About That Fling

by Tawna Fenske

  She looked away, letting her gaze fall to her watch. “I have to get to a meeting over in the ER. I’ll see you in the next mediation session?”

  “I promise to wear pants and leave my porn at home.”

  “Good plan,” she said, giving him one last look. “It’s a pleasure working with you.”

  “Likewise.”

  She turned away, the formality of it all making her jaw ache.

  The next morning, Adam made it a point to greet every member of the bargaining team—including Brett Lombard—with a smile and a handshake.

  His ex-wife’s grasp was cool and familiar, and she pulled away quickly as though fearful he hadn’t washed his hand after using the bathroom. Jenna was up next, and Adam held her gaze as he closed his palm around hers.

  “Jenna. Good to see you.”

  “You, too,” she said, and hurried past, leaving Adam with his fingers tingling.

  As soon as everyone had filed in, he returned to his spot at the front of the room. “We’re going to start the next segment of the mediation with some training in Nonviolent Communication strategies.”

  He took a seat on the table in front of the podium. As usual, it was vacant, with none of the bargaining team willing to occupy the front row. “Is anyone here familiar with NVC principles?” He scanned the room, making a point to meet every set of eyes.

  Okay, maybe not Jenna’s. Or his ex-wife’s. And Brett Lombard looked away the instant Adam’s eyes caught his. Still, twelve out of fifteen wasn’t bad.

  No one raised a hand, so Adam hopped off the table and picked up a pile of handouts. He split the stack in half, handing one pile to Nancy Jensen in the far corner of the room. Nancy took one and passed it behind her while Adam made his way to the opposite side of the room. Halfway there, he realized Jenna occupied the far corner. He tried not to let his hand brush hers as he handed the stack to her. She looked up at him and flushed, but her gaze slipped away quickly.

  Adam turned and retreated to the front of the room. “NVC, Nonviolent Communication, is also known as Compassionate Communication. It’s a way of taking a conversation out of a framework of judgment and blame. Can anyone take a guess what sort of response you generally get when you communicate with someone using judgment and blame?”

  The silence stretched out for a few beats, but Adam waited.

  “Defensiveness?”

  Adam nodded at Susan Schrader, trying not to imagine her admiring the photo of Brett’s junk. “That’s right. Anything else?”

  “A punch in the crotch.”

  Adam wasn’t sure who said it, but a few titters of laughter cropped up around the room, so he smiled. “That’s right. Also known as a counterattack, either literal or figurative. So instead of prompting that sort of response, we want to learn to speak and hear from the heart to create harmony and understanding. We learn to express feelings and universal needs, as opposed to judgments.”

  In the right corner of the room, the CEO yawned. Adam stifled the urge to clock the guy in the head. It was always the ones who needed it the most who tuned out first.

  “Jon, would you help me out with a little demonstration?”

  The CEO looked up, his brow creasing in an expression Adam had come to recognize as the reluctance of a man who would rather be asked to stick a hot fork in his eye and twist.

  “Absolutely,” Jon said. “Always happy to participate in anything that can help facilitate this valuable process.”

  Bullshit, Adam thought, which was precisely the judgmental language he needed the group to avoid.

  He slid back onto the table with his feet on a chair, bracing his arms across his knees. “Okay, let’s start off with a personal example, shall we? Tell us about something in your home life that routinely causes friction between you and another member of your household. It can be anything.”

  The CEO frowned, clearly trying to decide how much personal information he wished to reveal. Adam half expected him to report that his life was devoid of personal conflict, so he was surprised when Jon spoke again.

  “My wife is a neat freak,” he said. “Always straightening pillows and snapping at me if I leave a bowl on the kitchen counter. We’ve been married twenty-seven years, but we keep having the same fight over and over.”

  Adam nodded, intrigued by this human side of the man who, just last week, had called members of the nurses’ union “whiny little crybabies.”

  “Most couples have fights like that,” Adam agreed, trying not to let his eyes stray to his ex-wife. In his peripheral vision, he saw her shift in her seat. Discomfort, probably, though Adam couldn’t say if it was the pregnancy or the fact that the subject hit too close to home. How many times had they had their same arguments until they could have tape-recorded their lines and just played them at each other?

  You’re always working late. It’s like you don’t want to spend time with me.

  My job is very challenging, and I don’t need the added stress of you micromanaging how I spend my—

  Adam cleared his throat and wiped away the memory of those bitter arguments.

  “Okay,” he said, slapping his palms on his knees to focus his attention on the CEO. “Let’s do a quick demonstration of how the argument usually unfolds. Would you like to play yourself or your wife?”

  Jon scowled, clearly displeased at the thought that he might empathize with Mrs. Conway to that degree. “I’ll be me.”

  “And I’ll be Mrs. Conway.”

  “Archibald,” Jon grunted. “Sharon Archibald. She kept her maiden name.”

  “A woman’s prerogative,” Adam supplied, trying to sound more positive about it than Jon had. “Okay then, I’m Ms. Archibald. Ready?” Adam cleared his throat, and raised the inflection of his voice just a little. “Jon, you left the bread out on the counter again. You know I hate that, and it’s so disrespectful when I have to pick up after you.”

