Paige’s hands are extended to receive mine.
The first unexpected thought I have while I dance with Paige is that her hands are impressively soft. She must use hand cream like nobody’s business. Maybe she even uses those creepy moisturizing gloves.
But the second, and more surprising, unexpected thought I have is that, lo and behold, she’s actually fun to dance with. She’s relaxed and confident. She teaches me some of her moves. And as we dance, as the music swells around us, something absolutely preposterous happens.
It feels like we’re actually friends.
A little over an hour later, class is over. In the crowded lobby, I lose sight of Paige. But as I make my way outside, I hear her calling out my name. For once, the sound of her voice doesn’t make me cringe.
I turn around and watch as she materializes from the crowd.
“What a blast!” she says.
“I know, right?” I say. And I smile at her. Just a regular, genuine smile. I can’t explain it, but I no longer feel annoyed by her. Maybe the magic of Dance Den has something to do with it. Maybe it’s finally hit me that despite her weirdness, she’s actually pretty nice. In any case, whatever it is, things are suddenly different between us now.
I ask her if she wants to grab a smoothie.
“Absolutely,” she says.
At the smoothie bar, Paige and I sit on the upholstered stools that look out the front window. We watch as other people from Dance Den wander by. A lot of them are in pairs or small groups, their faces brightly lit up as they chitchat with each other.
I glance over at Paige, unsure of what kind of small talk to make. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a new friend.
“How’s your smoothie?” I ask.
“Not bad,” she says. She holds her cup out to me. “Wanna try?”
“Oh, that’s…no, that’s okay. Thanks, though.”
She shrugs, then lowers her mouth and takes an extremely long drink, noisily sucking up the smoothie through her straw.
“Oh, by the way,” I say. “I need to give you back your mini umbrella. Thanks for lending it to me. We did end up using it after all.”
“I thought you might,” she says. She frowns at me. “I heard you and Luke broke up.”
I nod. “We did.”
“Not-so-fun fact,” says Paige. “Flamingo relationships split up ninety-nine percent of the time.”
Okay. I guess she is still a little irritating.
“How do you know stuff like that?” I ask.
Paige shrugs. “It’s out there.”
“Right,” I say. “Well…as far as Luke and I are concerned, we never should have started dating in the first place. It was a huge mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
I raise my eyebrows and wait for her to go on.
“You’ve learned something from it,” she says. “So you’re better off than you were before.”
I laugh through my nose. “Sorry. But I’m pretty sure I’m worse off than before. I completely screwed up my friendship with Luke.”
“You’ll repair it.”
She sounds so confident that for a second, I almost feel convinced of it, too. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel very fixable.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” I sigh. “Things have changed. Permanently, I think.”
“You fell in love with him.”
“No,” I stammer. “I didn’t—”
“Lemme guess. You admitted your feelings, but he didn’t reciprocate them? Is that what happened?”
“No,” I say forcefully. “That’s not what happened. Can we please talk about something else?”
Paige scratches her arm. “Like?”
“Like…” I scramble for something, anything. “Have you cooked anything new lately?”
Sure enough, as soon as I bring up the topic, Paige is more than happy to talk about it. Relief washes over me as she starts telling me about the latest recipe she’s been developing—a concoction that features macerated blueberries and tuna fish. I listen to her, but at the same time, her verdict about my breakup with Luke keeps echoing through my mind. In love with him? No. I think I’d know if that had happened. You don’t fall in love with someone and not realize it. Sure, I developed a crush on him. But that was it. If it was anything more—
But the more I try to deny it, the more obvious it becomes.
I totally fell in love with Luke.
20
The next morning, shortly after I get to work, an email pops up in my inbox announcing an all-hands meeting that afternoon. As soon as the email arrives, a palpable feeling of somberness spreads over the room. Thanks to me, we all know what’s coming. And I won’t be surprised in the least when I’m one of the employees being let go. By now, Sherrie has probably scrawled the word RAT next to my name on her list.
Later, when everyone gathers for the meeting, I keep to myself and stay toward the back of the group. But I can only stare at my shoes for so long, and so eventually I look up—and, of course, my eyes find Luke. He’s on the opposite side of the room. He’s talking to Erin from Accounting. As I watch them, Erin tilts her head back and laughs at something Luke says, then places a hand on his arm.
I guess Luke is going to get what he wanted after all.
“Good afternoon, folks,” says Sherrie, as she walks to the front of the room, her heels clicking forebodingly against the floor. Everyone immediately quiets down. “I know you’re all probably anxious to find out what this meeting is about, so let’s get right into it.”
I close my eyes. I wait despondently for her to break the awful news. Part of me expects her to even start listing off names here and now.
I’ll be the first to be called, of course.
“There’s been some rumors going around,” says Sherrie. “Now, I’m not sure how these rumors started. But rest assured, there’s no truth to them. No one is losing their job.”
A sigh of relief goes through the room. I open my eyes. Wait, what? But I saw—
“We are, however, doing some restructuring. But again, it will not entail layoffs, folks. We’re just going to be shifting some things around. You may see yourself assigned to a new team in the following weeks, but no one is being let go. Are there any questions?”
