by Blair Holden
“It was all true. Now get up and get dressed before I drain the water.” He winks.
Truly a man of many talents, one minute he’s melting my heart and the next second. he’s a drill sergeant. Ah, I really do love him.
***
I’m embarrassed to look at Cole as he makes me breakfast. Like the infant I told myself I would never act like in front of him, I want to hide under the counter and pretend the last couple of hours never happened. I’d let my fear get the best of me and I’d just about decided that I wasn’t prepared for the real world just yet. Even after Cole’s pep talk, I’d been charged with anxiety as I got myself dressed for the day and went through my emails several time just to double-check I actually have a job to go to.
“You know I was scared shitless the first day of school?” Cole asks as he places the perfect stack of pancakes in front of me with the entire jar of Nutella on the side.
“You never told me that,” I say quietly and remember the first couple of days. I’d been worried about him of course, but in the back of my mind, I knew he’d have no problem settling in. It’s easy for Cole to make friends, always has been. As far back as I can remember, there’s been a group of people surrounding him wanting his attention. It’s not just girls, no, he’s a real guy’s guy and people love him, love his warmth and his openness. I’ve never doubted how lucky I am to have someone like him in my life, the light to my dark.
So it’s a bit difficult to digest the fact that he struggled.
“I didn’t want you to worry, Shortcake, and I’m okay now, but the first few days were hell. People can be real assholes, you know.”
My heart begins to hurt. “What happened?”
He shrugs, pouring us both some coffee. “They realized that I had played some ball in college. My injury was more known than I thought it’d be, and the ‘dumb jock’ label stuck. It was either that or they pitied me because my hopes and dreams of becoming an NFL quarterback died an early death.”
“That’s...that’s...ridiculous! I can’t believe they had the nerve to...you should’ve told me. I would have flown right out there and kneed those buttwipes so hard even their kids’ kids would have trouble reproducing.”
“That’s a little sexist,” he laughs a little, “Why do you assume it was only the guys?”
I roll my eyes. “Please, do you really think that after five years of dating you, my entire life of knowing you, I’ve been oblivious to the fact that you’re an ovary whisperer.”
He chokes on his coffee and something definitely goes down the wrong pipe. He tears up and I’m about to thump his back when he finally comes back to his senses.
“What the hell is an ovary whisperer?” He’s still coughing slightly, tears streaming down his face. I ought to Snapchat this moment and put the dog filter on it, save it for a rainy day.
“You know, you’re the guy women look at and immediately want to have his babies. Babies come first, I don’t know why, but it’s closely followed by a wedding they plan in great detail in their mind and a house that’s big enough for your adorable two point five children, and the nanny, of course.”
He looks stumped.
“So you think my skills as an ovary whisperer automatically mean that women don’t feel the need to be, you know, horrible to me.”
“Has there ever been one? Name her? Please, I’ll wait, and while we’re on it, let’s bet my entire stash of KitKats that are in the pantry right now on it please.”
“Oh, Shortcake,” he shakes his head, a smirk playing on his lips, “at least I’ll have a lot of chocolate to eat on the plane back.”
I think my face goes deathly pale.
I brought all the chocolate from back home and I don’t know this neighborhood well enough to venture out on my own and attempt to buy a ludicrous amount of refined sugar from one of the stores on the block.
Do they even allow refined sugar in this city? Wait, will I actually have to eat those raw, bitter, faux-chocolate chips they call cacao nibs instead of my beloved KitKats? A girl tried to make me sample some of those the other day and I almost cried at how blasphemous it was to even call them chocolate. Anyway, getting back on the subject of this man making absolutely fraudulent claims...
“It took me less than a second to think of a girl on whom my talents didn’t work for a very, very long time.”
“She must not have been into guys then,” I deadpan.
“Oh no, she very much was, but I just wasn’t the guy for her.”
I’m already angry at this imaginary girl who obviously lacks a few or several brain cells.
“I need proof or it didn’t happen.”
“Whatever you say, Shortcake.” He takes his phone out and, I assume, calls someone before putting it on speaker.
“Is Tessa hiding under the bed like I told you she would because you know, I told you so.”
I hear Beth’s voice and find myself frowning. These people know me far too well.
“She’s not hiding, actually she’s all dressed and ready to go. I just had a couple of questions for you this morning.”
“Okay, this feels weird, and I’m not going to share the results from my gynecologist’s appointment with you.”
I think Cole blushes, oh Beth.
“I don’t think that’s what he wants to know, but thank you for making him uncomfortable.” It’s my turn to smirk.
“Jesus, just tell us whether or not Tessie liked me when I first got back from military school.”
I gasp but gosh, that feels like ages ago.
“Are you two playing some sort of a kinky game? I wouldn’t recommend that before going to work. Or maybe it just might work if Tess needs a stress reliever.”
“Beth!”
“Kidding, lighten up, but I’m still confused by your boyfriend’s line of questioning.”
“We have a bet,” Cole explains.
“I told him he was an ovary whisperer.”
“Ah, yeah, that he is, but everyone knows that. Women look at him and you can practically see the blue-eyed bundles of joy shining in their eyes.”
