Virtually Perfect

by Samantha Hunter

  “Your car…”

  “Don’t worry about it…. I’ll walk back.”

  His tone cut off any comment she would have made, and she turned and left the room, not breathing until she reached the kitchen, feeling unsure as she sat at the small white table. She heard the door click quietly shut out in the living room, the soft sound more wrenching than a slam, and fought back tears.

  She told herself it was better this way.

  6

  THE DAY WAS SUNNY, and Gwen was just as bright, bouncing into Raine’s office Monday morning. She poised herself on the edge of the desk, leaned over, and in a conspiratorial whisper asked, “So, how’d it go? I want to know everything!”

  Raine didn’t even look up, and tried to sound as if she had no idea what Gwen was talking about. “Busy, Gwen, not now.” Her curt tone would have made most people cringe, but Gwen, as Raine had learned, was generally unrebuffable.

  “That bad, huh? Was he a complete toad?”

  Raine sat back and put her hands on her temples, sighing. Gwen would not let this rest, she knew. As her closest—and her only—real friend, she didn’t want to hurt Gwen’s feelings, but it was an annoying part of the girlfriend relationship that you were expected to tell all each Monday. She never could quite get used to it, and since typically she didn’t have much to tell, she just listened to Gwen’s tales.

  But Gwen was relentless, and she felt herself cave. Maybe it would be good to vent. She opened her eyes, only to find Gwen regarding her patiently.

  “I want to hear all about Rider, and your weekend, and then I’ll tell you about mine, too. I met a new guy. He’s dreamy.”

  “Don’t you ever work?”

  “Tons, but I manage my time so I can hear all about your weekend on Monday mornings. I find this little storytelling session is good for motivating me to get out of bed on Mondays, it primes me for the day. So go ahead, prime me.”

  Raine had to smile. “I don’t think you need any more priming, but okay. I’m not quite sure how to start. Let’s just say this weekend was…unusual.”

  Gwen slid off the desk and into a chair in one lithe movement. “Ohhh…unusual is good! But details, I want details.”

  Raine sighed. “Okay. Well, good thing you are sitting down. Turns out Rider is someone I know. Someone we both know.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened and she ticked off a few possible names. Raine shook her head. “No. Not even close. Rider is Jack Harris.”

  “Who?”

  Raine rolled her eyes and leaned forward. “Jack Harris—the IT guy you thought looked like Superman the other day.”

  “Noooooo!” Gwen whooshed out the word on a breath of disbelief, and sat back in her chair, flabbergasted. “You’ve got to be kidding! What are the freakin’ odds on that? Oh my God! Raine, I can’t believe it. What happened? God, he’s gorgeous.”

  Raine smiled faintly, absentmindedly arranging papers on her desk as she spoke. “Well, we were both pretty disappointed, to put it mildly. We argued a bit, then he…well, he—”

  “Yeah? C’mon! What?”

  “Well, he kissed me. Major-league kiss.”

  “Hold the phone. For whatever reason, you weren’t happy to see each other, you argued, and he kissed you?”

  “Yeah. I know. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it does, when you think about it. I guess we were both so worked up from the anticipation, the time online, we just had to find out. You know, what it would be like.” She took a deep breath, blushing furiously. “It ended up being a little more than a kiss. We, um, ended up going back to my place.”

  Since Gwen looked as if she might fall out of the chair and let out a hoot, Raine jumped up to close the door.

  “You slept with him?”

  Raine nodded silently and Gwen grinned. “How was it?”

  Too many reactions hit Raine at once. She started to speak, but stumbled, and felt her eyes burning. “It was great, but it was awful, you know? I mean, finally I meet someone who can…who could…” Just when she thought her cheeks wouldn’t burn any hotter, they did.

  Gwen smacked the table. “All right! It’s about time, I was keeping my fingers crossed for you. But may I say that you don’t look all that thrilled about it.”