  “She doesn’t allow bread in the house. Gluten intolerant.”

  “Okay then, milk.”

  “Dairy free.”

  “Work with me here, Jon,” Adam said, trying not to let his exasperation show. “What’s a food item we’d find in the Conway-Archibald residence that might occasionally be left on the counter?”

  “Squash.”

  “As in zucchini?”

  “Yes. I say it can be left on the counter; Sharon says it goes in the crisper.”

  “Good, that’s good.” Adam cleared his throat and tried his Sharon Archibald voice again. “Jon, I keep telling you the zucchini goes in the crisper drawer, not on the counter. I feel like you never listen to me, and it’s so disrespectful when you leave things lying around the house that I have to pick up.”

  Jon scowled. “Stop nagging me. I just worked a twelve-hour day while you sat around fluffing the pillows in the living room. You want to talk about disrespectful, I—”

  “Good,” Adam said, cutting him off before he could take it too far. There was a blue vein starting to bulge on the CEO’s forehead, and Adam was beginning to wonder if he’d picked the wrong guy for this exercise.

  “What you just demonstrated so well for the audience,” Adam began, careful to stroke the guy’s ego, “is the sort of defensiveness that results from using judgmental language. Nice work, Jon.”

  Jon nodded, and Adam looked around the room. “Can anyone here identify the parts of what I said that were especially judgmental?”

  He looked around, curious to see who’d been paying attention. Jenna was watching with an uneasy sort of alertness. Beside her, Mia was biting her lip and scribbling notes on a spiral notepad with a blue cover.

  “Disrespectful,” Jenna said, surprising him. Then again, it was probably good for her to speak up. It would look suspicious if the two of them avoided each other altogether.

  “Good. Exactly. Disrespectful is definitely a judgment word
. Anything else?”

  “Nagging.” Nancy Jensen crossed her arms crossed over her chest. “I hate that word. Men use it all the time when they want to degrade a woman or dismiss whatever she’s saying as petty and annoying.”

  “Hey,” called Brett Lombard, scowling. “No generalizations about how men always do this or always do that.”

  “Good, this is good,” Adam said, scrambling to divert the conversation back to the example. “You guys are doing an excellent job of modeling the sort of language we don’t want to be using.”

  Several members of the group frowned at the backhanded compliment, but no one argued.

  “As I was saying,” Adam continued, “there were a number of examples of judgmental language in the dialogue Jon and I just had. One example is something you may not have picked up on because it sounded very much like I was trying to be sensitive and express an emotion. Did anyone catch that?”

  He surveyed the room, wondering who’d picked up on it. On the far side of the room, his ex-wife tapped her pen three times on her notepad. A familiar gesture, one Adam remembered well. She had a thought, and was wrestling with whether to voice it. When she looked up, her eyes met his, and Adam forced himself not to look away.

  “You said ‘I feel like you never listen to me.’” She glanced down at her notes as though confirming she’d gotten the words right, then looked back at him and nodded. “Never is a very inflammatory word.”

  “Exactly,” he said, his voice hitching a little on the second syllable. “And that’s only part of what makes the sentence so judgmental. Can you pick up on anything else?”

  She hesitated, tapping her pen again. “I’m not sure.”

  Adam swallowed. How many times in their marriage had she uttered that phrase? Never, not that he could remember. She’d always been so goddamn certain about everything, sure he was working too many hours and not being spontaneous enough, sure he should be listening better instead of—

  “It’s the word ‘like,’” he said. “It’s a tricky one. On the surface, it sounds as though I’m trying to express a feeling, right? The sentence began with ‘I feel like,’ so it’s gotta be an emotion, right?”

  She shook her head, but didn’t say anything. There was something in her expression that suggested she was dangerously close to tears, and Adam had no earthly idea what he’d done to provoke that. So much for being a perceptive professional mediator.

  “Generally speaking,” he said, softening his voice a little. “If the word ‘like’ follows the words ‘I feel,’ you’re expressing a judgment, not a feeling. For instance, ‘I feel like you’re being unprofessional,’ or ‘I feel like you aren’t hearing me’—those are judgments, not genuine feelings.”

  Mia nodded, then looked down at her notebook again. She began to jot something in earnest. She was taking this whole process very seriously. Part of him wanted to be flattered. Hell, had Mia ever hung on his every word before?

  Part of him just wanted to be pissed that the answer was no.

  Adam took a breath. He needed to move on. “The worksheet I handed out at the start of this exercise has a list of universal feelings,” he said. “These are internal sensations without reference to thoughts or interpretations. They can range from embarrassment to uneasiness to suspicion to helplessness, and they are feelings everyone can relate to. Every single one of us.”

  Every eye in the room was watching him now, and for the first time in days, Adam felt sure he was getting somewhere with the group. He held up his copy of the sheet and pointed to the list at the top. “Up here we have a list of universal human needs. I want you to study these without reference to specific people, actions, or things.”

  He gave the group a moment to look at the sheet. He stole a glance at Jenna and saw her frowning down at the page. She had a furrow between her brows that Adam wanted to stroke with the pad of his thumb, caressing the worry away. He forced himself to look away, turning his attention back to the CEO.

