Their youngest reporter, Leo Asher, addressed Peter when he ducked into the hallway. “Today’s the day, I can feel it. Roberts is going to give me a real assignment.”
“Scholarships are real assignments.”
“I’ve been on scholarships for months. I can be trusted with something a little more high profile.” Leo was a junior in college, but his serious case of baby face could have fooled anyone.
“Do you know how long Roberts had me on scholarships when I started? Six months. I’d get comfortable if I were you.” As they neared the central hub of the office, the entrancing aroma of fresh coffee assaulted his senses. The prospect of caffeine filled Peter with an artificial dose of charity. “Tell you what, Asher, do you like football?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Next time Roberts tries to dump a game on me, I’ll slide it to you. If he gives you any trouble, just tell him I’m responsible.”
Turning his head away from Leo, Peter nearly crashed into Ryleigh. What is she doing here? Breaths caught in his chest, in no hurry to seek freedom. She mouthed, ‘Hey,’ steadying the stack of dishes she held. Rubbing his jaw, he gave her a fractional nod. He wanted to smile at her, to ask how her weekend had been. The jaded recess of his soul dissuaded him from doing so.
From his seat, he watched Ryleigh waltz around the conference table, filling up the white coffee mugs. Several pieces of hair maneuvered their way out of her braid as she poured the coffee, from one person to the next. When she arrived at his mug, a whiff of that fruity perfume infiltrated his nose. Peter concentrated on her delicate hands steadying the carafe, fighting off the memory of her soft lips, the way she had whispered in his ear like a licensed seductress.
As much as he would have loved to forget the incident, his puzzlement surrounding it stalled him. She was young, gorgeous, witty.
What could she possibly want from him?
Two chairs later, the carafe ran dry. Ryleigh went to the refreshment area to refill it, giving Peter’s neighbor an excuse to run his mouth. Though, the absence of an excuse had never stopped him, either.
“Completely non-conspicuous placement of your hands.” Mike glanced at Peter’s lap. “Nice to know you have blood running through those veins of yours. You know her?”
"Drop it, Corso."
He refused to indulge his colleague, who may as well have been accompanied by a club and a giant turkey leg.
“Alright, ladies and gents.” Mr. Roberts slung his behemoth planner onto the table. His coarse white hair strayed from its usual parting, sticking up as if he had tumbled around in a field of dryer sheets. “I don’t want to be here anymore than you do, so let’s get this over with.”
“Earlier today, I was informed Matthews is extending his leave. Since Rosenfeld can’t tell a damn tennis racquet from a baseball bat, I need somebody else to pick up the slack in sports this week.”
Peter’s ribs compressed like an accordion. Ryleigh squeezed her lips together, but it did not aid in shielding her profound amusement. He could have died right then, inadequacies on full display.
“I’d like to take a stab at it, sir,” Leo said.
“There’s a lot of moving parts when you cover sports. It’ll make your pretty little head spin. Your time will come, Asher.” Mr. Roberts scanned the staff. “What about … Corso?”
Peter's gaze split between Mr. Roberts yapping about the schedule and Ryleigh idling in the corner. Enduring her hour-long presence was like a recovering heroin addict confined to a room with nothing but a needle. As much as he craved to inject her affections into his veins, that stellar high would be riddled with side effects he was unqualified to handle.
Having retained nothing from the meeting, Peter returned to his office hoping to stifle his panic stricken inner dialogue with the melodic clicking of the keyboard. Ryleigh packed up and left the conference room short of the hour wrapping up. The tension in his chest lingered long after she had gone.
As he sifted through his e-mail, a knock reverberated on the door. Could it be her? No, it was Mike. He leaned on one side of Peter's desk and jutted his chin out.
“You alluded, not so subtly, to my erection in front of the entire conference room. You think I want to talk to you?” Peter keyed a response to the head of the farmer’s market, who had inquired about coverage for the close of their season. "This better be important.”
