Chapter Five #2
The Keurig’s ominous bubbling is just loud enough to drown out my thoughts when I shove a pod into place, but even in my haggard state, I’m not sure there’s a sonic boom aggressive enough to make me forget James’s presence just behind me.
At least we’re not talking, though. If the new plan is that we remain silent around each other except when completely necessary, I will happily sign that contract. No lawyer needed.
James has been scratched off the list, I remind myself. He doesn’t get even a second in my head that isn’t business-related.
It’s such a momentary relief, I feel my shoulders slack. James and I are co-workers. Nothing more. And we might not even be that for much longer if I can’t get my shit together.
“You done for the day?” James asks.
Or at least, that’s what I think he asks. The coffee machine chooses then to make a series of beeps and to flash a triangle with an exclamation point on its little screen in the universal sign of something is fucked up.
That makes two of us.
“What did you say?” I ask as I use the palm of my hand to whack the Keurig’s side. When that doesn’t work, I unplug it and plug it back in.
The triangle of doom is still there.
“I asked if you were done recording for the day,” James says.
“Nope.”
From the periphery, I can see him nod like this is news, but like the stupid coffee machine, I don’t bother responding.
After another whack for good measure, it becomes abundantly clear I’d be better off asking one of the rocks outside for water than this machine for caffeine.
I’m tired, definitely hangry, and depleted on every level, and I blame that shitty cocktail of human emotions for what I say when I whirl on a startled James.
“If you give me whatever is in that cup, we can forgo the social media. We don’t even have to try. I’ll sign whatever, do whatever…just give me your coffee.”
James is perfectly still except for his index finger thumping on the cup. I watch as he raises the cup to his lips and takes an annoying, long slug.
“You can’t be serious,” he says when he’s done.
“I am, though.”
“Because you want coffee that badly or because you finally came to your senses and agree that it’s too much work and effort to parade ourselves around the Internet like performing monkeys?”
I track his hand as he raises the cup for another sip.
“Can’t it be both?” I ask.
“With you? Probably not.”
I scoff. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough to know you’re overreacting.”
It’s the most terribly perfect thing to say, because it sucks the oxygen out of my head so completely, even the smoke doesn’t stand a chance of surviving. Instead it’s replaced with pure, refined rage.
“Look,” I spit. (Actually spit. Just a little dribble from my loose, tired lips, but still.
) “I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be here anymore.
This whole thing was a cosmic mistake. Thank you for giving me your lawyer’s card, I guess, but I’m not cut out for this and I never was and that’s why they gave my podcast to someone else and why the Reddit boards are lit up with how good the new host is and how they miss Juniper, but this one brings the fire. ”
This time when James takes a drink, he finishes his swallow with an obnoxious ahh.
I’m going to murder him.
“Apologies, Arabella, ” he says mockingly, “but we both signed contracts and neither of us could get out even if we wanted to. You sealed your fate and mine with your…persistence. Seems a pity to waste Genie’s considerable efforts.
I think it would be rude if we didn’t keep our word to at least give it the good ol’ college try, don’t you? ”
Somewhere in space and time, in some alternate universe, there is a Juniper Green who calmly walks outside and touches grass.
She takes deep breaths, maybe Serena calls her back and helps calm her heart rate and racing mind, and then she goes inside and confidently kicks ass to finish up her first day on the job.
This is not that space. Or that time.
I don’t have enough left in me to check the impulse to reach across the table and snatch James’s coffee cup, and I certainly don’t have the wherewithal to notice that the lid isn’t fully attached or that physics dictates the surface of the cup and the surface of the table don’t match and therefore it skitters instead of glides towardme.
The nearly full coffee spills in a spectacular burst of creamy brown espresso and—because I had to lean so far forward to grab it—instead of falling onto the conference table, it splashes down my cardigan and into my bra and shirt.
Mom’s shirt. The Meadow Mama shirt.
This fucking shirt.
Because of course it does.
James stands before I can let out so much as a whimper, grabbing paper towels and dabbing at where the coffee is spreading across the table.
