by Nikky Kaye
“It’s hella cold,” Dara pronounced, pushing me back to the door. “Next time have your personal crisis in summertime, okay?”
“You dragged us up here.”
The warm air washed over us as she yanked the door open. “Just wanted you to see what it felt like to be out in the cold,” she said over her shoulder.
The big metal door clunked shut behind us, the fluorescent light seeming dimmer than the afternoon sun.
“You think I should give him another chance,” I said.
“I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. How would you feel about him dating someone else? Sleeping with someone else?”
I flinched. The idea made me ill.
The truth was that I still loved him. Maybe Dara was right. Should I let this be the deal-breaker between us? How many chances did one give love? One? Five? As many as it took?
“If you were still writing Miss Behave, what advice would you give yourself?” she added as she continued down the stairs.
My hand grabbed the railing as I stopped suddenly.
* * *
The next day, I arrived at the office riding a unicorn.
At least, that’s what it felt like. Getting off the elevator was normal. I glanced at the door to the storage room with longing, wishing I could go back in time to flirt with Ash again. To be so close to him that I could smell his scent, feel his hands on me, hear his low chuckles in my ear…
Distracted by the memories, I almost didn’t notice that a couple of people in the hallway looked at me curiously. Almost. And as I walked down the hall past Rob’s office, I felt his gaze on me through the open doorway like a physical touch.
Yeah, I was late, but Vikas—my current editor—knew I’d be coming in at lunch. I’d spent the morning chasing after news stories, running down my phone battery with maps, voice recording, and taking copious notes. Irritation needled me at the idea that I required adult supervision, or at least monitoring.
When I walked into the cubicle farm, things seemed normal—until I dropped my laptop bag on my chair.
Dara’s head popped up then those of three other co-workers. One sat down, and then a different person rose to eye me. Two down, one up. It was like a bizarre game of human Whack-a-Mole.
I narrowed my eyes at Dara, who was closest. “What?”
She blinked at me from under her heavy bangs, twisting her lips like she was biting the inside of her mouth.
Again I gazed out at my colleagues, who were still popping up and peering at me. “What?”
Dara swiveled around, her backwards glare subduing the meerkat colony. Once everyone was sitting again, she scurried around the little wall to my cubicle.
“You haven’t seen it yet,” she said.
“Seen what?” I pulled my laptop out of my bag and put it on my desk.
“Your—Ash—the advice column,” she huffed, making a rolling gesture with her hand to hasten my computer reboot.
My hands faltered as I went to stow my bag under my desk. Oh god. Did he… He’d written about me; that much was obvious. Did I want to know?
I had to know.
“You going to give me a hint?” I looked to her anxiously.
She shook her head. Her expression gave nothing away, good or bad. When I opened up my web browser, Dara courteously turned away to let me read it privately.
Dear Miss Behave: I made a terrible mistake. The woman I was working with found out that I wrote you for advice, and she feels… well, I guess betrayed is the best word. I never meant to lie to her, embarrass her, or anything like that. Now she won’t speak to me, and all I want is for her to know that I never meant to hurt her. She’s become very important to me, and I want her forgiveness.
Cubicle Crush(ed)
Huh. I sat back in my chair, thinking. Okay, well, that was… appreciated, I guess. It was just kind of a written reminder of everything we’d argued about.
“So?” Dara asked, turning back to me with an expectant expression on her face.
I shrugged. There was a seed of hope in my heart, but I was afraid to tend it, in case it grew into a weed instead of a flower.
My friend looked past me, her eyes narrowing on my screen. “Oh, for god’s sakes, you didn’t even read all of it!”
“What?” I swiveled in my chair, tilting my head at my laptop.
“Scroll down,” she urged, not turning away again. She was too impatient to give me privacy.
My hand left a sweaty sheen on the track pad, and I swallowed tightly. What would I find?
“Cubicle Crushed,” I read. Scanned. Paused. “Wait, he answered as A Guy’s Guy, not Miss Behave?” While I’d been on the news desk, he’d been assigned to write both columns, but usually they didn’t overlap like this. Overlap, however, was apparently his modus operandi.
“Yeah, keep reading,” Dara said. “It’s pretty long.”
I began it out loud, but it didn’t take more than a couple of sentences for my lips to be moving but no sound coming out.
“Cubicle Crushed: Wow, you really pooched this one. Here’s the problem. Writing an advice columnist for, well, advice is not a crime. However, doing it under false pretenses or lying about it to the ones you love demonstrates only two things:
1. That you are an ass
2. That you have something to hide
So, asshole, what are you ashamed of? What are you afraid of? Rejection? Humiliation? I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what your girlfriend probably feels right now. And she’s totally entitled to feel that way.
Whatever your intentions were, they mean nothing right now compared to the ways you broke her trust and made her doubt both you and herself. You done screwed up, man.
My advice to you is to grow up. You say she’s “become very important” to you? If you love her, tell her. Life is too short to live with guilt and fear. I’m not saying stand outside her window with a boombox (do they even make those anymore?) or rent billboard space, but be an adult and tell her the whole truth without being defensive or making excuses.