"C’mon Pete. What’s the story with you and that girl?"
"Call me Pete again and you're permanently banned from my office. She's my barista. What's it to you?"
"Provided that you don’t have anything going on with her, I thought maybe you could get me her number, put in a good word?" Mike managed to come off as a complete creep, as per usual.
A wicked seed of an idea planted itself inside Peter’s mind, so wicked that he hesitated to follow through with it. Keeping weirdos like Mike at bay seemed like a sufficient reason to deliver the forthcoming white lie.
"I'd stay away from her unless you're trying to land yourself on page thirteen." While he found the joke humorous, Mike did not seem to understand it judging by his immovable grimace. "How long have you worked here? You don't know what's on page thirteen? Mugshots galore. She's in high school, Corso."
You’re going straight to hell for this.
"Damn, that blows." Mike's testosterone-driven enthusiasm deflated. He paused midway to the door. “Not to knock you down from your holier than thou high horse, but need I remind you, you were the one with tight pants over this girl.”
Days without seeing Peter morphed into weeks. Each chime of the door’s bell incited a higher degree of dread as someone other than him entered the shop. By the end of the third week, she was sure he was avoiding her.
Ryleigh had cleaned the same table for five minutes. The aching in her wrist from the repetitive, circular motion did not disrupt her fleeting subconscious. Had she been wrong to kiss Peter? He certainly had not come back for seconds. Why had he hung her out to dry? Her mental state crumbled and eroded like ancient rock formations as she tried to answer these questions. Questions only he could answer.
She had to see him.
Kendall danced at the sink while cleaning the blenders. The heavy bass line of hard rock droned on in her headphones, creating a static hum in the shop. Upon her migration to the espresso machine, Ryleigh urged, "Hey, I'll clean that. I'm making a drink on the way out."
She let her headphones rest on her neck. Kendall’s forehead scrunched, wrinkling her sepia skin. “You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”
“I’m just bringing him coffee.” Her hand rubbed along the side of her jeans. “And maybe my phone number.”
“I gave him my number, once upon a time.”
Spots obscured Ryleigh’s vision. Had they been ex-lovers, their hostile attitudes toward each other now made perfect sense. A pulling sensation hooked in her gut. Kendall and Peter were much closer in age.
“I didn’t know you two had history. I don’t want—“
“I’d barely clock it as history, and we’re still friends, somehow, in spite of it.” She shrugged into her leather jacket, lagging by the door. “Big sister advice? He’s a whole lot of mess for someone your age to try to deal with.”
Kendall meant well, but Ryleigh had already made her decision. One brush with Peter’s coarse lips had transformed her into a lovesick teenager. She refused to let him slip away, not when she had barely skimmed the surface of everything that could be. When would she meet a guy like this again? A sharp dresser with a smart mouth and a knee-buckling smile.
Her years of abstaining from the barbaric ritual of dating had not been in vain. She had been waiting for him.
Adrenaline raced through Ryleigh and overshadowed any fear of rejection. Once the cappuccino was made, she ripped a page from her poetry journal, folded it, and placed it in her jean pocket. She stepped outside, bounding across the street with her heart on her sleeve.
Ryleigh grew ill at the prospect of seeing Peter
. The initial excitement had fizzled out. Alone in the elevator, she had a hot drink and cold feet. Not to mention the poem nestled at her rear; the one she had written that day in the shop when he stole her table. The sliding of the chrome doors sealed her fate. Nausea held her in a vise grip as she crossed the threshold into the bustling workspace.
A woman with a comically long neck eyed her the moment she invaded the office. Short, choppy hair framed her face, which retained a spectacular angle for her age. She was one of those women who you were shocked to hear were 15 years older than they appeared.
“May I help you?” The woman unscrewed the cap on a bottle of white-out, elbows resting on a desk calendar. A metal plate on the desk declared her as ‘Ms. Walters.’
