Chapter 20
Chapter
It’s been a while since I had a late-night adventure in this office. There was a time in sixth grade when Mom was spiraling about a deadline, and she didn’t have anywhere to park me—Tita Wendy and Greg were living up north then—so she brought me along and I wandered the empty floors.
It was eerie to see all these slots where people were supposed to go, but with no people in them.
There were the cubicle walls to contain them, the chair to hold them, all their belongings arranged at arm’s length.
I’d play pretend, tell myself I was the sole survivor after a zombie apocalypse, hiding under someone’s desk in the Data Analytics Department.
But somehow I’d never even considered going to the roof.
“They kept adding on to the original structure,” Mark Winterson says as I follow him down a narrow hall that he had to badge into.
“Whenever the company expanded. But sometimes it was more haphazard than others.” He glances back over his shoulder at me.
“Anyway, the path to the roof gets trickier in a minute.”
We come to a dimly lit stairwell and climb to the top. And there is…a metal ladder built into the wall, disappearing into a hatch above?
“You ready for this?” he asks.
“Oh yeah.” I can’t help but laugh at the sight of it. “Born ready.”
He shrugs off his jacket, folding it and leaving it on the floor. The floor! I fight off the visceral urge to grab it and dust it off. It looks expensive—but I’m not sure I could recognize an expensive one in a police lineup of cheap ones.
Then I’m distracted by Mark Winterson rolling up his sleeves. I’m a sucker for a strong forearm.
He flicks his head upward. “Ladies first.”
“You going to look up my skirt?” I’ve figured out that he likes when I give him shit, but my stomach dips after I say it, wondering if I pushed it too far.
He puts a hand over his heart and lurches forward. “You wound me, Ruby. Can’t believe you’d think I’m anything but a gentleman.” The corner of his mouth turns up. “I promise I won’t look, but I want to be there in case you slip.”
I’m debating whether to kick off my heels, but I don’t know what walking on the roof is going to be like. And Mom did drill into me never to leave my belongings unattended.
So I step onto the ladder, first rung wedged between my high heel and the sole, and hoist myself up.
“There you go,” Mark Winterson says, hands hovering near my waist, ready to catch me. And as I get higher up the ladder, he adds: “My eyes are averted, okay? Tell me when to look.”
I push open the hatch and hoist myself through, bare knees on the grit of the roof.
“All clear,” I say, peering back down at Mark Winterson—who, true to his word, is dutifully staring at a patch of ceiling off to the left.
I sit on a metal air duct and take in my surroundings.
The view is really something—the campus and blocky buildings of TKCORP spread out below, the dark expanse of Sterling Field, the old school building slumbering squat in the distance.
Suburban rooftops fanning out in cul-de-sac configurations all around, cozy lights on inside every house.
Mark Winterson catches up and sits beside me, elbows resting on his thighs and hands clasped between.
“So,” he says. “Worth the climb?”
“I’ve been visiting this building my whole life, but I never saw it from this angle.”
He grins like this is a huge accomplishment. “I like to get to know the ins and outs of a place.”
“My mom would have been so mad if she knew I came up here.” I lean back on my palms, staring up at the thin crescent moon. “Disrespectful to TKCORP or something.”
“Hey, Ruby, I…I’m really sorry about your mom.”
People say that all the time, rote and polite, but the way his voice softens when he says it gives me a hazy feeling in my gut.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
“How have…things been for you lately? With your family thing?”
“Oh, you know. Family—it can be a lot.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Mm, seems like a bad idea to tell my boss’s boss’s boss about my mommy issues.
” I give him a toothy grin. In eighth grade, Greg dubbed it my Bugs Bunny grin, because my top front teeth are bigger than the others.
(Is that supposed to be an insult? I’d asked, and Greg blushed.
No, it’s too cute, he said. Be careful how you use that thing.)
“At least, not on the first roof excursion,” I add. “Maybe, like, the tenth.”
Mark Winterson makes a dismissive sound. “I’ll see you your mommy issues and raise you my daddy issues.”
“Oh, you have those?” I say so brightly, it makes him laugh. “All right, you go first.”
It’s funny—somehow, feeling like he’s out of my league and there’s no chance anything can happen turns me into my weirdest, pushiest self.
Mark Winterson smiles open-mouthed and glances around theatrically, as though he’s hoping to make eye contact with some bystander and say, Can you believe this girl? But of course we’re alone up here.
