by A. J. Wynter
Stop it. You can’t.
People began to clear out of the conference room once the names were drawn and I shifted in my seat as Marissa walked over towards my chair.
“Hey Kirk,” she said, and I could tell she was seeking some sort of apology or explanation for how I acted last night. Well, too damn bad.
“Hey,” I said, looking down at my briefcase. God, she was still so attractive, too attractive, to the extent where it made it hard to talk to her without making a complete fool of myself.
“I’ve really been enjoying working here so far,” Marissa said, shrugging with a smile. “I hope it lasts.”
“Yeah,” I said flatly, still looking down.
“What is up with you, Kirk?” Marissa demanded suddenly.
I felt a pang of terror in my chest at her sudden accusation. “Nothing, you know, I just—”
“You’re not still mad at me about what happened, are you?”
I felt myself tense up as she met my eyes, as we finally acknowledged the elephant in the room.
“Of course not,” I said, queasy with dishonesty. “I mean, we were just kids, right?”
“Yeah,” Marissa said, her eyes full of regrets. “Just kids.”
Chapter 7-Marissa
It’s lab day again, and Kirk and I doze off during the instructions as we always do. Ms. Eliot takes far too long to explain everything, and Kirk and I are usually clever enough to figure it out on our own and still get our experiment done in half the time it takes the other students. Today we’re doing something classic, something that involves a lot of test tubes over Bunsen burners and strange-colored liquids. It should be simple. What isn’t simple though, is this warm, twisted-up feeling in my chest. This feeling that I know is called love but that I keep trying to pretend is something else.
Kirk is designing a graph on our worksheet and I’m setting up the experiment. I take a test tube filled with a bright scarlet liquid and move it to heat over the Bunsen burner with my tongs. I take a second to look over at Kirk, and I’m in the middle of appreciating the cute way he scratches his head with his pencil when he’s thinking, when all of a sudden, my hand feels like it’s been set on fire.
I screech as I realize the tube has boiled over and the red liquid is bubbling over my hand. “Oh my god,” I say, panting as I shake my hand up and down.
“I got it, I got it,” Kirk says, grabbing a wet towel and cleaning off my hand with gentle strokes. Ms. Eliot is about to interfere but backs away when she realizes that Kirk has the situation well under control.
My hand is still burning with pain and stained a bright red as Kirk runs the towel over with cold water again and reapplies it. He is cradling my arm in his, gently cleaning my hand with great precision and care. I’m sure everyone was staring, but how was I to know? I’m far too wrapped up in the safe feeling I get from Kirk cradling my arm against his chest, and watching in awe at how focused and concerned he is with making sure that I’m alright.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I joked to Kirk, and he just smiles down at me as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I’m always going to make sure you’re okay, Marissa.”
And that was when I gave the feeling a name.
Whatever, Kirk. You know what, whatever. Be that way. If you’re the kind of guy who is capable of holding a grudge against someone for over a decade, that’s your problem. Okay, I woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning, as they say. Although, when you’re me, there is no wrong side. It’s just me, all alone in my shitty apartment, being bitter about the fact that a boy I liked in high school won’t pay attention to me anymore. And that I burned my breakfast this morning. But that’s another story.
It’s the second meeting of the week and I’m already fed up. Look. I know Kirk said he’s fine, but he certainly hasn’t been acting like it. He won’t look at me, and he won’t talk to me in the friendly way he does to our other coworkers.
We’re sitting in the second meeting of the week, and Johnathan is droning on and on about one of our investors. I can sense Kirk looking at me from the corner of my eye. Not that it means anything. It could just as well be hate staring. He used to stare at me in Biology class because I was pretty, but I had a queasy sort of feeling that wasn’t the reason anymore. Did I mention I pulled his name for Secret Santa? Talk about queasy. I mean what kind of gift do you get for a guy whose heart you broke a decade ago and is apparently still pretty bitter about it?
“…and that’s how we can improve client outreach. Any questions?” Johnathan is gazing around the room, and his eyes land on me. “Marissa! The newbie! Do you have any input?”
Before I speak my eyes dart over to Kirk, who is making a concerted effort to look as if he’s not paying attention to me. That’s it. Fine. If he wants war, I’ll give him war.
“Well,” I say, leaning back in my chair and twirling my pen. “I think we should re-establish our relationships with some of our old clients. I mean, if it worked once, why shouldn’t it work again?” I see Kirk look up in surprise and scoff quietly to himself.
“An interesting idea…” Johnathan says, politely agreeing. “It’s great to get some fresh perspectives in this room, Marissa. We’re glad to have you here.”
“I would have to disagree,” Kirk interrupted suddenly, and the room froze solid.
Everyone turned to see Kirk now paying full attention and ready to make a point.
“And why do you disagree?” Johnathan asked respectfully.
“Well,” Kirk said with a pointed look towards me. “With all due respect, I think the Torver Corporation is about the Future. We’re about progress. Moving on. If we keep revisiting old clients we won’t be able to grow as a company.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“New clients are risky,” I retorted, glaring back at Kirk. “I’ve looked through some of our old files with Johnathan, and we’ve built strong relationships with some of these clients. If something worked well, I think it’s worth it to try again.”
