He poked at an ice cube in his tea with a straw. “Not officially.”
“When was this?” I kept staring at him, wondering what else I didn’t know about my friend’s life. Probably a billion things, just like she didn’t know about mine. That didn’t soothe the slightly queasy feeling surfacing from the magma.
“College. Sophomore year. We went to a couple parties together, that’s all.”
I took a sip of my iced tea, barely tasting it. “So you went to CU, huh? What was your major?” The sooner we got off the topic of Ally, the better. Especially since all I wanted to do was rip her face off to see the one underneath I clearly didn’t know at all.
“Dance,” he said, totally deadpan.
I choked on my drink. “What?”
His grin brought out his dimples. “Psychology, with a minor in Criminal Justice. You?”
“Photography. Much less impressive.” I smiled back.
“I never figured you for an art nerd,” he said, thinking. “You know, back when. Is that what you do now?”
I ran my finger around the rim of my cup’s lid. “I had my own business. It never really got off the ground, but I loved it. If I’d been able to pay the bills with it…” I shook my head. I didn’t want this date to get all depressing, no matter how I felt after Ally’s ‘warning.’ “I just got a job working for a toy factory, though. It’s a fun place so far.” When it wasn’t trying to kill me, of course. “What about you?”
He sipped his drink, then gave me a slow, long glance that revived the butterflies in my belly. “What do you think I do?”
“Well, you said you were on call last weekend and you always did really well in biology, so I would have guessed you were a doctor. But if you majored in psych, I’m going to have to go with psychiatrist.”
“Close, but no cigar.” He laid his arm across the table, his hand crossing the midline. Without meaning to, I mirrored him, our fingers not quite touching.
“Is that a metaphoric cigar, or a cigar that’s just a cigar?”
His eyes held mine, like one of those long moments of sexual tension in a chick flick. “Which do you want it to be?”
I felt myself flush, and not just my face. It had been so insanely long since I had flirted at all - at all - that I fumbled to find a good answer. I had been good at flirting once. Back when I had confidence. Back when I had something to be confident about. I opened my mouth to answer with whatever came out of my mouth, but I was saved the embarrassment by a loud, repetitive beep coming from Nicky’s back pocket.
He groaned and made an adorably sheepish grin as he pulled out his smartphone. “That’s my emergency ring. Sorry.” He hit the button to talk and said, “I’m not on call this weekend, Puchowsky.” Pause. “That’s too bad. But I’m in the middle of something important…” His eyebrows shot up, making him look younger than he had any right to. “Really? That’s—yeah, okay. I’ll be there A-SAP.” He hung up.
“What exactly do you do?” I asked, trying to keep my amused face on while my insides filled with disappointment.
That roguish half-grin showed up again, lessening my disappointment a little. “We’ll lead with that next time.”
“Next time?”
A gleam of worry flashed across his face before he hid it. “If I’m allowed a next time? I’m really sorry, Tess. If it were anything less than…than what it is, I’d have told Puchowsky to shove it. But it’s important. I’d love a raincheck. My treat, anything you want to do.”
I still had enough of a grasp on my ability to talk to men to keep my enthusiasm in check. Barely. “I’ll let you know,” I said, all cool and even. When his expression dimmed, I realized how it must’ve sounded and quickly added, “I mean, yes to the raincheck. I’ll let you know what I want to do.” Ladies and gentlemen, Tessa’s cool has left the building.
It was worth the stumble, though, to see that grin of his again. It lit him up with sexy excitement, and the idea that he was excited to see me flushed me with equal excitement. “Great. I look forward to it. Enjoy the lemonade, and have a great day. I wish I could do the end-of-date tap dance, but…”
I tried - and failed - to rein in my own grin. “But you are very important and have somewhere pressing to be. I get it. Go on.” I gave an imperious, sarcastic wave toward the door.
“My lady,” he said, kind of bowing, and touched his fingers to his forehead. “See ya, Tess.”
“Bye, Nicky.”