If Mom were here, she would laugh with me, and I would be laughing because that was the default between us: lightness and humor and bright sides.
If Mom were here, she would promise to make me another shirt, but then again…
I wouldn’t be wearing this one if she were.
This was supposed to be an homage or maybe an emblem to bring good luck, but either way, it was meant to make it feel like she’s with me, and now I’ve gone and done something stupid and ruined one of the only Mom artifacts I have left from the museum of what once was.
“The shirt…” It comes out pathetic and weak but I don’t care. It was my Mom’s, I mean to say, but instead all I can do is let out a ridiculous, pitiful sound that I’m pretty sure only guinea pigs can hear.
James must have superhuman hearing, because at my whimper, his eyes drag up from table coffee to shirt coffee to my face, which I can feel is already wet with the tears I’ve been holding back for hours.
He’s at my side in an instant.
“Juniper—”
“Sorry,” I say, though I don’t know why. “Sorry…”
My voice dies in my throat as James moves my cardigan aside, the back of his hands brushing the undersides of my upper arms.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Look, it’s not much. If we can’t get it out, we’ll get you another shirt.”
He pauses as I shrug the cardigan the rest of the way off my shoulders and he sees the shirt in its entirety.
“Oh shit,” he whispers, and he sounds…shocked. “This is your shirt?”
I look down, try to guess at what he’s so obviously dismayed by.
“I’m not a mother if that’s what you’re asking,” I say. “This was my mom’s, and now it’s ruined. On the first day of this stupid project that I should have known better than to join. It’s an omen. A harbinger. A—”
“Take off the shirt.”
His voice is nothing short of a command. I’m so shocked by the conviction in it, the rest of my brain goes blissfully quiet. Finally.
“What did you say?” I ask again, but this time I really do think I’m losing my mind.
“Take it off, please, ” James says, unbuttoning his own shirt as he speaks.
I blink at him a few times, but no amount of blinking will erase the view of his chest barreling into his arms or the way his jeans hang on his hips or how fluidly he frees himself of the sleeves.
“I don’t—”
“You want your shirt clean?” His voice is sure, commanding. “Give it to me. Quick. The longer you leave the coffee, the worse the stain is going to be.”
He doesn’t make a big thing of it, handing me his button-down. Nor does he make a thing out of how superhero-y his stomach still looks, but that doesn’t stop my mind from making it a Whole Thing for us.
I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved that he doesn’t even try to look at me in the two seconds where I’m in just my bra.
He very pointedly looks away and holds his hand out toward me, his gaze studying the wheel of one of the chairs like he’ll be required to take it apart and then put it back together.
He turns his also-muscular back to me the second the shirt fabric touches his palm.
Out of all the ways I saw the first day on the job going, this is maybe the last one: James bare-chested washing my mom’s old shirt inside out in the tiny sink that is only supposed to be used to rinse out mugs while I watch in nothing but a bra, jeans, and his button-down, which most definitely smells like soap and coffee at the collar and most definitely will not button over my boobs.
Or across my hips and stomach for that matter. Like, how fit is this guy?
I go for the hospital gown look, putting his shirt on backward so at least my front is covered when James’s brain inevitably clicks back on and he realizes what he’s done.
Because surely he doesn’t mean to be doing this. It’s probably some instinct drilled into him by costumers and stagehands: Save the garment.
He can’t know how important this shirt is to me. It has nothing to do with me personally.
But then again, when James does turn around, holding my wet shirt that looks impossibly small in his hands, it’s almost like he maybe more-than-knows.
Like he understands. His face is softer, not an ounce of the mockery from before the spill, and his mouth tilts just a little when he sees how ridiculous his shirt looks on me.
“Most of the coffee is out,” he says, and then adds regretfully, “People probably won’t notice the discoloration, but you’ll always be able to tell since you know what it looked like before.”
It occurs to me that from the start—since that dingy excuse of a dressing room in college—I’ve told this man too much, revealed too much. I can’t find it in myself to stop now.
“It was my mom’s,” I tell him again. “She loved this stupid shirt. Made it herself during the embroidery phase that she would circle back to every few months when she got tired of her other hobbies.” I sigh. “I made fun of her for wearing it.”
