Chapter 10
I really, truly do not expect anything to change in my relationship with Jesse—at least not for the better.
He likes me. Fine. Sure. But clearly has some kind of hang-up about it. And I…well, I may have liked him for years, but that ship has sailed and even sunk, about a year ago. I have no intention of putting up a fight against the aforementioned hang-up.
So, that’s it. Game over. He and I are going to be colleagues, good colleagues, but I’m determined to not think about him in any nonprofessional capacity for a second longer.
And yet, Jesse might have other ideas.
I get a sense of it the following morning, when I’m precariously balancing food on my plate at the breakfast buffet, wondering if I can fit that banana-walnut muffin on top of my eggs and still reasonably expect that the majestic architectural structure I built won’t collapse.
Yes—I hype myself up—I can do this.
Except, no. I can’t. I realize it on my way back to the table, when the muffin wobbles and slips and begins a tragic, facedown plunge that—
A large hand catches the muffin before its untimely demise.
“Watch out,” a voice says as the muffin is deposited back on my plate.
I turn around, because the voice sounds a lot like Jesse’s and…
Yup, he’s standing there. Right beside me.
Taking my plate from my hands and setting it on the nearest table, where Kai and Shannon are fighting over the Ubisoft formula.
“Here okay?” he asks, like the kind, attentive gesture he just performed for me is a totally normal occurrence between us.
I nod. Meet his eyes. “Um…Thank you?”
“You’re welcome.”
I want to say more, but one of Nephilim’s developers is already hogging Jesse’s attention, asking a question about the patches they’ve been issuing for their most recent game. Jesse nods, a cup of coffee in one hand, a green apple in the other, and I’m forgotten.
I gingerly take a seat and start eating my breakfast.
The muffin turns out to be delicious.
Afterward, Mike and Otto decide that we should go outside and take a group picture, presumably with the purpose of convincing StarPlay that the team-building retreat they are paying handsomely for is, indeed, building a team.
I’m not sure how the snowball fight begins—maybe it’s John, tripping over Shannon as she makes a snow angel, though it might have been Ashley throwing a ball at Clara and accidentally hitting John.
All I know is that it becomes a Nephilim versus FlyButter conflict really fast, and I spend the following twenty minutes shoveling to help Mila build a snow fort.
At which point, I must resentfully admit that while the cotton mittens Aunt Selene crocheted for me are colorful and very cute, they might not have been the best gear for this specific activity.
I go through a couple of different stages of misery—freezing pain, wishing for a swift death, wanting to chop off both my hands—but by the time the fort is finally ready I’m mostly feeling numb.
“My fingers are not even cold anymore,” I marvel. “I think I’ve conquered the concept of physical suffering?”
“You haven’t,” Mila says. “It’s just the first step toward hypothermia. Go run your hands under hot water.” She runs after Otto, leaving me alone with gruesome visions of frostbite and amputation, and I decide that she’s right. I should go back inside for a minute.
It’s on the porch that I cross paths with Jesse. Again. He’s leaning against one of the wooden columns, eyes never leaving me, and when I’m close enough he says, “You should take your mittens off. They’re drenched.”
So weird, all these interactions he’s been initiating—especially after our disastrous conversation last night. So, so weird.
“Yeah.” I stand in front of him to shake the snow off the tips of my boots. “I don’t think I’m well equipped for this trip. I thought there would be…I don’t know. Fewer outings, and more sugar cookies.”
“I can tell,” he says, but there’s no bite to it. The opposite, in fact. Because Jesse takes the soaked mittens off my hands, tosses them on the rocking chair right beside us, and wraps his palms around my icy fingers.
My heart, and about half of my internal organs, cease to function.
His grip is warm. Toasty. Delicious, after the stabbing ice of the snow. He smells good. His body shields me from the frigid air, and yet I’m trembling anyway.
“You don’t like the snow much, do you?” he asks, like this is a totally normal exchange between us. His tone is…well, no different from the way he’s been speaking to me for years. Polite but reserved. Except, I pick up on an undercurrent of something else. Something new.
“Nope,” I say, harnessing my stuttering brain to find my voice. “I hate the cold. You don’t?”
“Don’t really feel it too much.”
I bet. I look up at him, taking in the way he’s made, the height and the width, the pink flush on his cheekbones under the rim of his glasses. Suddenly, I don’t feel the cold too much, either.
“Do you remember our first meeting?” he asks.
I blink at the abrupt change in topic. “The interview, right? Unless there was another time before…?”
He shakes his head. “Your interview for that programming position. About six years ago.” A beat. “Do you remember what happened?”
“I do, actually. The guy made a shitty joke, I got mad, told him he could fuck right off, and stormed out. Then you ran after me and apologized on his behalf.” I shrug. “Did I miss anything?”
“Do you remember what you said to me?”
“Yes. Well, not word by word. I had a migraine that day, so it’s a bit fuzzy. But I do remember ranting about that guy and this whole industry. Isn’t that how it went?”
“Not quite.” He exhales. The air around his handsome face blows white. His hands are still wrapped around mine. “Do you remember that I asked you out?”