“Right? But he doesn’t believe me. He said that there are women out there who don’t fall for him and make plans on how to domesticate him the minute he opens his mouth.”
“Well, there was one exception.”
“Aha!” I see Cole fist pumping.
“Who?”
“You, obviously. I mean you and he were oil and water. You repelled him like someone smothered in mosquito repellent, you were ketchup, he was ice cream. I’d never seen someone so hell-bent on making sure she wasn’t attracted to a guy.”
Oh.
Cole looks smug, and as Beth’s still recounting escapades of how I’d tried to resist Cole, he ends the call.
“So how about some chocolate?”
***
I’m not unaware of what he’s doing, even though at times it’s easy. He’s making me feel comfortable, he’s trying to take the pressure off and help me get over my nerves. I value the distraction since it helps me center myself, and it’s kind of miraculous, what a difference not overthinking and just going with the flow can make.
“You ready?” Cole hands me my coat and I linger by the door. By this point, I’ve already been up for a couple of hours and it feels like an eternity has passed before eight a.m. I’m not sure how the rest of the day will go but Cole’s right, I won’t know till I try.
“As I’ll ever be.”
There’s a car waiting to pick us up at the front of the building, a little treat from my dad to make sure I have a good start to my first job. I’m sure I’ll have to master the subway sooner rather than later, but I’m glad that it’s not today.
He holds my hand as we go down the now-fixed elevator and Cole picks up on the change in my mood.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
I look at him and am completely honest when I tell him, “I’m so happy you’re here right now. I know I haven’t said it enough, but you being here right now
means the absolute world.” I feel myself choke up with emotion and I blink several times to make sure I don’t end up sobbing in his arms.
Cole pulls me into a tight, close-bodied hug and buries his face in my neck. “You’re killing me here, Tessie. You know I’d do anything for you. How could I have been anywhere but here?”
I lean into him and inhale the achingly familiar scent of him. Oh God, I’m going to miss him so much.
“When will I see you next?”
He won’t be home when I come back, already having left for the airport. It absolutely shatters me to think of coming back to an empty space now that he’s made it all his own. I’ll associate everything in the apartment with him; he’ll have his own mug that he drank coffee out of, his side of the couch, his side of the bed, and the spare toothbrush in the bathroom will stay there.
I’m an emotional wreck.
“It’ll be Thanksgiving break before you know it, Tessie, and remember, you’re spending it with me.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” My flight for Chicago had been booked ages ago.
We walk out to the car together and throughout the ride there, I lean my head on Cole’s shoulder with our hands entwined. We don’t speak and it’s a good thing because my emotions are all over the place. When the building comes into view, where I’ll be working for the foreseeable future, I squeeze the life out of Cole’s hands.
“You got this, Shortcake.”
“No,” I lean my forehead against his, “we got this. Here’s to making forever happen.”
Chapter Four: Do You Own a Suspiciously Oversized Trench Coat?
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“And how was work?”
“Okay.”
“Did you make friends?”
“It’s work, not kindergarten. I don’t think making friends is a requirement.”
“Okay. Well, did you get the food shopping PDF I sent over? It’s really helpful for placing weekly orders and...”
“My boss refuses to give me more than twenty minutes to have lunch. I get home close to ten at night and then I’m out the door by seven o’clock the next morning. So far ramen’s my best bet.”
“Oh Tessa, honey, that’s horrific. You should complain to HR.”
“I don’t think it works that way here, Mom. Everyone has the same working hours as I do and no one seems to be bothered by it. I don’t want to be the whiny new girl.”
“It’s still highly inappropriate for them to work you so hard. There are laws about these kinds of things, you know.”
Maybe those laws would be helpful if I hadn’t signed my employment agreement when I’d still been hung over from celebrating Beth’s birthday.
“It’s okay. All the girls I work with say that it gets better with time. The more you prove to the big man that you’re okay with sleep deprivation becoming a regular way of life, the more they decide to take pity on you.”
She makes a tsking sound at the back of her throat, and I imagine her sitting in one of the many rooms in her mansion back home in Connecticut. She’d be touching her pearl necklace, taking deep breaths and fidgeting with the need to control this situation but would also be agitated by the fact that she couldn’t do something about it.
“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, Tess, Ray would love to have you work for him.”
I roll my eyes, a habit I know will send her anxiety and twitching into hyperdrive could she see me, but this is indeed the millionth time she’s suggested that I work for her current boyfriend and the owner of the multi-million-dollar mansion she’s been living in for the past two years. I didn’t question her when she chose to move back so close to our hometown a couple of years ago, but the fact that she came with a millionaire in tow said a lot about the bitter feelings she still has toward my dad.
My dad who has been there for me way more than she has. But I digress, she’s trying, she really is, and maybe pushing me to accept a handout from Ray is her way of telling me that she loves me.
“I’m not cut out for the corporate world, Mom. Ray works with finance and that’s just about all I can understand about his job. There’s no way I’d be qualified for the job.”
“But he has shares in so many different businesses, Tess! Even publishing houses, if that’s what you want, then I’m sure he can make it happen.”
I find myself gripping my phone so tightly that my knuckles turn white.