Murmurs of understanding ripple through the group. A few hands shoot up into the air. As for me, I feel like an utter fool. I want to run out of the room. I want to hide behind the nearest potted ficus tree.
Most of all, I want to go back in time and stop myself from seeing that stupid piece of paper on Sherrie’s desk.
Sherrie answers a few questions, tells us that more details will be forthcoming, and thanks everyone for coming to the meeting. As the group breaks up and people head back to their desks, lighthearted chatter fills the air. I know I should be relieved, too. But I only feel humiliated. Now I’m going to forever be known as the girl who cried layoffs.
I hurry back to my desk and drop into my chair. Even sitting down, though, I still feel so visible, and I lower the seat a little. Then a little more. Then all the way down. I look ridiculous now, but I don’t even care. If I could, I would crawl under my desk.
Instead, desperately needing a distraction, I open up the vendor applications folder on the server. A new batch of them have just come in. I open the first one and look it over. The applicant, a woman based in Alaska, makes custom sterling silver jewelry; her specialty is hand-engraving portraits onto pendants. As I flip through the photos she submitted of her work, engraved couple after engraved couple smile tauntingly at me.
I close the application and mark it as rejected. Then, sighing, knowing that this is exactly the kind of product our customers go nuts for, I change the status to under consideration and drop it in the folder for the senior product buyers to review.
Later that afternoon, I get a call about the job that I interviewed for. I run like a maniac out into the stairwell to take it. Through my labored breathing, I hear an upbeat H
R woman ask how my day is going, remark about how beautiful the weather is, and then cheerfully offer me the position.
“No need to give me an answer right now, of course,” she says. “You’re welcome to think it over for a few days.”
I catch my breath. I thank her for the offer. I tell her that I don’t need a few days—that the answer is yes. And then I hang up and make my way to Sherrie’s office.
* * *
I tell myself that it’s for the best. The whole layoff blunder, I mean. Continuing to work at Artisanal Gifts would simply be too torturous, now that I’ve accepted my true feelings for Luke. In fact, I’ve decided that the best course of action is to pretend as if Luke doesn’t even exist from here on out.
Immature, I know. But a hundred percent necessary.
A few days later, though, I’m at home after work when I get an email from Catherine. The subject line reads: Hawaii Pics! I open up the email and find a link from the portrait photographer. And below the link, Catherine has included a note about there being some great shots of Luke and myself.
I’m not in the mood to look through the photos, but I figure I should get it over with. If I don’t look at them now, I’ll never look at them. And I know that somehow Catherine will be able to tell.
I log into the client portal and click on the first thumbnail. When the photograph enlarges, it instantly transports me back to Hawaii. It’s been less than a week, but it feels like the photograph is from ages ago. We all look happy. Behind us glows an obscenely beautiful sunset. Around us, palm tree fronds are frozen mid-wave.
One at a time, I click through the photos, giving a few seconds of attention to each one. There are a bunch of shots of all of us posing together, in various crops and angles. Then there are photos of individual couples, starting with Mom and Dad. There’s one especially great shot with the two of them holding each other and laughing. The pictures of Catherine and Kenneth come next. After that are the ones of Luke and myself. I click through those faster, barely giving each one a glance.
God, there are so many photos. When is the torment going to end?
Finally, I reach it. The last photo. It’s a candid shot of all of us: we’ll all looking out at the ocean. All of us, that is, except for Luke. Instead of focusing on the water, Luke’s eyes are on me. And he has this…look in his eyes. The longer I stare at the photograph, the longer I’m sure of it.
He has real feelings for me, too.
* * *
I can’t sleep that night. I toss and turn relentlessly in bed. And by the time I do finally fall asleep, it’s almost four in the morning. I stay asleep for less than three hours before waking up again. I take a shower, dry my hair, force myself to eat something, put on a little make up. Not that any amount of under eye concealer will fix what I’ve got going on.
Then I get in my car and drive to Luke’s.
Standing outside his building, I steady my shaking hand and press the buzzer to his apartment. Luke answers with a groggy, “Hello?”
“It’s Emma,” I say, leaning into the speaker. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
There’s a pause. “Um, okay. Come up, I guess.”
He buzzes me in.
Upstairs, on his floor, I find his apartment door slightly ajar. I walk in and close it behind me. His apartment smells like shampoo and freshly brewed coffee.
Luke walks out of the kitchen holding a cup. “You couldn’t have just called?”
“I wanted to talk to you in person.”
“At seven in the morning.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. But I—I couldn’t sleep last night, and—”
“It’s fine,” Luke says, sounding impatient. “What’s up?”
“I need to apologize to you,” I say. “Luke, I am really, really sorry about what I said to you in Hawaii. I didn’t mean it. I was putting up a shield.”
I see the coldness retreat from his face. He sighs. “I acted like a jerk, too.”
“I really did develop feelings for you, you know.”
“You did, huh?” he asks. I see the corner of his mouth curl up. Just a little.