  “Okay then. Jon, could I get you to walk through that example with me again?”

  “Sure. Yes, absolutely.”

  “This time, I’d like us to use language that expresses feelings and needs. I’ll start by being Ms. Archibald again.” He looked down at the sheet, though he pretty much had it memorized. He hadn’t always known how to work through conflict like this, but it had become second nature to him now. How would it have changed his marriage if he’d found the tool seven or eight years ago?

  He folded his arms across his knees and cued up his Sharon Archibald voice again. “Jon, I’m feeling anxious and overwhelmed and a little helpless.”

  “Okay,” the CEO said, looking leery, but he didn’t interrupt.

  Adam continued, treading carefully. “When it comes to the household, I have a real need for order and harmony. It’s what helps me feel safe in our home.”

  He heard someone on the opposite side of the room mutter “cheesy,” but everyone else was paying attention. Even the CEO sat blinking at him in surprise.

  “Did you catch how I expressed both feelings and needs?”

  Jon nodded, saying nothing.

  “Now it’s your turn,” Adam said, skipping the part where Jon needed to repeat everything back to make sure he got it. It was clear from his expression that he did. “Tell me how you feel and what you need. Use the sheet, it’ll help.”

  Jon nodded and looked down at the page. When he looked up, his scowl was gone. “I feel exhausted. I work long days, and I come home and just want to relax, but instead I feel like—” He stopped there, grimacing at his own use of the word “like.” Adam could have kissed him, but instead he let him keep going. Jon trailed a finger over the page, looking for the right words on the list. “I feel discouraged. I want to do a good job, and I just need acceptance and trust and maybe a little space.”

  The room was silent. Adam let the silence hang like that for a few beats. The first voice to break it was one he knew well.

  “Wow.”

  He looked over at Mia. Her mouth was open, and her pen was dangling from the tips of her fingers. Adam turned back to Jon and nodded.

  “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  The CEO beamed. “Thank you.”

  “It’s powerful stuff, isn’t it? When you share feelings instead of judgments, it compels people to relate to you.”

  “And hearing what someone needs instead of a list of complaints—it’s kind of empowering?”

  Adam looked at the nursing manager who’d spoken and gave her a quick nod. “Exactly. And empowered is a much better way to feel than attacked and helpless. Not a bad shift, with just a few changes in wording, wouldn’t you say?”

  Several heads nodded. A few people looked uncertain, but nearly everyone in the room was looking at the list with renewed interest.

  “Okay then,” Adam said, standing up and beginning a stroll around the room. “I’d like you all to pair up with someone else in the room and practice running through scenarios until you feel comfortable with this format. For now, stick with personal examples—no talk of company business until we’re all sure we’ve got the hang of the tool. Any questions?”

  “Yes.” Adam turned to see Nancy Jensen smiling. “Will you come home with me?” she asked. “I’d love to have you teach my husband and me to relate to each other like this.”

  Adam laughed and ran his hand through his hair. “I can certainly recommend a number of excellent resources for Compassionate Communication training. There are plenty of NVC specialists in Portland.”

  “Are you single?” Adam looked to the corner of the room where Susan Schrader was smiling at her own joke. “It’s hard for me to imagine someone with communication skills like this wouldn’t be snapped up pretty quickly.”

  It took every ounce of strength he had not to look to the other corner of the room. “You’d be surprised.”

&nb
sp; Later that week, Adam was standing in the produce aisle staring at a limp-looking cauliflower. His hotel suite had a kitchenette, which should be all the motivation he needed to whip up home-cooked meals every evening when he finished his workday at Belmont.

  But between working late and feeling out of sorts living in a hotel, he hadn’t managed to assemble anything more complicated than a veggie omelet one morning last week.

  He had the skills to do it. The cooking class he’d taken last spring had seen to that, and he’d gotten pretty good at making impressive meals from scratch since he and Mia had split up. What was his problem now?

  “Salmon chowder,” he decided, setting the cauliflower down and snatching up a few large carrots. He turned around to add potatoes and onions to his basket, trying to remember the rest of the recipe he’d learned in his last cooking class.

  That’s when he spotted her. An elderly woman teetering on the second row of shelving, scaling the display like a monkey as she stretched up to reach something on a high shelf.

  “Ma’am, stop!” Adam called, dropping his basket and hurrying over. “Let me help you, please. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  The woman turned and blinked at him. There was something familiar about her startlingly blue eyes, but Adam pushed the thought aside as she started to wobble. He got there just in time as the woman toppled backward, falling into his arms. She was surprisingly light, and he half expected her to smack him with her purse and accuse him of molesting her as he set her back on solid ground.

  “My, my,” she said, fluffing her hair. “I haven’t had a man sweep me off my feet like that for some time. You’re a regular romance novel hero, aren’t you?”

  Adam stepped back, a little surprised by her sass. “Nope, just a man who doesn’t want to see a lady get hurt. Climbing on store shelves is a pretty much a recipe for a lawsuit.”

  “Do you work for the store?”

  “No, but I practiced law for a number of years. You fall and break your neck here, that could turn into an ugly legal situation for everyone involved.”