“You what?” I laugh, genuinely amused. “No. No, you didn’t. You must be confusing me with…” I trail off when I notice the way he’s looking at me, like I’m missing a very important puzzle piece, right there, at the center of the picture.
I try to recall our conversation. It’s all very hazy, but I can almost see Jesse’s face in my head, a few years younger, face rounder and more boyish.
Hopeful.
“I was wondering,” he said, gently, a little tentative. So different from the firm way he’d spoken to his dickhead of a boss. “If you…”
I covered my mouth with a yawn. “Sorry! I’m so tired today—can’t believe I stayed up so late to prep to impress that asshole.”
“Don’t worry about that. Would you like to get coffee?”
“Oh, no. No, don’t worry. Not going to fall asleep at the wheel.” I flashed him a grin. “ ’Cause I can’t afford a car, yet.”
“Ah.”
“Oh my god,” I say now. “Was it—when you mentioned coffee…?”
He nods. “It occurred to me yesterday, when you told me that I should have just asked you out, that maybe you didn’t understand. Because I did ask. And you said no.”
I want to crumple into myself and die. “I had no idea! I…” He needs to let go of my hands, so I can use them to hide my face and maybe stab myself repeatedly with a pine cone.
But wait. So I didn’t catch that he asked me out. I was dumb, okay, but it still doesn’t warrant the way he pretended I didn’t exist for—
“And then something else occurred to me,” he continues gently. “That if you couldn’t recall me asking you out, maybe you couldn’t recall what you told me afterward. Do you?”
I shake my head, even as I say, “The rant?”
“The rant was justified. You were upset for very valid reasons. You told me about the challenges of being a woman in such a male-dominated field. Gave me some examples of truly egregious things that happened to you. And one of them was this guy you’d done an internship with, back in college.
He asked you out several times, and each time you rejected him.
He was insistent, and now that you were both starting to work as developers, you constantly saw him at conferences and workshops.
Whenever he was around you felt uncomfortable, and—”
“Oh my god.” This time I do free my hands, which tingle pleasantly long past the end of his touch.
I take a step back. “You thought I was warning you. You thought that you’d asked me out, I’d rejected you, and then I told you the story to—you thought it was an indirect way to ask you to keep your distance. ”
He presses his lips together and nods, and…
He clearly has had a few hours to get used to this screwball piece of misunderstanding, because he appears to see the humor in it.
But all I can think of is that shortly after our first encounter, I was going to develop a massive, years-enduring, ostensibly unrequited crush on him.
And he’d asked me out.
And I…
“I hadn’t realized it.”
“I know.” He thrusts his hands in his pockets. “It became obvious yesterday, when you confronted me.”
“So you just…You avoided me because…”
“I thought it was what you wanted.”
“But what about…I tried to make conversation with you, several times, and I would smile at you and try to be nice, and—”
“Always in group settings,” he points out quietly, biting the inside of his cheek.
“I figured that because we had acquaintances in common, you couldn’t avoid me.
And…Viola, you’re a nice person. You’re nice to everyone.
I didn’t take you being nice to me as an invitation, and I definitely didn’t think it would overwrite the request you’d made of me years earlier—”
“But I didn’t! I never made that request, and…What about the mistletoe? That was so mean!”
He looks away, huffing out an unamused, misty-white laugh.
“That one…I couldn’t stop thinking about how cornered you must have felt, after.
But in the moment, it was such a mindfuck, Viola.
Because I’d been wanting that kiss for the longest time, and the opportunity was there, served to me like a fucking holiday present.
But I also knew how little you wanted me around, and…
” He shakes his head. His smile is small and wistful, like he finds the fact that we’re finally clearing up this years-long misunderstanding funny, but also heartbreaking.
And I think I might be. Heartbroken, that is. Because now that I know that then-Jesse liked then-Viola, I cannot stop remembering how much then-Viola liked him.
“You told my cousin that you wanted nothing to do with me,” I say dully.
“You mentioned that, and…I don’t remember exactly what I said, honestly. But I do recall him asking me why I didn’t kiss you, and…taking the blame, making it sound like I was the one who had issues with you, it seemed fair.”
“Fair?”
“Instead of explaining what had happened between us years earlier and—”
“Jesse!” Clara screams from the thick of the snowball fight. “A little help here? We’re losing and need someone with powerful arms!”
He sighs indulgently. “Coming!” he yells back, and then, lower, to me: “Here.”
I glance at his hand. He’s holding out a pair of black, well-insulated snow gloves. They are worn, and made for bigger hands, and…
“Oh, no. I can’t steal your—”
“Yeah, you can.” He takes my wrist and puts the gloves in the palm of my hand. I let him, suddenly, uncharacteristically passive. I think I’m still in a stupor.
“Jesse!” Clara, again. “We’re being decimated.”
“Yup, coming.”
I stare at his back as he jogs to one of the forts, wondering if I hallucinated what he told me. Maybe I was hit in the head by a stray snowball. Maybe I’m lying belly-up on the ground. Maybe life is just a computer simulation.
Jesse’s gloves, though, are in my hand, holding a warmth that could come only from his body.