“What about you?” I ask, my heart rate picking up.
A length of silence passes between us. Finally, Luke says, “I developed feelings for you, too.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
Luke’s smile vanishes, and my stomach drops.
“Look, Emma,” he says. “I’m sorry. But I think we’ve established that we aren’t meant to be together.”
“But that was a fake relationship. It wasn’t real.”
“I know, but…let’s just let it be. Okay?” He runs a hand through his hair. “Breaking up the first time was bad enough. If we have to go through that again, and for real this time…I’m sorry. But I can’t.”
I almost say, “Okay, so we won’t break up, then!” But then I realize how ridiculous that sounds. So I just stand there, not saying anything at all. In the kitchen, his coffee maker beeps.
“Fine,” I say. “I get it. We can just be friends.”
Luke’s eyes drift from mine. “Right, um…I don’t know if I can do that, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’ll be too hard.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. That’s it? What, just like that, we’re never going to talk again? No. I can’t let things end like this. Maybe if I tell him how I really feel—
I open my mouth, but I can’t bring myself to tell him that I love him. It’s too much.
“You don’t know how much you mean to me,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You mean a lot to me too, but…I can’t.”
Every bone in my body feels shattered.
“I’m going to go,” I say, and turn away. But before I fully make it through his door, I turn around to say, “I accepted a job offer. Just so you know.”
“Wait, what?” says Luke. “But the layoffs didn’t happen.”
“I guess it’s time for me to move on anyway,” I say.
21
There are a lot of good things about my new job. My commute is eight minutes shorter. All of my coworkers are perfectly pleasant. My desk is by a window that looks out toward the water. There are perks galore, like a free membership to the gym in the building, discounted coffee at the adjoining café, and an extra week’s worth of vacation days. And, of course, the job itself is better than what I was doing before. Now, as a senior buyer for a small import company, it feels like the decisions I make effect actual change at work. I even have a small team of employees reporting to me—although, truth be told, they’re so self-sufficient that I barely have to manage them.
Still, I miss things. I miss the familiarity of the old office. I miss the silly team building exercises. I even miss the wonky drawer on my desk. But most of all, I miss Luke. During my first few days at the new job, every time someone has introduced themself to me, I’ve wondered whether they’ll end up being my closest friend here. I’ve wondered which of them—if any of them—will be my new Luke. Minus the mess, of course.
After I finish up my first week, though, I begin to settle in. As I gradually discover the quirks of the office—a bathroom stall with a sticky lock, a coworker who talks to the copier, a small group who sneak out for a cocktail lunch every Wednesday—it makes me feel more at home. And I do end up finding someone who I click with, a woman named Brenna from Accounts Payable. By the end of my second week, we’ve already eaten lunch out together twice. There’s no comparable restaurant to Tasty Thai in the area. But the alternative options do just fine.
It’s a Tuesday during the following week when I get a call from the front desk.
“Package just arrived for you,” says Carrie, our receptionist.
“A package?” I ask, confused. “I didn’t order anything.”
“It looks like it’s from…let’s see…a company called Novelties?”
“I don’t think it’s for me,” I say.
“Just come up
and get it,” says Carrie. “It’s addressed to you, Emma.”
I finish up what I’m doing and then head over to the front desk. Carrie is on the phone, but she points to a small mountain of packages stacked nearby. I spot the one with my name on it and, after giving it a gentle shake, carry it back to my desk.
When I open it up, I find a desktop bowling game inside: a wooden alley shorter than my forearm, ten tiny pins, and one itty-bitty bowling ball.
I laugh quietly, still perplexed. I set the game on my desk and search through the tissue paper that it was packed in. In the bottom of the box, I find a printed invoice. But there’s no sender name. No gift message.
The miniature size of the game does remind me of the miniature umbrella that Paige lent me, though. Maybe this is simply her way of continuing on our friendship. The other possibility is that Luke sent it to me. But it doesn’t seem like something he would do. Lucinda is also a possibility, I guess. But it doesn’t seem very like her, either.
I decide not to do anything about it yet. After playing a few frames—bowling strikes, of course—I find a good place for the game on my desk and go back to work.
And, to be honest, I don’t think about the gift much after that. Not until the following day. Not until I get another call from Carrie, letting me know that there’s another delivery for me at the front desk.
This time I don’t object about not having ordered anything. I simply go up and get my package. It’s smaller this time. It’s a square box instead of a rectangular one. FRAGILE is printed at a diagonal across the box.
Inside, wrapped in bubble wrap, is a cat mug. Not the same cat mug as my old one, the one that went missing all those weeks ago. But it’s a pretty adorable one nonetheless. On the side of the cup, a tortoiseshell cat gazes up at me mischievously. The handle of the cup is its tail.
Again, there’s no gift message, no sender info. But I know now: it’s Luke. It has to be, right? He’s the only one I told about my cat mug going missing. But why did he send me a new one, and the bowling game? If he’s trying to tell me something, I wish he would just tell me.
Emma and Luke Are Totally Together Page 14