  “Gwen, the guy I slept with Saturday night is not who I thought he would be—it was a fantasy. In real life he is a complete jerk with a horrible attitude who for some unknown reason can’t stand me! And I can’t stand him either. He’s so…rude. And arrogant. And I went to bed with him! How could I have done that?”

  She dropped her head to the desk for a moment, and then raised it to look at Gwen with miserable eyes. “When we were in bed, at a, um, critical moment, he called me Nilla instead of Raine, and I don’t know—it was like he couldn’t think about being with me. The real me. He just wanted the fantasy. He wanted Nilla. It was humiliating.”

  “Oh, Raine, honey, c’mon, people fantasize all the time in bed, and he knows you better as Nilla than Raine. I would think that was completely natural. It’s only a name, for goodness’ sake. I’m sure he knew exactly whom he was with. And you are Nilla, after all. It’s not like he was thinking about a different woman.”

  Raine sucked in a breath and her voice became stiff and prim.

  “Maybe so, but Nilla is a creation, she is many things that I am not at all. So, it just underlines the fact that he didn’t want to think about who he was really with.”

  “Well, all right. What happened then?”

  “He spent the night, and it was…nice. But then in the morning, I knew that it was all wrong, that we’d made a huge mistake. I feel like such a fool. I hate that I had such a lapse in judgment. I have never gotten so caught up in someone before, so swept away…”

  Gwen offered only a satisfied smirk. “It’s about time, if you ask me. That’s what it’s supposed to be like, Raine. You are supposed to get so caught up you don’t care about anything or anyone else. We all wait to be swept away like that. Thank your lucky stars!”

  “My lucky stars? Are you crazy? Not only did I sleep with a man who dislikes me, now I also have to think about dealing with him at work. Does it occur to you that this is a little weird?” She got up and paced the office.

  “I have to see him here in the office and pretend nothing happened. I had phone sex with him, for God’s sake, and was, well, pretty open with him online. It’s so embarrassing! I’ll thank my lucky stars if he isn’t having a good laugh about it downstairs with the staff.”

  Crossing over to hug Raine, Gwen stroked her hair and cooed reassuringly. “Raine, this is not a bad thing. Maybe not ideal, but not bad. You guys just have to work it out.”

  “There is nothing to work out. He was very angry when he left…I guess I was a little, um, harsh. And that’s just as well. Now we just have to get past a few awkward moments here, and as long as he doesn’t go telling anyone else, it’ll be fine.”

  Gwen sighed. Raine knew she thought she was too stubborn, and too afraid. But her voice was supportive.

  “Hey, you took a chance, and you had a great night, right? So you had a tiff—those things can be smoothed out. Don’t make up your mind so fast, just see what happens.”

  Raine nodded, though she did so only to placate Gwen. She had no doubts that she and Jack were definitely not a possibility. Gwen went on.

  “I don’t think he is the kiss-and-tell type, anyway. I wouldn’t worry too much about that. He just didn’t seem to be that way. More like tall, quiet and intense.” She shifted gears quickly, sitting up and wiggling in the chair. “So, anyway, let me tell you about the new guy I met. I went down there, and…”

  “Down where?”

  “Downstairs. Remember we were joking about if there were more cute guys hiding downstairs where Jack works? Well, I decided to find out, and figured even if there weren’t, maybe I would run into Jack—not that I would even have so much as a fantasy about him now that I know you two are having a thing—” Raine tried to interject that they were d
efinitely not having a thing, but Gwen just rolled on with her story.

  “Anyway, you should see it down there. I never knew. It’s like something out of a movie. All these small offices circle around the edges of this one big room, and there are thousands of computers there. Well, maybe not thousands, but a lot. It’s all kinda dimly lit, and romantic in a techno comic-book kind of way.”

  Raine raised her eyebrows, wondering at Gwen’s description of the building basement, but listened as she continued.

  “Anyway, I figured I would go down, and just see what or who was there. So, I was poking around looking for Jack’s office, and bumped into this guy.” Her eyes took on that faraway look that Raine knew well.