“Well, alright then,” Johnathan said, with an uncomfortable look that made it seem like he understood that we were no longer talking about our client base. “I suppose we’ll have to come up with some sort of compromise! We can discuss this later. Back to work everyone.”
I took a deep breath as I got up with the rest of my coworkers and headed out of the conference room. Did I really just say that? Did I imply that I wanted Kirk back? I mean, that was high school. Ancient history. We were a flower pressed at the back of a book…very nice to look back at fondly, to reminiscence of summer days, but very, very dead.
I thought it over as I stumbled into the break room for another coffee. I mean, we had clicked back then. Click was an understatement. It was magic. And of course, there was the undeniable fact that he had gotten irresistibly sexy. Just the thought of him staring at me angrily from across the table was turning me on, his sweater sleeves rolled up so you could see the gorgeously sculpted muscles of his forearms…Christ. And all those problems we had back in high school, those were non-issues now, right? I mean, we are adults.
I was dying for some more caffeine after whatever the hell had just occurred. The coffee machine in the break room was one that had been imported from some small country in Europe and was nearly impossible to figure out how to use, but it sure beat the line for the Swiss coffee maker in the reception room, which of course came with the added bonus of awful small talk with my coworkers, which I was certainly not in the mood for today. I pulled the machine towards me and tried to figure out how to fit one of the strange cylindrical coffee packets inside. I stuck my finger inside and tried to wiggle the coffee packet until it fit. I almost had it, just a little bit—
“Ow! Shit! Oh god…” I muttered. I had just completely sliced my finger open on what must have been some small, invisible blade inside the machine, and my finger was already bleeding all over the counter.
“Hey! I got it.”
I turned aro
und in shock to see Kirk rush in and pull a first-aid kit out of one of the cabinets. “Oh…thanks,” I said, confused at why Kirk would rush in all of a sudden and help me after what had just went down at the meeting.
“Yikes, was that the coffee maker?”
“Er…yes?” I practically squeaked.
“Ugh, don’t worry, that thing is a death trap.” Kirk said. “We literally have like one injury from it a month. I’ve been bugging Johnathan to get rid of it forever.”
I smiled as I watched Kirk pour some antiseptic onto a cloth and apply it to my finger. “Sting much?” he asked.
“A little,” I admitted, but I was far too distracted to even tell.
Déjà vu swept over me as Kirk wiped off the blood from my finger with the cloth and applied a bandage to it. God, he was gorgeous. I could see him as a doctor in some bloody and ruthless war, solid and unshakable, saving the lives of soldiers as women swooned over him. He met my eyes when he was finished and I felt my knees grow weak.
“Why are you taking care of me?” I asked. “I thought…”
“I’m sorry,” Kirk said. “It’s just…well, I guess after all these years I had kind of a strong emotional reaction, but I shouldn’t, I just—”
“But why are you helping me?”
“You know I’m always going to make sure you’re okay, right, Marissa?” Kirk said, and squeezed my hand gently. He looked at me and suddenly I was sixteen again, we were back, we were young, things were new and…
Kirk smiled at me before he walked out, back towards his office.
And that was when I knew I wanted him again.
But this time, I promised myself, I would be in it one hundred percent.
Chapter 8-Kirk
I always love the days when we go over tests. I almost always got nearly one-hundred percent of the answers right, so I was never interested in hearing Ms. Eliot explain the solutions I already knew. Marissa didn’t seem to care either. I don’t remember when it started, but one day she pushed her notebook towards me with a blank hangman puzzle, and then all of a sudden, we were addicted.
I loved those rainy afternoons, sitting next to Marissa as close as our chairs would allow without it meaning something—close enough that I could feel her warmth and smell her perfume. I loved the thrill of getting a new puzzle, of whispering letters back and forth, the safety of our quiet, perfect, invisible friendship.
It was always the highlight of my day.
Martin from the accounting department is the literal worst. I mean, he’s a nice guy, but by god is he boring. Every time he speaks it comes out like an adult from a Charlie Brown cartoon. And the fact that all he talks about is accounting doesn’t help much either. We’re sitting at a meeting, it’s early, and Martin has been rambling on for about forty-five minutes about spreadsheets or something. Believe it or not, Marissa decided to sit down next to me today and smiled at me when I came in. I guess she’s forgiven me for being a bit rude to her the other day…and I guess the fact that I helped her with her injured hand helped too.
Doesn’t mean I’m ready to forgive her though…right?
I can barely keep my eyes open, and eventually I find them wandering down to Marissa’s legs. Christ, she has great legs—she always had. She still smelled a little bit the same from here…there were familiar notes of almond and vanilla drifting off her skin, but the artificial fruitiness of her youth was gone, replaced with a more adult musk, something a bit more spicy and musky. I was about to drift off again when I noticed Marissa slide her legal pad over to me.
She didn’t. Hangman? Was she crazy? Did she think I was really going to cozy up to some twisted high school nostalgia bit of hers?