To be fair, watching him leave was its own kind of thrill. A thrill cut short in its prime as I noticed Ally’s dark glare from just outside the front window. I did my best to ignore her, gathering up my purse and my cup. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing her ‘well-meaning help’ had gotten to me. But she caught my eye again, ostentatiously fanning herself with a Kyle-and-Serabella magazine. Theatre had never been one of Ally’s strong subjects.
I wanted to give her the finger. To dump her frothy mochaccino grande with extra whipped cream all over her perfect blouse and flouncy robin’s egg skirt. To storm over there, rip the magazine in half, and make her eat the most offensive pages.
But that wasn’t me. I wasn’t the girl who made a scene over some guy. Not over Nicky, no matter how adorable his dimples, and certainly not over my lying ex-husband. Besides, my dignity was about all I had left in the world. I wasn’t about to sacrifice that for a glorious moment of vengeance.
Still, I spent all the steps between my table and the front door shouting at her in my head. How dare she bring up Kyle? How dare she say I had treated him badly when she hadn’t said so much as five words to him in the decade I had been married to him? When she was supposed to be my friend? Friends were supposed to invite you over for all the drinks you could hold to help you get over the jerk you’d broken up with, weren’t they? Or take you shopping? Or even just give you a hug? Not one of my high school friends had done even that much since I’d gotten back. And that had been before Kyle’s story hit every media outlet in print and online. How dare she lecture me on hurting people!
I had worked myself up into a good froth of my own as I reached down to push open the coffee shop door. Except the door wasn’t there when I leaned for it. Someone opened it from the outside, leaving me to stumble through the doorway and slam straight into them. My tea exploded between us as the cup crushed from the force, drenching my boobs in ice-cold, sticky, new-dress-staining brown-purple. I gasped and tried to shake the ice out of my bra without baring too much skin.
“I say!” exclaimed a very English voice.
I looked up into the wrinkled but roguish face of Harry Roundtop, the nice old man who had given me the rose. “I’m so, so sorry!” I blurted, using a handful of napkins grabbed from a nearby dispenser to blot at his soaked shirt.
“Accidents happen,” he said. “Why don’t you let me buy you another of those, and you can tell me what has you in such a state?”
For a second, I thought he was hitting on me. But one glance at those kindly eyes in their nest of wrinkles, and I could tell he just wanted to help. I opened my mouth to decline politely just as my mom’s voice blared in my head. Instead of a delicate apology and graceful exit, I blurted, “I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
I should have stayed and apologized, and maybe bought him a drink, since I’d probably ruined his shirt. I would have stayed, too, regardless of what my mom said, except that I happened to glance around us. Half a dozen people had stopped to stare at us, just on this side of the street. There were more I didn’t bother counting, including Ally, who had a perfect view of the blackberry tea destroying my brand new dress.
Mortified, I added insult to injury…and bolted back to the car.
Chapter 12
Mom met me at the garage door, her brightest smile collapsing in on itself as she caught a glimpse of me. “Tess, sweetie. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” I shouted up the stairs as I darted down to my room. You know, like the kid I clearly still w
as and would probably always be, no matter how hard I worked to change my life.
Further evidence of that awaited me in my room, sitting in a box with a San Francisco return address from Iceworm Interactive. The computer was gorgeous, lightweight, and purple. I set it up immediately, filled with equal parts irritation at my brother and electronic geek love. When I turned it on, the fans were so quiet I had to rely on the diagnostic lights to know it was working.
It came prepackaged with a Turdreza profile. I loaded his nickname for me with a few choice words directed halfway across the country in his general direction. The desktop wallpaper was a giant picture of that same said sibling, giving me a double thumbs-up with a huge, moronic grin.
“You’re such an idiot,” I said to it as I opened a file labeled: Read Me First!