  “His name is Neal. Don’t ya just love that name? It’s so, I don’t know, down-home.” She smiled. “He’s kinda cute, not as built as Jack, but cute in that nerdy I-work-on-my-computer-in-the-basement kind of way, you know? And he even had the thick, black-framed glasses.”

  Raine couldn’t quite hold back her amusement when Gwen sighed, but motioned for her to continue. At least this was taking her mind off her own problems.

  “Okay, so you met this guy Neal and…”

  “He asked me why I was there, and I told him I was looking for Jack, and then we got talking and I asked him out.”

  “You don’t waste time, Gwen.”

  “Life is short. Anyway, we had a very nice dinner Saturday night, talked a lot, you know, got to know each other a little bit, and then went back to his place and just made out for hours.”

  “Made out?”

  Gwen sighed again. “Just kissing. Kissing and kissing and more kissing. I haven’t done that since high school, and it was terrific. Hot, sweaty, got-my-panties-soaked kissing that went on for half the night and then we just said good night. We’re going out again this Friday.” Gwen smiled, and blushed a little, and Raine smiled back.

  “Sounds nice. I’m glad for you.” And she was. It was her turn to sigh, though, and she blocked out the images of what she had been doing for hours on Saturday night, and tried not to remember the feel of Jack’s mouth on her skin.

  “So, are you going to see him again?” Gwen’s voice broke through the fog as she headed to the door.

  “Hmm? Who?”

  “Jack.”

  Raine screwed up her mouth and shook her head. “Gwen, I told you—”

  Gwen put up her hand. “Okay, okay, just want you to be open to the possibilities. You know that’s half the battle. If you are open to things happening in life, they tend to work out.”

  “Yeah, well, you have to be careful what you are open to.” She’d been way too open lately, she thought, a wave of embarrassment washing over her.

  Gwen made a face. “Pessimist. Focus on the positive, at least you got laid by a gorgeous guy, right?” She grinned. “I’m back to work. Maybe I can break something on my computer so Neal can come up and fix it. I’d like to watch him bending over to get down into all those wires under the desk.”

  Raine smiled. “In that case, may all your files crash today.” Gwen giggled and waved as she left.

  RAINE PARKED HER CAR in front of the castlelike building of the Witch Museum and walked across the street to the Salem Common, a large, open-area park where people came to walk their dogs, play and hang out.

  It was a place where you could be by yourself but not alone. Exactly what she was looking for. It was too early to go home. She stared up at the looming statue of Salem’s first settler, Roger Conant, and felt a shiver run down her spine. The statue always seemed so eerie to her. She turned her back on him and entered the park.

  Some intrepid dog walkers were exercising their canine friends, and groups of children were having snowball fights, their shrieks of joy cutting through the crisp air. She started at the closest corner and followed the maze of walkways without paying much attention to which way she was moving. Snowmen in various stages of meltdown stood here and there along the walk, and she smiled as she walked past the form of a snow angel frozen into the snow. The snow lit up the night; she loved the way it looked like diamonds scattered all over the ground.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  She was startled to see Duane fall into step beside her.

  “Um, sure.”

  “I usually walk through here on my way home, and saw you get out of your car over there. I live just over on Oliver. How about you? You live farther out, right?”

  “Yeah, on Chestnut. I just felt like a walk. Long day.”

  He nodded and they turned the corner near the ornate structure known as the bandshell, a domed stage resembling a very large gazebo. It had stood there since Salem’s early days.

  “Listen, Raine, I was wondering how the column is going. I know I was a little hard on you about it before, and if you don’t want to meet his guy, you don’t have to. It was wrong of me to push you. We can work the article without the meeting.”

  Now she really didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t ready to let Duane know she had met Jack, and had no idea how to explain what had happened. She tried to sound unconcerned and professional.

  “Thanks, Duane. I’ll let you know how it works out.”

  They walked by a group of children in the playground and Duane bent, picked up a handful of snow and whipped a snowball into the group, smacking a young boy on the arm. Delighted yells followed, and before she knew it, they were running down the walk, being chased and pelted. Duane laughed, and she joined in.