Gaining her forgiveness shouldn’t be your main goal right now, though. Don’t get me wrong—you totally need to grovel. On your hands and knees, intricate tongue action, whatever. But if she forgives you, it should be more for her own benefit than yours.
If you’re lucky, she’ll speak to you again. Maybe you can be friends. If you’re very lucky, then maybe she loves you enough to show some compassion and want to move on from this.
Your balls are in her court. Let’s hope she still wants to play with them.”
A Guy’s Guy
It wasn’t until I finished reading and was going over it a second time that I realized Dara was hovering over my shoulder. I sat back in my chair, not sure what to think.
“Wow.”
“Right?” she agreed.
“You think this means that he loves me?”
She gave me a look that implied I was a moron. That seed of hope in my heart began germinating, threatening to sprout.
“But he never—” I broke off, remembering a moment when I thought he might say it, when I fantasized that it was on the tip of his tongue. Late at night, I’d convinced myself that I’d imagined it.
Perhaps, deep down, I was already looking for reasons to forgive him, and it was only my own stupid pride that was getting in the way.
“Maybe he was afraid to. Maybe it was the wrong time or place. The question is,” my friend said, pointing at the screen, “Do you love him?”
Now it was my turn to look at her as though she were a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
She rolled her eyes. “I meant, do you love him enough?”
20
Ash
I was close to crawling out of my skin with impatience. A hundred times I’d had to stop myself from calling or texting Lizzie. Emailing her. Showing up at her apartment, or her place of work.
Basically, I was one good intention away from being a stalker.
Dara had emailed me to let me know that Lizzie
had read the column. So that was something, at least.
So I waited. Leaving my balls in her court was agonizing. I wasn’t good at waiting for important things to come to me; usually I was the kind of guy who went out and got them.
After two days, I’d gotten creative. It was time to put my trust fund to work, funding Project Make Lizzie Trust Me Again.
I bought ads on the Hot Mess and Static sites. Dara, Pete, and Rob all sent me WTF? emails the first day, but I refused to back down. It was a little harder explaining myself to the news director, but I owed him a heads up, at least.
I told myself it was my romantic side coming out. When Mike saw it, he said it was more like my pussy-whipped, crazy side coming out. Either way, it was certifiably stupid and I even got a voice mail from my dad laughing at me. But… nothing from Lizzie. Goddamn crickets.
To hell with this, I thought as I stomped over to her apartment. I wasn’t waiting any longer. Yeah, it was ten o’clock at night, and yeah I probably should have waited until morning, but I knew sleep wouldn’t come while I thought about this.
While I thought about her.
She buzzed me up without even asking who was there, which relieved me and pissed me off at the same time. I could be the friendly neighborhood serial killer! On the way up, all my words jumbled together in my head, twisted by rising emotion and adrenaline.
The door opened almost as soon as I knocked, as though she was waiting right there.
“Just a second,” she croaked, looking down at her purse while she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. With her hand outstretched, she looked up at me and blinked. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” I took in her flushed cheeks, bright eyes, red nose, and brown fuzzy robe and realized that either she was sick or masquerading as a squirrel.
“You’re not who I was waiting for,” she managed to say.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
We stood there, silently watching each other. Her buzzer went, startling both of us. “That’s probably…” she trailed off as she reached for the intercom.
My hand fell on her arm. “Ask who it is, first,” I reminded her. The color in her cheeks deepened as she realized that her recklessness was why I was standing in front of her.
“Food?” I asked.
She nodded. “Soup.”
“You’re sick.” It wasn’t a question.
“You’re a genius.” When she tried to roll her eyes, she swayed a little.
My hands went to her shoulders, steadying her. How come I hadn’t known she wasn’t feeling well? I felt like I should have known, or Dara should have told me—if she even knew.
I looked over Lizzie’s head, taking in the state of her apartment. The folding screen dividing her bed from the living room was open, and there was a direct line from the nest of tissues on her bed to a reality show playing on the TV.
“Back to bed.” I turned her around and steered her to the bed, then I took off my jacket and shoes, and rolled up the sleeves of my flannel shirt.
In a couple of minutes, the delivery guy was paid, tipped, and on his way back down as I opened up a big Styrofoam container of hot and sour soup. My mouth started watering at the tangy smell rising up before me as I started searching for a bowl.
Maybe two bowls.
“Do you want to eat at the table, or…?” I glanced over at Lizzie, who’d settled back into her nest and now sat up in bed with a lap desk on her outstretched legs. She’d removed her robe to reveal a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants.
She still looked beautiful, even as she plucked up the used tissues surrounding her and dropped them, one by one, over the far side of the bed.
If I truly loved her, then chances were good that I’d be going over there with a trash bag later. A sigh escaped me, as wispy as the steam from the soup.
I carried a bowl and spoon over to her, placing it carefully on the makeshift tray in front of her. “Don’t spill; it’s hot.”
“Yes, mom.” At least she didn’t lose her equilibrium this time as she lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Thanks,” she said quietly as she brought the spoon to her mouth.