Still-shirtless James asks, “Your mom liked The Meadow, too, I take it?”
Somehow, bringing her into this space if in name only is the calmest I’ve felt all day. It doesn’t feel like betrayal or grief. With James doing the prompting, it feels natural to speak Mom’s name, even to laugh a little at the memory of her.
“ Liked seems not strong enough a word. She adored it. She was always reading my favorite books because she wanted to know what I was talking about when I got truly obsessed, but usually she only read them for me. The Meadow she loved for herself.”
“Is that why you took this gig?” James asks, carefully draping my wet shirt over the back of a leather wheely chair. “To make her proud?”
It’s an earnest question, not a jackass prying question, so I think about my answer, less and less aware of our wardrobe exchange and his shirtless torso.
“Probably a little,” I admit. “But I don’t think it’s to make her proud. I think it’s to…I don’t know? It sounds stupid, but I’ve always hoped she would come back to haunt me a little bit. Maybe this is what she will come back for. Maybe this is what causes her to come Casper me for a while.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” James says.
He pauses, but I can tell he’s thinking about saying something else.
His tone is careful when he adds, “My mom liked The Meadow. She sounds like your mom, actually. An artist of sorts who was also obsessed with a teenage book series. I used to think it was embarrassing, but now that she…Well, she’s gone, too. It’s why I considered the project in the first place.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I say. “God, I know that’s useless and cliché and does absolutely nothing, but I really am.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry, too. About yours.”
“You already said that part,” I say. “Ten years ago, give or take.”
We’re on opposite ends of the table again after the sink washing. And now we’re properly looking at each other, but not at each other’s half-clothed bodies.
I’ve often wondered if actors have special eyeball magic all their own, a way to convey emotions through the slightest eyebrow twitch, the bat of an eyelash. Do they stand in front of mirrors to practice changing from one micro-expression to the next?
James must. Because as I watch, he shapeshifts from uncaring, authoritarian jerk face James Freakin’ Neely to James. Just James. James of the still-damp hands from where he rescued my shirt for no reason other than I was obviously distressed.
“You need food,” he says, his eyes unchanging. “And evidently, I need another coffee.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “About the coffee, I mean. But, um—” I gesture down at his backward button-down. “—I know Tatum is pretty casual, but this might be pushing the envelope.”
“Right,” James says. “Right.”
He looks around the conference room like maybe a magic talking wardrobe will appear with outfits for us both.
But the magic isn’t here, of course, so instead we root around through the low wooden cabinets bordering the sink until we find a white tablecloth that has—lucky me—only one dead bug atop its folded corners.
“Little Mermaid chic,” I quip, tying two corners behind my neck like a halter top and tucking the overflowing middle into my bra band until I resemble a washed-up Ariel in her sail.
James shrugs his shirt back on.
“I can drive you back to your house to change,” he says. “I’m not sure if your hemline is going to be conducive to road safety.”
We both look down at the long train of cloth wrapped about my ankles.
“It’s really not worth the drive,” I say. “Would you mind maybe grabbing me a new shirt? I think they have some for sale behind the counter at the coffee shop next to the chocolatier.”
This is the part where James Freakin’ Neely comes back, I’m sure of it.
He’s going to roll his eyes and say that he’s paid his debt, he doesn’t owe me anything. He cleaned my mom’s shirt. Is that not enough?
Instead, the micro-expression of concern on his face shifts to one I can’t read for the life of me.
“Are you always this accident-prone? Maybe I should invest in three or four of them to stash around the studio as backups. As…” He pauses like he’s searching for the perfect word. “As distinguished as you look in your tablecloth frock, I think that might be best to avoid potential future mishaps.”
“Thanks, James.”
He waves off my gratitude.
“You owe me now,” he says, but instead of a threat, it sounds like a joke, like something a friend would say to a friend.
“I’ll write you a check,” I say dryly. “ Moo. ”
“Moo to you, too,” he says, and his eyes hold mine for the longest second before he closes the door.