  “I forget,” he said. “Never instigate a snowball fight when you are outnumbered.”

  Raine smiled. “I think that is the first one I have been in, so you’re the expert.”

  He was looking at her differently, and she blinked when he raised his hand to brush some snow out of her hair.

  “You have a pretty smile. I wish you would show it off more often.”

  The hairs on her neck stood up in awareness, and she took a step back from his hand. This was not boss-to-employee chat, at least not the kind she was interested in. He put his hands in his pockets, and bent his head down for a moment, and then looked at her, chagrined.

  “Sorry, I guess that wasn’t too smooth.”

  “Um, Duane, you know I like you, you’re a good boss, but I don’t think—” He held his hands up and interrupted her, laughing in a kind of embarrassed way that didn’t make her feel any better.

  “Listen, I’m sorry. I’ve just been trying to screw up the courage to ask you out for a while. I know you keep to yourself a lot, and I figured you wouldn’t be someone who would get involved with anyone at the office, but I thought, hey, what the heck.”

  Raine held her breath, thinking of Jack, and felt her stomach sink a little more. Duane continued.

  “And then, here I am forcing you to go meet some other guy, and I couldn’t believe how stupid that was.” He laughed again and kicked some snow, looking at her with intense, blue eyes.

  Raine couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and had no idea what to do with it.

  “Duane, I just don’t think going out with you is a good idea—”

  He looked down again, and nodded, and she searched for something, anything, intelligent to say.

  “I mean, we work together, you are my boss. And I like you, I do, but you know, things like this never work.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I knew that, but seeing you every day, and then thinking of you going to meet some stranger—well, I figured…hell, I don’t know what I figured. But hey, I took my shot, and now we know.” He tried to sound offhand, but Raine could hear the strain and felt terrible, though she wasn’t quite sure why she should.

  “I’m sorry, Duane.” It was all she could think to say. She was freezing, her teeth were beginning to chatter, and she couldn’t feel any more awkward.

  “No, I know, it’s okay. Listen, let me walk you back to your car. You’re freezing.”

  She sighed and nodded. They walked across the park to her car in silence, and she was relieved to finally say g
ood-night and watch him walk away. The situation was just surreal. She had never picked up one hint from Duane that he was interested in her—and she had never thought of him that way, not once. He could have his pick of just about any woman in the company, and he was asking her out?

  Life was getting too strange.

  She drove home with the radio blaring. She just didn’t want to think about any of it anymore. She grabbed her mail, surprised to see so much of it, on her way in the door.

  She put her coat on the hook, and looked through the stack. Something wasn’t right. These all came from the creditors she had just sent checks to. Opening the first envelope, she discovered a thank-you letter for her recent payment, but they had issued a refund check since her account was already paid in full. Another assumed she had overpaid and sent back the check. Raine blinked, and opened the other envelopes—all the same. Every one of the payments she had just made to credit cards, a parking ticket, and even her student loans, was sent back, and she was informed her accounts were paid in full.

  How could this be? She slumped against the door. Just what she needed. Now she had to try to figure out this mess, resend all these payments and get this straightened out before her credit was completely destroyed. Just wonderful. She was already behind on her column, she had two men she had to avoid romantic entanglements with at work, and tomorrow she would have to spend half the day on the phone getting this mess fixed. What next?

  JACK TOOK AIM at the multicolored dart board about twelve feet away. He rocketed his arm forward, and the red dart flew and just hit the board, barely sticking to the outside edge. He grunted in disgust as a couple of the guys he was out with cheered and slapped him on the back. They were happy because with that crappy shot, the next round was on him. He was off his game, to say the least, but he lost fair and square. Heading to the bar, he put in the order and went back to the table.

  “So, Jack, where have you been lately?” Greg, a programmer with a high-profile company in Boston, tilted his head toward the dartboard. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you play that badly, not that I’m not grateful.” Greg, an incorrigible flirt, eyed the waitress appreciatively as she placed a tray with several bottles of beer in the center of the table. Greg watched the young woman walk away, and sighed lustily.