on rare occasions. He hardly knew the guy. “Are you sure?”
Amy nodded, the phone already to her ear.
“Hi, honey. Can you do me a favor?” A quick smile and she continued.
“Mike Durham, from IT, is here at my table and I want you to tell him how much of a disaster your attempts to win me over were at first.” She laughed.
“No, I’m serious. There’s this woman he is basically desperately in love with and he can’t get himself out of the friend zone.
” She made a sound of acknowledgement. “So will you?”
This was embarrassing.
Amy held her phone out and smiled as if she was offering him a very welcome gift rather than forcing him to have an awkward conversation with her husband.
“Hi,” he said.
“Is this as weird for you as it is for me?” Mr. Amy asked.
“Yes.”
Mr. Amy— Mike was having a very personal conversation with someone whose name he didn’t even know— laughed in commiseration. “I don’t really have any good advice. I got out of ‘the friend zone,’ as Amy calls it, by getting out of the friendship. I called it quits.”
“You gave up the entire thing?” Mike didn’t like that suggestion. He’d been backing away a little, giving himself some space to breathe. But ending their friendship entirely was a more drastic step than he was ready to take.
“I told her that I loved her and wanted her to be happy. I told her I respected her decision not to be anything more than friends, but that being her friend would never be enough for me.”
“You told her straight out?” Mike had only ever beaten around that bush.
“She wasn’t getting the message any other way. I told her to call if she ever needed anything and that I’d see her around. And then I walked out of her life.”
Mike couldn’t imagine doing that. Just thinking about it turned his stomach to lead. “For good?”
“That was the plan. Not a plan like, ‘Hey, if I turn my back on her maybe she’ll come crawling back.’ I just couldn’t do it any more. The plan was— I don’t know how to explain it.”
Mike did. “Self-preservation.”
“Right. But, after a while, she started missing me and realizing there was more between us than just a casual friendship. I’d run into her once in a while and she’d start to realize it more.
Then, one day, she came to me and said she’d like to start again.
So we did. And now we’re married with a kid who likes to puke on me. ”
“Every man’s dream.” Mike liked Mr. Amy.
“Chances are I got lucky that she came back. But, even if she hadn’t, I had to get out of there. It was killing me.”
Mike knew that feeling. “How soon did you jump to that idea?” Mike had only been trying his methods for seven years, after all. An entire decade wasn’t too long to wait. He rolled his eyes at how ridiculous he sounded.
“Not until everything else failed. Pretending I only wanted to be friends was Plan A. Actually asking her out a bunch of times was Plan B.”
Mike hadn’t moved to Plan B yet. “And walking away was Plan C?”
“More like Plan L or M.”
Maybe it was time for Mike to be a little more upfront about his feelings. He could try asking her out, try showing her his interest in her went past hanging out over coffee and YouTube concerts.
And he probably should also formulate a Plan C, D, E…