Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Iris
“Okay. Yes. Fine. He was good-looking, Brooke, but you’re ignoring the most important part.”
We’re standing in the teacher’s lounge, me waiting for my single cup of coffee to brew, and my co-worker Brooke wasting her one precious free hour. The things she’ll do for even the hint of gossip.
I arrived at work coffee-stained, sticky, and twenty minutes late, and attempted to slip into the staff meeting already in progress. I tried to be stealthy so I didn’t disrupt the principal, Mr. Kincaid—Charles—I have a hard time calling him by his first name, though he insists—but I might as well have been wearing a headband with sparklers on it. Everyone turned to look at me the second I opened the door.
And now, half the day has passed, and Brooke has been waiting to get what she expects is the salacious scoop about why I was late. Save for the coffee, the truth is, unfortunately, utterly lukewarm.
“I can’t think of anything more important,” Brooke says, still expecting drama. “Come on! You’re hot and single.”
“Ha. ”
“ He’s hot and single.”
“Nobody said that?—”
She continues like I’m not even talking. “The universe is practically forcing you together. You can’t ignore that. His paper on your doorstep? It’s the building. Has to be.”
“Brooke, come on.”
“I knew that place is magic.” She spins in a circle. “Are there any apartments for rent? Or do you have a spare room? I just want to see it for myself.”
I groan and roll my eyes. “It’s not magic.” I pick up my cup from under the spout of the Keurig machine, move down the counter, and pour in so much creamer that it hardly even tastes like coffee anymore. “And what kind of magic would it be? The kind that makes me late for work? The kind that makes me spill coffee all over my shirt?”
“The kind that brought you face-to-face with a hot neighbor.” Brooke opens the refrigerator and pulls out two cups of yogurt, waving one in front of me.
“I can just dump this right on your shirt if you want, save you the time,” she jokes.
“Hilarious,” I deadpan.
She puts one carton back in the fridge, closes it, then removes the foil from the top of the other. “You’re refusing to see what’s right in front of you.”
“Okay. Let’s just say you’re right, for argument’s sake. If ‘magic’ brought me face-to-face with that jerk, it was only to remind me that just because someone is good-looking, it does not make them kind.”
Even as I say it, a question enters my mind: Why is he so rude? Did something happen to make him that way?
Brooke must’ve seen the question on my face because she points her spoon at me. “Ha!”
“No. No , Brooke, I have zero interest. None.”
She doesn’t know that I’m determined to break my cycle of picking the wrong guys. Of trying to talk someone into feeling a certain way about me. My new friends here don’t need to know that I’m trying to be less . . . me. Less open. Less all-in. Less dramatic. Just . . . less.
You’re a lot, Iris.
“Zero interest in who?” Liz Ridgeway pops in the lounge from the hallway but stops short and glares at the yogurt in Brooke’s hand. “It’s you .” Her tone accuses.
“What’s me?” Brooke’s face is all innocence.
“You’ve been stealing my yogurt!” Liz shakes her head. “I thought it was Joyce.”
Brooke slowly holds out the half-eaten cup to her, but Liz rolls her eyes. “Forget it. You owe me two Boston cream pies, one strawberry, and one of whatever that is.” She takes a K-cup and moves toward the Keurig, then looks at me. “Did your building finally come through and find your soulmate?” Her eyes brighten.
“Oh, good grief ,” I groan. “Not you, too.” I expected this reaction from Brooke, but I thought Liz was more level-headed.
“Look, Iris.” Liz sets a cup under the spout of the machine and turns it on. It whirrs to life as she and Brooke exchange a glance. “If you were mysteriously brought together with someone, you should pay attention. That place is magic. Everyone says so.”
I’d heard rumblings of magic in the building, but those are just silly superstitions, right? Despite Liz and Brooke’s earnest expressions, I have to stick with logic. I’m trying to be more practical, which is why I need to save the magic for the movies. Would it be so cool if a mother and daughter really could switch places to gain a new perspective on each other’s lives and struggles? Of course. But my life is not a Lindsay Lohan movie.
I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about that .
“I don’t believe in magic.” I toss my stir stick in the trash. “It’s not real! And if it were, it would be the kind of thing that happens to other people.” I take a sip of my coffee, hearing the pathetic nothing cool ever happens to me in my own voice.
No. I do not need a magic man right now. Or any man. I promised myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I’ve made a hundred times before. That’s why I moved. That’s why I’m here.
Mostly.