“How about we have this conversation later? I’m really tired.” I fake a yawn but really, I’m exhausted down to my very bones. A look at the clock tells me that it’s nearly midnight. I mentally count the hours of sleep I’m going to get and it makes me want to cry.
If you’d forgotten, I value sleep more than I value my kidneys. Want me to donate a kidney to you? Have at it! Want me to sleep for less than at least eight hours a day? I will gouge your insides out.
So you might also get a general idea of just how much I love my job—not.
“Well, all right, but call me when you can. I don’t like the idea of you living in the city all alone.”
“Travis and Beth live pretty close, plus I know a lot of people from school here,” I lie about the second part, “I’m hardly alone.”
She sighs, a long, deep, and rather painful sigh, where I’m guessing she asks God why she couldn’t have nicer children.
“Okay, honey, but please next time I call don’t take hours to call me back. You know how worried I get.”
“Yes, Mom, whatever you say.” I don’t tell her that the fact that she checks up on me multiple times a day, when I’m in meetings, when I’m busy running errands for my dictator of a boss, when I’m taking the subway back home and holding on to my handbag for dear life, when I’m in the bathroom…yeah, it gets a little too much.
She hangs up and I realize that I’m too keyed up to go right to bed now. She keeps on bringing up Ray and how I should work for him. He might be a decent guy, but I wonder if she knows that he would do anything to hide the fact that his trophy girlfriend has children? Mom has had a lot of work done over the years, her life, her choice. But as a result, she looks younger, but in a slightly artificial kind of way. Let’s put it this way, you might have a dozen brilliant ways to reheat your pizza from last night, but it will still be a leftover slice of pizza. I’ve lost track of the number of procedures she’s had done recently, and the result hasn’t always turned out as expected. I know my dad gets a kick out of it, but I make a point to bring it up to Mom the next time I see her, before she books herself in for another filler.
Did I just compare my own mother to pizza? Christ, I must be getting delirious.
I make myself a peppermint tea to calm my nerves and try to put myself to sleep. I have to be up in a ridiculous amount of time and the thought makes me cry. My stomach rumbles as I change into my pajamas and I’m torn between diving straight into bed or opting to make enough effort to boil some water for ramen. Exhaustion ultimately wins out and I’m out the moment my head touches the pillow.
***
“She doesn’t like that font,” Leila, a fellow junior beauty editor, hisses from the cubicle next to mine. The first day I met her, she took one look at me and decided that I wasn’t worth the effort to get to know. I understand her opinion, I guess. She’s one of those waif-like, supermodel-tall girls who have the ability to make even a piece of rag look stylish. Her skin’s a deep olive color, which just makes her blue eyes pop even more. She’s got her dark hair cut in one of those trendy blunt bobs that I will never have the face to pull off.
But I think what really cemented her dislike of me was the number of KitKats I stress-ate on the first day. I’d been given a number of boxes of the mini ones and I’d tipped a boxful into my bag that day. Anytime I felt like I wanted to bolt out the door, I went through a chocolate bar as my neighbor looked at me with horror and utter disgust in her eyes.
Yeah, we definitely weren’t going to be work buddies anytime s
oon, but back to the present moment.
Leila glares at the report I just printed out like it’s a double cheese burger. “That font, it’s Times, not Times Roman, and the size is clearly 12, not 11.5 like it’s specifically mentioned on the guidelines that were emailed to you on the first day. Are you trying to put her in a bad mood? Because guess what? I’m going to ask her for my days off today, and if she’s pissed off because you couldn’t read simple instructions, we’re going to have a problem.” She glowers at me and strangely reminds of an angry chihuahua.
But I only find myself gaping at her, wondering how I’ve found myself in a position where half-a-point-size difference in the font of a report that my boss wouldn’t even bother reading could literally be made to sound like a life-or-death situation.
“Okay. First, I think you need to calm down, because I don’t think high levels of stress are good for you, especially after you drank that entire huge vat of tar-like black coffee a couple of minutes ago.”
I imagine her heart rate is skyrocketing and whatever anxiety she’s brought in from home has been amplified. But if she thinks she’s going to take it out on me, she’s got another thing coming.
Leila shrinks back, her posture becoming less threatening, but she’s still giving me the stink eye.
“Second, this report isn’t even for Amy,” I tell her, referring to our boss, “it’s for HR, some paperwork that was left over from when I started last week, and I’m sure they’ll be fine with the font size being twelve.”
“Whatever.” She flicks her hair and goes back to typing away at her computer. Yup, hard to believe someone so eloquent is a Columbia grad.
But the thing is, Leila isn’t the only one around here who acts like they’ve always got a fire to put out and that I’m the helpless puppy they’d have to go back for after they’ve got all the humans out.
I get it, I’m new and I clearly stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not because of how I look, I like to think that the extra half an hour I spend on making myself look acceptable in the mornings means that I’m not completely hopeless. I know how to dress and how to fit into this environment, even if I do so begrudgingly. My mom’s present for me, for my first job, was a gift certificate for Bloomingdale’s and an appointment with a personal shopper. She decked me out with a good enough wardrobe that would help me navigate the wild, wild terrain of high fashion and beauty.
