Just Down the Hall
Page 20
I started pacing back and forth, my hands over my face. I mumbled through my fingers. “I have no idea what’s going on, I promise you. Maybe it’s some software on my work computer glitching? Or…I don’t know!”
“I asked Mandy - the auditor - about that. She says that she’d see something like a computer glitch, that it’d be obvious.”
Alphonso nodded. “Yeah, it’d be happening every fraction of a second, or something. Even if it was a virus, it’d happen at regular intervals. This looks like someone sitting at the computer with a mouse, refreshing, and then clicking over and over.”
“I still swear on everything holy - on every episode of the West Wing, Monica - I really don’t know. But…maybe we can just…not tell anyone? I mean, how would the Liz Dates Philly sponsors even find out?”
“Alphonso? Care to explain Amanda the auditor’s personality to Liz?”
“Amanda is a bitch,” Alphonso deadpanned. “We hired her because she’s the owner’s niece and some idiot never made her sign any non-disclosure agreements with her contract. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s leaked information to other publications before we could print it. But this makes US look bad. It would ruin our columnists’ credibility across the board. She’d have a field day.”
“Amanda would collect the cash from the tip, and still get to keep working here, even after making us look like a much of manipulative shit heads. Dammit, Liz.” Monica slammed her hand on the desk and I jumped.
“Wait a minute, though.” Alphonso finally plunked his skinny-jeans covered ass on a desk chair and flipped to the back of the document. “There’s another IP that voted like a kajillion times, too.”
“As soon as Amanda called me with this, I grabbed the papers from her. So we just saw the one. Where’s the other address, Liz? Your favorite coffee shop maybe, hm?” Monica asked, glaring at me.
I sighed. “I only work at home and in the office. I swear.” The tension had dissipated just enough for me to find a place to sit, too.
“Yeah, this address…it’s actually on UPenn’s campus. South. That’s the science campus.” He smirked over at me. “I used to date a guy in the Biochem program there. Well, ‘date’ isn’t exactly the right word. We mostly met in the stacks of the chem library.”
“Ugh, TMI Alphonso, that’s…” and that’s when it hit me. Nobody I knew on Penn’s campus was in a science major. There were no apartments or sorority houses near there. The only person I could think of who spent any time on campus at all anymore was…
“Jordan,” I breathed. “Jordan.” The second time I said his name came out as a growl. Spit gathered at the corners of my lips, like I was frothing at the mouth. And it tasted like blood.
Monica dropped the papers onto the desk and slid them over to me. “I’m giving you three days to figure this out, figure out how to fix it. You told me you loved politics, right?”
I nodded numbly.
“Well, politics is about spin. So is column-writing. So is saving your ass when you or your—whoever—is dumb enough to get it in deep shit. Figure this the fuck out.”
My whole body shook as Alphonso drove me back to our place. My fists clenched, making white spots bloom over my knuckles, and my nails dug into my palms. I was so rigid from head to toe that I almost felt like I wasn’t making contact with the seat. I was ready to unleash an avalanche of shit on Jordan Jacobs, dickhead extraordinaire, and none of it was good.
Alphonso went to turn the ignition off, and my hand shot out, slapping his forearm. He hissed and rubbed at it.
“You are not coming in with me. This is personal.”
“That’s exactly why I want to come in!” he whined in protest. “Can I at least come stand outside the door and eavesdrop? It’s for journalism, Liz! And I drove you!”
“In your dreams,” I grumbled, launching myself out of my seat and onto the sidewalk. After a step toward our building, I stopped and turned, went back, and wrenched open the door. Alphonso was smirking at me, holding my bag up on one finger. I’d left my damn keys inside it. In the car.
“Thank you,” I said under my breath. “And thanks for the ride. You saved my ass this morning. I think.”
My quads burned as I stomped up the stairs - there was no way I was going to wait for the creaky, slow elevator today. I pictured myself pacing in front of it like a caged animal just waiting to be let out for the kill.