“‘Dear Ms. Hargitay,’” I read aloud. “‘Here is your new work machine. Please give it a good home filled with awful pictures of ugly dogs or whatever it is you’re into these days. It was packaged incorrectly with a variety of photo manipulation software, so please disregard those. The important program is located in the file labeled Epic Awesomeness. Our tremendously wordy lawyers have included extra documentation regarding the nature of our non-disclosure standards that you should read when you have several hours to waste on it. Otherwise, the standard NDA will open on first use of the program. It is a legally binding document that will allow me to sue your pants off should you breathe a single word about anything involved in the game.’” I snorted. “Go ahead. My pants are about the only things I own.” I skimmed to the bottom of the amusing form letter tacked onto my brother’s note to find the post-script. “‘P.S. The computer’s color was a fatal design error. You can’t give it back; no one here will use it. Enjoy this shiny new tax write-off! (For us, not for you. Sorry.)’”
I closed the note and opened the game. Gates of Gossamerre appeared to be your standard-type fantasy massively multiplayer game. I spent almost an hour designing my fairy swordswoman before I got to the actual game, but I didn’t notice. It was nice to have something brainless to focus on, without strains of gossip or trails of my own self-doubt interrupting.
Maybe it was the day’s humiliation or the anger. Maybe it was having my date cut short or just that I had a long week of work behind me, complete with near-death experience. Whatever it was, I clearly needed a break—I played until the wee hours of Monday morning. I mean, I slept and ate and took bathroom breaks. But in all other respects, it was like I was still in high school.
And why not? Wasn’t that the way the rest of my life was going? In reverse? Pretty soon, I was going to get to play pretend all day long and not have to worry about anything worse than mean girls and forgetting my homework.
As I slew a monster several levels stronger than my swordsfairy, singlehandedly, and let out a loud whoop of triumph, I considered that maybe my desire to be a grown-up was seriously overrated. Screw relationships, paying the bills, and worrying about my mental health; game on!
Still, when 2 A.M. Monday morning rolled around, I turned off my beautiful pity computer, climbed into bed, and set my alarm for plenty of time to shower, dress, and prep for work.
Unfortunately, whatever luck I had in the game stayed in the game. My alarm didn’t go off. My mom didn’t wake me up. Instead, I bolted out of a nightmare involving a swarm of fireflies begging me to save them and stinging me repeatedly when I refused, glanced at the clock, and felt my stomach collapse. I showered at top speed, ran a comb through my hair, and chucked my makeup bag in the car with me.
Keeping the car at a legal speed proved difficult, but I knew my luck would put a cop out there, bored and ready for action. I pulled into the parking lot at Fairytale Endings five minutes late, but it was empty. I parked next to Mueller’s truck in the back lot and racked my brain for a reason nobody else had showed up. Was it a day off and I didn’t know? No, several times on Friday someone had mentioned the machinists were returning to work on Monday. Mueller complained about it at least three times. As far as I could reason, they should be here.
Armed with that logic - but with my stomach gremlin still doing back flips in the dark - I dashed inside to clock in.
Robin wasn’t at her desk. I considered using my new security clearance to make sure Robin wasn’t using Maysie’s office, but decided that wasn’t the kind of emergency Maysie intended. I didn’t find the teenager in the bathroom or the break room. For a minute or two, I felt like I was lost in a Stephen King novel, except without the creepy metallic bits that fell out of people who should be there. Then I noticed the factory was as noisy as it usually was during the day, so no worries about freaky mouth-beasts arriving to eat this part of space-time with me still in it.
“Mueller?” I called as I walked onto the floor, enjoying the loud slam of the door closing behind me. Every machine was powered and chugging away, even The Ogre. In fact, it looked brand new, like it had never collapsed, almost killed us, and been cobbled back together in a hurry.
Panic started to set in. “If this is a prank, Mueller, you’re going to be in deep—”
“You’re in early,” Mueller said from a foot behind me, making me jump.
I whirled around and punched him lightly. “Don’t do that!”
He winced and rubbed the spot I punched. “Ditto. That’s the same place you hit me with the Happily Ever After.”
“Yeah, well, sneak up on me again and I’ll hit harder next time.”
“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed, didja?” He gave me a second look, taking in my face and hair and the rumpled state of my t-shirt. A sly smile slid across his scruffy face. “Or should I ask the wrong side of whose bed did you wake up on? It wasn’t that dude in the suit, was it? That was the effing Chisel, Tessa. You can’t sleep with the Chisel. The Hammer, sure. The Drill, definitely. But not the Chisel.”