I stood at the edge of her bed. I didn’t want to sit down and risk jostling her. I’d thought not talking to her, not seeing her was tough, but the five feet or so that separated us felt ten times worse. I wanted to take her in my arms, kiss every inch of her…
“How sick are you?” I asked.
“Just caught a chill or something,” she said, happily slurping the soup.
I looked around. Her computer was far away, on the coffee table. No coat was draped over the back of the couch or boots by the door. “You worked from home today?”
Lizzie muttered something about a “mental health day” as the spoon clinked on the bottom of the bowl.
I strode over to relieve her of the bowl and the makeshift tray. After I put the bowl in the sink, I brought her a fresh bottle of water from the fridge—and a new box of tissues.
She looked suspiciously at them. “Are you going to make me cry again?”
Ouch. I could have just stood still and let her carve out my heart with the soup spoon.
“Honestly,” she said, “I just wanted to hide from the world today. I don’t feel that bad, other than a bit sniffly. And tired. Tired of everything.”
She looked up at me with a beleaguered expression, and I had to wonder how much of the way she felt was because of me. Again I wanted to kick myself, for being the source of her pain instead of her happiness.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked gently.
Her gaze pinned me, her features relaxed and her mouth teased me with a small smile. “No. I don’t.”
Instant relief swelled inside me, until I remembered why I came over. I glanced over at her closed laptop again.
“Have you been online at all today?”
She shook her head as she snuggled down in the bed. “Decided to take the day off. No work, no social media, no email. I even turned my phone off.” She sounded both embarrassed and astonished at her own self-restraint.
It figured. Once I started laughing, I found I couldn’t stop.
Her brows drew together. “Why are you laughing at me?”
Shit. I swiped my hand over my face. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you.” Something loosened in my chest just taking in her wounded expression. “I’m not laughing at you,” I repeated softly, then held up a hand. “Just a sec.”
I grabbed her computer and placed it on her lap. “Go to the Hot Mess site.”
She gave me a quizzical look, but woke up the laptop and went to the bookmark.
The homepage loaded, and I could pinpoint the moment she saw it. Her eyes widened and her chin jerked up as she looked at me. I remained silent as she turned back to the screen, but lowered myself to the edge of her bed. As she scanned and scrolled, clicking through different pages of the site, her gasps turned into choking sounds of disbelief.
“Oh my god.”
“I wanted to be honest with you.”
“With me, sure. But with the rest of the world?”
Pretty much every ad on the site was one I’d paid for, asking her to forgive me. Reminding her of special moments we’d had together (PG-rated, naturally). Telling her that I missed her.
More than that, I’d confessed to every embarrassing moment in my life that I could think of, every secret that I’d kept. I’d hidden too much from her, and I owed her utmost honesty now.
“You cheated in eleventh grade math?” she read from one of the boxes.
“Yep.” Hopefully my former teacher didn’t subscribe to Hot Mess.
Her cheeks flushed as she pointed to another. “Seriously?”
I shrugged, not sure what she was seeing.
She raised an eyebrow and read out loud, “‘True fact: I shaved my pubes in college to make my dick look bigger’,” she blurted out, her gaze going to my crotch.
Oh, that. I rubbed the back of my neck. Maybe I’
d taken it too far?
She snickered. “Oh my god, why would you even need to?”
That was a compliment, right? I reached for her hand, taking it off the track pad.
“No, I want to read more!” she whined, but her eyes sparkled and my heart beat harder at the shit-eating grin on her face. “Did you sleep with a stuffie until you were twelve? Did you pick your nose and eat it? What else is there?”
Her gaze flitted back and forth between the screen and me as I squeezed her fingers in mine. God, I’d missed holding her hand.
True fact: Mike was right—I am pussy-whipped.
“Lizzie, there’s something I didn’t, uh…”
She couldn’t stop giggling. “W-what could possibly be worse than th-this?”
I shut the computer with my free hand and pushed it off her lap to the opposite side of the bed. Her disappointed whine made me smile. Hell, everything about her made me smile.
“I couldn’t—not on the site, for everyone to see…”
She blinked, but her face was soft as she grabbed my other hand as well. “What?”
“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Her silence told me nothing.
Under my palms I felt the bumps of her knuckles. Slowly, I slid my hands up, over her delicate wrists and up her arms. To my satisfaction, she shivered a little.
Yes, she knew.
I pulled her a little closer to me and edged myself a little closer to her, but I kept my gaze down, as though it would be easier to tell the truth without the weight of her hypnotic stare. Her bright hazel eyes were my undoing and my salvation. The same could be said of many parts of Lizzie Bell.
“I love you. I am in love with you.” I paused, then swallowed. “I’ve done a lot of stupid things,” I admitted, jerking my head toward the laptop. “But the worst thing I’ve ever done was hurt you.”
Finally I looked up as she made a sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes were glossy with tears and she bit her lower lip. It surely wasn’t meant to be seductive, but my body tightened nonetheless.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” I whispered, a lump growing in my throat. “I didn’t know that it was so… contagious.”