I would not be that girl today. I would be a grownup. Most importantly, I would not let Jordan know he had hurt my feelings. This was about work, and only work. This was about my one good shot at a journalism job that he had taken away from me, why? Because he wanted to keep fucking me.
I scoffed as I started on the last flight of stairs. After all his sweet talk last night, about how you only “fucked” someone you didn’t care about. How he couldn’t possibly fuck me, because I was more than that. Well, maybe what we did in bed wasn’t fucking me, but he’d certainly fucked my career over.
And then confusion swarmed my brain. Which one was it? Did he care about me, or not? Because sending me on awful date after awful date was not something someone who cared about you would do, unless they wanted you all to themselves.
All these weeks, I’d been operating under the assumption that Jordan didn’t want a relationship with me – that’s what he’d told me. So why would he go to so much trouble to rig Liz Dates Philly so that I only dated cringeworthy guys?
Maybe he just got off on controlling me. I didn’t know whether that made me want to cry or rage.
Armed with that thought, I jammed my key into the lock and gave it a good twist. I hoped he heard me. I hoped he understood just exactly how pissed off I was when I finally let loose on him.
I never expected what I saw when the door swung open. Jordan, sitting on the couch, across from a girl with a shocking bright red bob. With her feet in his lap, and her hand on his shoulder, and a dopey smile on her face. Jordan most certainly wasn’t trying to get her to move.
All rational thought blew out of my mind then, the new sense of betrayal and heartache mixing with my previous anger. At that moment, the only thing I could manage to say flew out of my mouth with a cracking, high-pitched gasp. “What the fuck?”
Chapter 23
Jordan
I came home to an empty apartment, which worried me for a second, until I realized that there were no signs of forced entry, Liz’s keys and bag were gone, and she’d left her typical hurricane-strength path of detritus in her wake. A Chapstick cap here, a stray receipt, a dime and penny flung from her purse or pocket in her rush to get out. I smiled softly and set her scone out on a little plate on the table. I could wait for her to get back. Maybe she was buying more condoms. The thought put a smug smile on my face, and I got busy settling in for the rest of what would hopefully be a lazy Sunday with Liz. Hopefully one where I’d tell her how I felt.
I’d managed to brew myself a second cup of coffee, set Liz’s down and get settled with a stack of grading I had to do for the class I TA’d with Toby.
It was difficult to focus with thoughts of last night with Liz running on a loop through my head. The way her little pink tongue licked her lips when she was getting excited about something I was about to do to her, her little whimpering moans in time with my thrusts, her breathlessness when she was close to coming…it all added up to something I had never known was my ultimate fantasy.
I blew out a long breath. If I focused on grading now, maybe I could spend the rest of my weekend getting tangled in the sheets with Liz. I flipped open the manila folder of lab reports, and as soon as I scanned the first one, let out a long groan. Instead of my name at the top of every piece of paper was Tovyah Eisen’s.
I was just about to shoot Toby an email, hoping she answered sooner rather than later, when there was a light, rhythmic knock on the door. That had to be Liz, coming back with condoms and maybe snacks in tow. (Hey, a guy could dream. If anything could make her more perfect, it would be running out for Saturday
sex supplies.)But instead of Liz’s bouncy golden waves on the other side of the door, all I saw was Toby’s chestnut locks.
“Oh. Hey.” I scoured my memory. Had I even given her my address?
“Don’t sound so excited to see me, Mister.” Toby shouldered her way into the apartment, drawing the tip of her index finger along my jawline as she did. After scanning the floor to see the trail of Liz-stuff, she called, “Morning, Liz!”
“Oh. She’s not home.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
I scrunched up my eyebrows and gave her a side-eye.
Toby giggled and rolled her eyes, as if her entire manner wasn’t dripping with innuendo. “I just meant that we’ll work better if the apartment’s quiet.” She plopped down on the couch and pulled out a manila folder of lab sheets identical to mine out of her bag, flipping it open.