It’s not like I left town because I ran through all the men there and needed a new hunting ground. But I did need the chance to figure out how to let logic—and not emotion—be the thing that drives my choices. “Emotion” would have me believing that I’ve magically stumbled upon a unicorn of a guy, the one person on the planet who might actually stick around. “Logic” knows better.
Logic knows that people leave. Or—maybe more to the point—people don’t stay. Those might seem like the same thing, but they absolutely are not.
Which is why I cannot buy into the “magic” or “romance” of a building— a building? Really?— because if it were true—which it obviously isn’t—I would hope it would try to match me with someone nicer.
I turn and add a little more creamer to my cup.
“Why do you even bother with the coffee?” Brooke stares at the near-white liquid in my mug. “You might as well just pour some sugar in a cup, stir in some cream, and drink it like a shot.”
“Ooh, good idea,” I say, faux-happy. “I’ll do that tomorrow.”
“Don’t disregard The Serendipity, Iris,” Liz says, stuck on this. “You can look it up. Whole articles have been written about it.” She points at me. “ Magic. ”
I lean against the counter as Brooke shoots the empty yogurt cup at the garbage can, missing and hitting the wall. “And the thing about magic is . . .” She walks over and picks up the cup, steps a few feet back, shoots . . . and misses again. “You don’t have to believe in it for it to be real.”
I frown. “Oh, my gosh. You’re actually serious.”
Up until now, I thought this was a wink, wink kind of suggestion, but I realize I was wrong.
Brooke picks up the cup one more time and, this time, does a little move and tosses it into the garbage can. She whips around and points double pointer fingers at me.
“ First try, ” she says in a funny voice.
I roll my eyes, but I smile and shake my head.
Liz holds up a hand. “I know you’re not from here?—”
“I’m not from Zimbabwe, I’m from like an hour away,” I interject.
“ —but ,” she continues, leaning on her tone, “there is plenty of evidence to back up the claim. My uncle met his wife because of that building.”
I give her a look. “Because of a building ?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
I muse. “A building told them they should meet.”
She nods and shrugs. “That’s the story. She lived there when it was a dorm.”
“The Serendipity is special,” Brooke says. “If you were lucky enough to get an apartment in that building, it’s because the building has a plan for you, you know?—”
“Romantically,” Liz says, finishing the thought.
I laugh. “Okay. Pause. I love a good folk tale as much as the next girl . . .” They lean in. “But as much as I hate to disappoint the magic building ”—my words drip with massive verbal air quotes—“I’m not looking for romance.”
Liz purses her lips and tilts her head at Brooke. “Huh. They never are. ”
I shake my head at them. “You guys. I’m not just saying it. I really am not looking for romance.”
Looking for romance has only ever gone horribly wrong for me.
“Why?” Brooke asks. “You don’t want to fall in love? Love is awesome.”
I think about the string of relationships I’ve had, each one a carbon copy of the one before. Always going all in. Jumping without looking. Believing each one is the one. Too much, too fast, too quick, or too deep never occurred to me.
But it was exhausting. It is exhausting. And last summer, I finally realized something needed to change. I realized the easiest way to stop heartbreak is to stop falling for the wrong guys.
Since “the wrong guys” were—and are—the only ones I seem to be drawn to, I’ve quit. Or . . . paused. New job. New city. A fresh start.
This is a cycle I’m determined to break.
“It’s just not for me,” I say. “I’ve tried it before—” I look at them. “Didn’t go my way.”
Brooke opens the fridge and takes out another cup of yogurt. She turns to Liz, eyebrows up, and Liz slowly shakes her head. Brooke, without breaking eye contact, slowly nods and peels up the corner of the lid.
Liz sighs. “Fine, thief. But now you owe me five.”
Brooke pumps a fist and rips it open. Then, to me, she says, “Maybe this guy—this hot neighbor —is the one to change all that.”
“Yeah, no. Hard pass. Matteo Morgan is not the kind of guy I’d be looking for even if I was interested in a relationship.”
“ Matteo ?” Liz says this on a sigh, as if his name conjures anything other than annoyance. “Sounds like a hot guy name.” She looks at me. “Sounds like a hot guy name, and the building is telling you that you shouldn’t just dismiss him.”
I shake my head. “I have to go. I have fourth graders.”
I do have to go. And I do have fourth graders.
I turn to leave, and as I do, I hear the two of them chant a sing-songy “Ooh, Matteo . . .! ” behind me.
“I’m calling HR.” I toss a look over my shoulder as I head to my room.