I stared at the legal pad, my heart lurching at the seven blank spaces laid out in a neat row on the paper.
“Anyway,” Martin rambled on. “This row of cells displays our data on return investment for the…”
Okay, you know, I was bored enough.
“A” I whispered towards Marissa, and she smiled, drawing a tiny head.
“I”
She filled in the second space.
“O”, I whispered, and Marissa smirked as she filled in the third and fifth letters.
“M,” I said, and frowned playfully at Marissa as she drew a torso on the stick man.
“K,” I added, and watched her draw on an arm. I was running out of guesses.
“B,” I said, and smiled as Marissa filled in the first letter, and then I realized what the word was.
Biology?, I scribbled with pencil on the legal pad, and Marissa nodded.
Seriously. Biology. What kind of game was Marissa playing here? Why was she so intent on me reminiscing with her about the doomed romance we lived through as teenagers? What on earth was the point?
I mean, she didn’t really want to try this again, did she? Why, because I work out now? Because I’m rich? Is she serious?
The meeting came to an end a few minutes later, and after a friendly, yet awkward, goodbye with Marissa, I returned to my office. My phone started beeping and I saw it was my mother calling.
“Kirk! Baby! How are you?”
“Hey Ma,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I’m fine, how are you?”
“Good, good,” she said hurriedly, and I could practically see her leaning over the kitchen table, surrounded by the many lists of calls she had to make and things she had to do to prep for the holiday season. “I just wanted to confirm that you’re coming to the Christmas potluck on Saturday.”
“Of course,” I said warmly. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“And your girlfriend is coming too, right? You know I’ve been dying to meet her ever since you mentioned her at Thanksgiving.”
I froze. Shit.
“Oh, yeah, uh, she’ll be there Ma,” I stuttered. “I’ll see you Saturday. Love you.”
“Love you too, honey!” My mother hung up, and a panicked realization spread through my chest.
Okay, so, I might have made up a girlfriend a few weeks ago at Thanksgiving to appease my parents and their constant nagging and perpetual crisis about the fact that I’m always single. It just sort of…slipped out, and I figured in six months I’d say we broke up and it’d be the end of it, and I’d be left alone for a while. But now here I was, only a couple of days from the famous annual Atkins family Christmas potluck, and I was supposed to show up with a girlfriend that, big surprise, I did not have. There was no way I was going to find a girlfriend in two days, much less one who was cool with meeting my entire extended family on the first date.
I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head. Where on earth was I going to find a girl willing to put up with this? I thought about asking Sabryna, but there was no way someone as sensible as her would put up with a crazy plot like this. Just imagining the look on her face after proposing such a thing was terrifying.
I thought about Marissa during the meeting, and the way she watched me each time I guessed a letter, eager to witness my reaction, to win my approval. She had always been someone who needed everyone to like her, and I guessed that the fact that I hadn’t warmed up to her right away was starting to bother her. I know our relationship was in kind of a fragile place for me to be asking something so strange of her straight off the bat, but this was Marissa. She thrived off of this stuff, she loved these crazy kinds of plans that could end in complete disaster…and besides, I was desperate. I was starting to get annoyed at the constant badgering about my love life that always occurred during family gatherings, the pitiful looks and the way people kept pulling pictures of their granddaughters out of their wallets. I couldn’t take any more embarrassment, and getting caught in a lie, a really pathetic lie, would be even worse. And okay, maybe there was another reason too. Something that occurred to me today as I sat next to her at that meeting…
…I was finally remembering how much I’ve missed her all these years.
Chapter 9-Marissa
The conversation is drifting back and fort
h between just about every single thing I could care less about. We’re talking about a fundraiser for new pom-poms, about how Vivian’s haircut is hideous, and complaining about our government teacher for what must be the fourth time this week. I mean, do my friends always think like this too? Do they ever think about anything that matters, anything that moves and thinks and lives outside the doors of this high school? Outside this table?
“So,” I say, filling a silence and taking a chance. “What do you guys think of Kirk Atkins?”
“Who’s that?” Tara asks, and then looks bored before she even finds out the answer.
“Oh,” Ella says, “I cheated off him in math once. Sort of a tallish, skinny, black guy. Glasses. Why do you ask?”
I swallow and look down. “I just sit next to him in Bio. It’s nothing.”
I’m in a fairly good mood this morning as I make my way to work, my gingerbread-flavored coffee warming me up against the damp cold of the city streets. I don’t know what exactly changed, but I think the Christmas mood has finally hit me, and the carols echoing out of the shop windows are beginning to fill me with warmth instead of annoyance. I’m dressed in my favorite winter outfit—a dark burgundy pea coat paired with my cream-colored sweater dress, gray leggings, and high heeled boots. I have that lovely, opening number of a musical kind of optimism about today, and I really hope it’s not misguided.
I get on the elevator and make my way up to the office. As I walk in, I wonder if this place always smells like this…this odd mix of nutmeg, peppermint, and lemon disinfectant, or if it’s a strictly holiday kind of thing.