My eyes narrowed with the memory of her assortment of crazily-patterned folders strewn all over her cubicle in the engineering department. “Didn’t you just tell me that you have the folders with the designs on them so that they don’t get mixed up with anyone else’s?
She shrugged and grinned. “The one time I run out, and look what happens. Lucky mine got mixed up with yours. You’re my favorite fellow TA. Favorite guy in Philly, too.” She paused, then sniffed the air like a bloodhound. “Would you be a sweetheart and grab me a cup of coffee?”
I shook my head in disbelief, but wandered to the kitchen anyway, pouring her a cup of black and bringing it back to her where she’d already snuggled into the couch cushions. “Thanks, hon,” she murmured, leaning forward to rest the cup on the coffee table with one hand and pat the couch cushion opposite her with the other. “Come on, sit by me. It’ll be fun. Like old times.”
The only time I’d ever been on a couch with Toby, we most certainly had not been grading papers. Old times? More like orgasm times.
More innuendo.
For some reason, though, I obeyed. It only took a second for her to stretch her long, pale legs out across the couch and rest her ankles on my thigh.
It only took a second longer for the doorknob to turn and for Liz to burst in, her gorgeous hair wild and her eyes wide with fury. Clutched in her hand were a dozen or so pieces of paper, which looked like they’d once been stacked neatly. Liz’s eyes darted to Toby, then back to me, then down at Toby’s feet in my lap, then back to Toby.
The sound that came out of her mouth then was something I would have imagined coming from a hellbeast or a harpy in one of those campy fantasy movies from the 90s.
“What the fuck?” Liz screeched as her tight grip on the papers loosened and they went fluttering down to the battered hardwood floor.
Terror ripped through me. I shoved Toby’s feet off my lap, barely registering the squeak that came from her side of the couch. I stood and carefully approached Liz, but her eyes went even wider and she backed into the door. I was thankful it had shut behind her. At least she couldn’t escape that easily.
“I can explain, Lizzie, okay?”
“Explain what? How you’ve been fucking rigging the voting every single goddamn date I’ve been on? Or why you’re snuggling with some other girl on the same damn couch where you fucked me senseless?”
Liz’s eyes flicked to Toby. “Sorry. I’m sure you’re very nice,” she seethed.
“She’s just a friend,” I said quickly, waving Toby off and half-wishing she’d just disappear with a flick of my wrist.
“I’m sorry, what?” I heard the thunk of Toby’s folder on the floor, and turned to see her standing up and taking on an offensive stance, too.
Nothing like being trapped in the middle of your living room by two girls you’d slept with, claws out and snarling. This was terrifying, but if there was ever a time I needed to be brave, it was now.
“You’re just a friend,” I repeated, turning to Toby, registering the remarkable way her expression mirrored Liz’s. Either they were about to tackle each other or bond over how much they hated me and become best friends. I wouldn’t have been surprised by the latter, at this point.
At least I knew why Toby was pissed at me, so I took a deep breath and continued, “We slept together four years ago -”
“Three and a half, and it was awesome,” she growled, her eyes narrowed and fixed on my face like she wanted to shoot lasers at it.
She was right. It had been awesome. The flash of memory made me pause for a second, which brought a smirk to her face. Liz threw her hands up in the air, letting out an indignant squawk.
“That is not the point, Toby. The point is,” I said, turning to Liz, “that Toby and I TA the same class, she just dropped by to give me some papers, and we are not even remotely close to sleeping together. It’s only you.” On the last sentence, I softened my voice and pushed my eyebrows up while letting my mouth turn down. Please let the puppy dog eyes work.
Liz’s eyebrows went up then too, and together with her little surprised gasp, it meant that I’d hit some emotional chord. Which meant that she felt something for me, too. I moved toward her, starting to lift my arms to embrace her, but she only stepped away again.
“Yeah. It’s only me. And you made damn sure of that, didn’t you?”