Ryleigh presented the cappuccino. “I wanted to drop this off for Peter.”
"Which Peter would that be? We have two.”
She had seen his last name a thousand times on his loyalty account, she had overheard it at the catered meeting, and yet it evaded her. "He's tall, curly dark hair …"
"Odd. Cranky Peter never gets visitors." Ms. Walters looked Ryleigh up and down as if she were an alien lifeform. "Rosenfeld’s office is 307. Down the hall, take a left, second door on the right."
Cranky Peter? Some reputation this guy has.
It turned out the instructions Ms. Walters provided were unnecessary. A gold placard mounted to the left of each door proclaimed the office number and its occupant. 303, Greene, closed door. 305, Asher, light off. 307, Rosenfeld, door wide open and light on. No Peter.
The computer chair had been rolled away from the desk. On the monitor, the cursor blinked, awaiting the formation of ensuing words. There were no personal mementos, save the amusing ‘Trust me, I’m a journalist’ coffee mug.
Discomfort blazed through Ryleigh like flame conquering a kerosene-soaked rope. The walls of the space closed in and immobilized her in a circle of inaction. She could not stand there forever, stressing the possible appearance of a man whom she had kissed once.
Just put it on his desk and bolt.
Her paddle ball heartbeat pummeled against her chest. Placing the cappuccino and poem beside his keyboard felt criminal. Ryleigh stared at her cherry red boots. What would her parents say about her gallivanting around with someone who knows how much older than herself?
Peter’s scratchy voice froze her hand as she reached to retract the coffee. “Didn’t know you guys delivered.”
Ryleigh turned around. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Fine, red lines had constructed highways in his tired eyes. His thin face drooped like a flower thirsting for rain. Cruelness marred the usual frailty of his smile. “Oh, you noticed that, huh?”
Ryleigh’s lungs constricted at his staggering audacity. How dare he speak to her like this after the transcendence they had shared. Had he not felt the same, extraordinary, toe-curling spark when their lips met?
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come.” She tried to move past him but he caught her below the shoulders. Her muscles weakened despite the lightness of his touch, and her limbs trembled when he let her go.
“I’m sort of glad you did.”
“You can’t kiss me like that and then act like I don’t exist.” Ryleigh swallowed her embarrassment. He could hear her out. He owed her that much. That headstrong act faltered as she whimpered, “I have feelings.”
A balding guy passing through the hall snorted. “Page thirteen. Good one, bud.”
“Beat it, Corso,” Peter shouted. His thumb and index finger did a split across his forehead. “Look, I understand you have feelings, alright? I’m keeping my distance out of respect for your feelings. Because, emotionally, I’m unavailable.”
Ryleigh grabbed a fistful of his sweater, resulting in a clumsy collision of their bodies. “If I asked you to kiss me again, right here, right now, would you?”
“No. No, I-I can’t.”
“I should go.” She surrendered her hold on the sweater.
“What’s that? A love note?” Peter alluded to the folded paper, recovering from a stuttering imbecile to the prince of snark in record time. And while his pointed remarks normally made Ryleigh’s nerve endings tingle, this one left her gutted, numb.
“Take it as it resonates.”
Mike’s derisive mention of page thirteen triggered a cacophony of neuroses. High school joke aside, a college freshman hardly qualified as a higher rung on the ethics ladder. She was practically half his age. Peter knew he liked her, and that horrifying admission complicated everything tenfold.
“Emotionally unavailable. That was the best you could come up with?” Peter muttered to himself after she had gone.
The bullshit excuse sounded a hell of a lot better than ‘I’m terrified of anything with a vagina.’
Of course he had wanted to kiss her. How could he not with those doll-like eyes and smug lips angled up at him? Kissing would lead them to the messy tango of other intimate dealings, experiences that were better left untouched. Peter had endured enough sexual humiliation for this lifetime.