I crossed my arms over my hastily chosen Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt. “Are those real people, or are you just picking tools that can describe sexual activities?”
He chuckled, low and rumbly, like a bear who had stolen a picnic basket from some poor dupe, but refused to answer.
I sighed but caught myself smiling. “So, where is everybody? I thought the floor crew was supposed to start back today?”
“Whaddya mean?” One dark eyebrow arched while the other wrinkled. Like Mr. Spock, except full of emotion that looked a lot like humored incredulity.
“You know what I mean. I had a bad weekend, so please just answer the question.”
Incredulity became a glower and intimidating-man pose, arms over chest, head slightly forward, legs planted shoulder-width apart. “Weren’t you supposed to have a date?”
I nodded, the intimidation factor making me want to step back, away from his intensity, but I held my ground.
“He a jerk? Want me to track him down and give him hell?”
The tension fled from my shoulders. He was concerned for me, not angry. I must be more tired than I thought. “No, he was perfect. He had to leave almost immediately. Before you say he ditched me, we have a raincheck. He wants to go out again.”
“Did you make specific plans?” Now it seemed like he actually was glowering at me.
I shook my head. “No, but—hey! Don’t change the subject. Where are all the floor workers?”
He glanced this way and that, then came back to eye me in confusion. “Uh, right here?”
I stamped my foot, out of patience to deal with his antics. “No, the machine operators. They were supposed to start back today.”
He made a thumbs-up sign with both hands, then angled his thumbs at his face. “Right here, babe,” he said again.
“Stop playing, Mueller. There should be dozens of women all over this room.”
“Hell yeah, there should be. All over this room, and all over me.” He gave a little hyuck and drifted, lost in his imagination.
I snapped my fingers in front of his face to bring him back to the present. “Stop being an ass and answer my ques
tion.”
He spread his hands. “What do you want from me? I’m telling you the truth here. It hasn’t been anyone but me and you for months.”
“What are you talking about? I just started here a week ago!” I ran my hands through my still-damp hair and roared my frustration. “I don’t know what kind of messed up joke you’re trying to pull off here, but I’m not playing anymore. You can eat lunch by yourself today.”
Back in my file room, I resisted the urge to throw my neat piles of employee files all over the room. As satisfying as it would have been, I was a professional. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood to make more work for myself. I got back to sorting, burying myself in the repetition of organizing alphabetically by year. So intent was I, in fact, that I only stopped when I ran out of floor piles to dissect.
Standing back, I folded my arms in satisfaction and viewed my progress with pride. Towers of files stood in perfect, neat piles as tall as I could stack them without causing an avalanche. Oh, there were still dozens of piles on top of the cabinets and the cabinets themselves to get through, and that was just for the initial organization effort. Afterward would be the more difficult task of standardizing the contents and bringing the current ones up to snuff, but for now I allowed myself the glow of accomplishment.
Now that the floor was bare, the tiny bits of paper littering the floor amid the dust and dirt really stood out. I had no doubt that continued work would fill it back up again, but now was a good time to clean.
I left my self-imposed isolation and trotted downstairs to grab a broom and cloths from the janitor’s closet. Part of me said I should go back through the heavy factory doors and apologize to Mueller for getting so angry. The rest of me insisted I let him rot. After all, he wouldn’t feel guilty if I apologized to him. I went with the latter and headed back upstairs.
With the slim windows open to let in fresh summer air (Mueller must have fixed them after I complained), I propped the door open and went through the dance of cleaning out my small space. The cabinets almost gleamed after I wiped them down, the wood a deep, rich color that impressed me on some weird level. I had never been much of a homemaker; I couldn’t give a room that warm, homey feeling that my mom did seemingly with a wave of her hand, no matter how hard I tried. My walls usually ended up looking like strange collages that only made sense to me. The furniture looked like an IKEA had thrown up and I pulled out whatever was least gross and put it in my living room. So to find any kind of delight or appreciation in a piece of woodworking as mundane as a filing cabinet…it was weird.
One Good Wand Page 12