My eyes flicked down the papers scattered all over our floor then. They were filled with lines and lines of IP address readouts. “Where were you just now, Liz? Philly Illustrated? A sour sinking feeling sloshed in my gut. I knew that’s where she’d been as soon as I asked it. And I knew what those sheets represented. Every single damn vote in Liz Dates Philly. Even without a good look at the papers, I knew that a good half of the IP addresses listed there were mine.
My mouth dropped open, then shut again. Finally, I managed to say something. “Liz, I can explain.” Dammit, I’d already said that about Toby, and she hadn’t bought it then. Clearly stacking the votes in Liz Dates Philly was a far worse transgression than having my ex fuck-buddy’s feet in my lap, and I’d been an idiot and used the same intro line.
“I seriously doubt it,” she growled. Behind her glare, which she was still terrifyingly maintaining, her eyes glistened. I wanted to go to her, to hold her, to give her tears permission to fall, to kiss and apologize each one away. But Liz was a viper right now, coiled and ready to strike, and behind my very real love for her and panic to make everything between us better, there was intense and total fear.
“I just thought…” I thought a lot of things, or, rather, gave myself over to my emotions on a lot of things. “I don’t know. At first, all the guys seemed so awful, so…I didn’t think it would make a difference. Maybe give you some funnier material for the column. And then…then I just…I wanted…” I couldn’t summon the words for what happened next, even though I knew damn well what had happened. I had been slowly falling for her and I wanted her to myself. I knew it wasn’t okay, and even if I hadn’t, my own sister had told me to cut it out. I didn’t really have any excuses.
Except now I’d gone and let myself fall in love with her. It didn’t matter that she clearly wanted to claw out my throat at this moment. I still wanted to hold her, needed her to understand, was desperate for her to forgive me.
I just couldn’t figure out what to say to make that happen.
“What the fuck, Jordan?” she repeated, and something small inside me was satisfied that she didn’t really have anything coherent to say about this whole situation, either.
“Toby, could you…?” I turned back to see Toby stuffing folders into her bag and her feet into shoes. “Just make sure you get the right papers this time,” I said, keeping my voice low and timid. She glared, pulled the folder out of her bag, double checked in, slammed it down on the couch, and grabbed the one that I’d left shoved between the cushions on my side of the couch.
She stalked past Liz and I, her steps so forceful that her hair made a small breeze as she walked by. When she was almost to the door, she turned on her heel and looked Liz square in the eye. “He didn’t say a word about you, by the
way. So I kind of seriously doubt that ‘only you, Lynn,’ or whatever the fuck your name is, he’s feeding you.”
Liz looked down at the ground, swallowing audibly in the suddenly, horribly quiet living room. “It’s Liz,” she said in a near whisper. “My name’s Liz.” Then she looked up into my eyes, and they were all pain. Betrayal.
That was when my heart broke.
“Toby, could you just—I’ll see you in the office.” I didn’t even try to keep the bitter edge off my request. Toby huffed, but finally left.
Liz was right. She was right, and I was so, so wrong. Of course, my stacking the votes was wrong, but it was so much more than that. I’d kept Liz all to myself, kept our relationship and my feelings for her limited to these four walls, like she was Rapunzel in a damn tower.
Liz stared at me, her eyes red and watery her lip visibly trembling. I couldn’t stand to watch her like this, had no idea what to do to fix it. Worst, I didn’t even know if I could fix it.
I finally met a girl I really liked—probably, no, definitely loved - and I’d done pretty much everything in my power to communicate that all she was to me was a game. A diversion. Something fun to pass the time, since we lived in the same place anyway.
“I don’t know what to say.” My voice cracked at the end of the sentence. It hadn’t done that since I was seventeen.
“Is there anything to say?” Liz’s words were a half-broken whisper dancing on a knife’s edge, holding on to the thinnest string of hope.
I sighed heavily, feeling the weight of my shoulders as they pulled down, a burden I couldn’t shake. “I’ll move my stuff out tomorrow. While you’re at work, so you don’t have to see me.”
She nodded, swallowed hard. “And you’ll pay your share of the rent while I look for someone else.”