He leans forward on his knees. “Maybe…you’ll think it’s dumb. And I can’t complain, in life. Had a lot of advantages, growing up.”
For someone who seems to be all swagger during the daytime, this blush of self-awareness is a bit disarming.
He re-adjusts where his feet are planted, and the motion once again draws my eye to his dress shoes, and the way his socks hug his ankles. They’re so…shapely? Wow, maybe I’m the Victorian child.
“Now I’m in suspense,” I say.
“My dad’s tough,” he says, finally. “Big personality. Impossible to impress. Always reminding me how I fall short.”
I nod, watching the blinking lights of a plane as it glides across the sky overhead. “Can’t tell you how deeply I relate to that.”
“Oh?” He turns his head to look at me.
“Yeah, I always feel like a failure.” I say it with a laugh, tone jokey. Letting him in, but not enough that I can’t deny it happened later, if I need to.
“You work at TKCORP. You must be doing something right.”
“Do they pay you to say that? Do you get a commission?”
“A modest two percent,” he says, grinning at me.
The wind picks up on the roof, ruffling my hair. “My mom’s…very critical.” Oh shit, wrong tense for this audience. “I mean, she was. That was her way of showing she cared. Always wanting me to be better. Have a better life than her.”
That precarious feeling of saying too much overtakes me.
Mark Winterson knocks the side of his shoe playfully against mine. “Can’t believe we have so much in common.” He’s matching my light tone, but there’s something wistful at the end.
“I should get back,” I say, standing again. “Erica’s going to kill me if I don’t finish this thing by tomorrow morning.”
“Can I help?”
“Ohhh, uh…” The thought embarrasses me—Mark Winterson crouching next to my desk in the dark office, seeing how perplexed I am by Excel? Maybe it would even put my job at risk. “No no, it’s fine. I’ve got this.”
He insists on going first so he can spot me. And it’s good that he did, because as I’m climbing down, there’s a snap, and I slip with a shriek. I got these shoes at TKMART for cheap, and the pressure from the rung must have broken the heel clean off.
“Oof!” Mark Winterson exclaims as I crash into him. His chest is warm and solid against my back; his arms wrap around me, stopping my fall. He chuckles, and I feel the vibration in my spine. “Got you,” he says, hot breath tickling my ear.
He promptly lets me go and I spin to face him. He’s gazing down at me, lids half closed, and—am I imagining it?—his soft brown eyes look pained, like he wants something he can’t have. His lips part slightly, and for a second, I’m convinced he’s about to kiss me.
Instead he blinks a couple times, takes a step backward, and delicately clears his throat into his fist. Like he’s committed to being a gentleman, but in this moment it’s a struggle.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Oh…yeah. Thanks.” I stoop to take off my broken shoe. “Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” The corner of his mouth tilts up as he retrieves his jacket and dusts it off.
“I’m sorry your shoes got ruined. This is my fault—it was my idea.
” And he plucks the broken shoe out of my hand, flipping it over and hunting for the size before I can snatch it back. “Let me replace them.”
“Oh no. No no.” I wave my hands. He’s not serious, right? It’s probably a thing rich people toss around, like we should get lunch sometime.
“I—I should really—” I point behind me.
“Of course, right. I’ll walk with you.”
I’m quiet most of the way back, and so is he.
But when we’re moving down that narrow hall I’d never seen before, almost back to my department on the eighth floor, I start laughing.
Mark Winterson glances over at me, laughing too. “What’s funny?”
I just shake my head, and he gives me a sleepy smile. “You sure you’re going to stay?” he adds.
“Yeah! Yeah, I’ve got to.”
“Burning the midnight oil, I respect it. Glad I could get you to take a break, at least.” He walks me to my cubicle and raps the wall with his knuckles. “Good night, Ruby.”
True to form, he heads for the stairwell. Once he’s gone, I let out a long breath and slump against my cubicle divider.
It’s clearer to me, in retrospect: Sure, he’s sickeningly attractive and makes my heart flutter sometimes. I’m only human. But until tonight, I’d classified him in my head as Not a Person I Would Actually Like on the Inside.
But as I make a Cup Noodles from the vending machine, I keep replaying our conversation from the roof, that wistful note in his voice, the moment he caught me. And I think: Well, Ruby, maybe you were wrong about him.