A meticulously crafted heart in the center of the cappuccino’s foam stared back at him, making him regret how he had handled the situation. The remnants of the artwork disappeared throughout the course of the hour, fading into the lake of coffee like it had never existed.
His nervous stomach deterred him from drinking it.
The night crept by as he grappled with the Ryleigh dilemma. He edited the same story three times before submitting it, only to have one of his co-workers send it back to his desk flagged with careless errors. Thoughts of her clouded his ability to focus on correcting the article. Ryleigh’s hurt had engraved itself into his brain, as if it were his own. Her watery eyes pleaded with him, her cracked voice recounting, ‘Take it as it resonates.’
When he opened his eyes, his gaze wandered to that pastel pink slip of paper. No one had ever written him a love note. Maybe it was presumptuous to refer to it as such.
Peter figured he may as well read it before throwing it in the trash. Her smudged cursive filled the page, the same looping penmanship in which she scrawled his name onto his many to-go cups.
Eyes haunted by fatigue
Rings of fire guarding graying amber fossils
Brows lay flat in surrender to the mundanity of life
Arches vanished in the absence of having anything to contest
An inexpressive mouth conceals the wonderment of his perfectly imperfect grin
When those thin lips part to expose crooked teeth
His face blooms, a spring garden shaking off winter’s burden
Crow’s feet take up roost, glorious creases of skin mimicking sharp talons
Laugh lines surround the smile, mirroring rippled water
Just as tranquil
But summer’s heat is merciless
The once hopeful buds of spring were never meant to last
His fingers ghosted over the lines. Why had she wasted these lyrical words on him? Peter’s cool olive complexion blanched as he deciphered the string of digits beneath the poem.
Her phone number.
"So, what’s the big news you’ve brought us here to discuss?” Andrea, ever the gossiper, did not waste time with formalities. Ryleigh had invited her to their favorite lunch spot under the pretense of filling her in on ‘guy-related developments.’ She predetermined to omit the part where Peter acted like a dick. “Are you still pining after that news guy?”
"I brought him a cappuccino after my shift the other night." Ryleigh swirled the straw in her cup. “I can’t believe this place still uses straws. They must not watch the news. These are killing marine life, you know.”
Andrea choked on her soft drink. "You just showed up at his office? Unannounced? That’s psycho."
If she knew about the kiss she wouldn’t say that.
Ryleigh shoved a guacamole-laden chip into her mouth, a display of innocent indifference. "I was going to leave it on his desk and get the hell out of there, until
he walked in on my not so stealthy operation.” She paused for a beat, debating whether she should reveal the more damning part of her quest. “This is going to sound like I’ve gone insane, because it’s so off-base for me, but I gave him my number.”
"Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?" Andrea’s eyes bordered on popping out of their sockets. “How old is he, anyway? Never mind. It’s your life. Did you hear from him?”
"No, not yet. How did your date go?"
"Fine." Andrea wrinkled her nose, as she did whenever an unpleasant topic arose. "He tried to make out with me halfway through the movie, and I totally shut him down, which pissed him off. Don’t get me wrong, I like him, a lot. That’s why I’m trying to take it slow."
"He shouldn't get pissy with you for not wanting to do something that makes you uncomfortable. They make PSA’s about guys like that.”
"Exactly. That was our first official date, and he was reaching for privileges he has yet to earn, if you catch my drift."
Ryleigh’s phone created an unpleasant buzzing against the wooden booth. She flipped it over, throat going dry at the display. The lock screen illuminated with a message from an unsaved number. Each word contained within the notification escalated the already disconcerting rate of her pulse: ‘Had I read the poem first, I might have kissed you.’
Ryleigh came in through the garage, wiggling out of her boots and shrugging off her coat. Her fuzzy socks muffled her descent to the kitchen. Anticipation ruled each step. Peter texted her the same time every afternoon, like clockwork, as she arrived home and he headed to work. Their secret, technological connection spawned euphoria.
Loving Rosenfeld Page 5
