“Hey.” His eyebrows waggle and a light I haven’t seen before comes into his eyes. She may have caught a live one here.
“Hey,” she returns without looking at him.
He clears his throat, but she still doesn’t turn around. He takes a beat and then scoots past her, sucking in his stomach and inching sideways so they don’t touch. She doesn’t move to allow him any space.
When he’s gone, I tilt my head at her. “What’s up with you and Troy now?”
She rolls her eyes and steps back, glancing down the hall to make sure he’s out of earshot. “I’m letting him get ideas.”
I blink at her. “What does that mean?”
“Well, I’ve been flirting with him for a month. That’s it. Now I ignore him. He should get ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“Ideas about me. About us. About making us happen.”
“You should just ask him out.”
She snorted and assumed an expression of superiority. “Troy writes for Sports.” She puts emphasis on the last word and stares at me like I should know what that means.
“So?”
“So he’s a guy’s guy. A man’s man. Masculine. Macho. Primal. He must do the pursuing.”
“Okay.” I nod along like I’m following her logic.
She continues. “I indicated I was interested. Gave him attention these past four weeks. And now he has to act.”
“Or you’ll ignore him?”
“Or I’m cooling off on him and he’d better notice.”
I shrug and concede to her superior skills. “It was downright arctic in here.”
She puts her nose in the air. “Thank you. I try.”
“So how long are you freezing him out?”
She scowls at me like I’ve missed the point. “For as long as it takes.”
“Huh.”
“What?” She glances at me sideways, and for a second I can see the vulnerability she’s masking.
“Seems like you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into this one.” I search her features, but she hides behind the mask again.
“He must be the one you really, really want,” I press.
She looks around. The desks nearest mine are empty, but she lowers her voice anyway. “Well, of course he is,” she hisses. “Why do you think I engineered this run-in in the first place?”
My face splits into a grin. “Oh, Blaire, that’s great!” I stand up and try to hug her, but she stiffens and pulls away. I persist.
“What are you doing? This is nothing to celebrate.”
Clinging tighter, I give her a squeeze, laughing. “Yes it is. You’re in love. Admit it.”
“I will not. It’s not even a crush. You are oversensitive to love and much too fast to jump to commitment,” she says, but hugs me back. When I pull away there’s a rigidly contained, tight-lipped smile sneaking onto her face. “Although it might be…something. Someday.”
I fake-slug her on the arm. She teeters on her high heels and grabs the cubicle wall for balance. Deep inside Blaire, there’s a hidden romantic. With my heart still an open wound gouged by Tarek—I mean Liam—you’d think I’d be bitter, but I’m pleased to see Blaire hopeful about finding love and commitment. I have to believe that more love in the world in general will bring my love back to me.
“Just make sure I’m a bridesmaid.”
“Oh, shut up and go sit on your donut.” She smiles and flounces back to her desk.
I set the inflatable cushion on my chair and wince when I sit down. The truth is my pride is more wounded than my backside. But it’s my heart that bears the greatest pain of all, and for this Tarek must pay.
There are more than six hundred new emails and a virtual stack of obituaries waiting for me. People say print is dying, but so is everyone else. I ignore all of them and instead open up Facebook.
Giselle’s account.
Sure enough, Tarek has written.
I purposely did not even look at her page this weekend. I want Giselle to seem busy—and unconcerned with Tarek in the extreme.
Hopefully Tarek noticed. Hopefully it drove him crazy.
There’s a message from him. Sent Saturday afternoon.
Tarek Oliver
I can understand if you don’t want to come over, jealous boyfriend and all. But maybe we can meet for lunch or a drink sometime with Marissa so you guys can reconnect and you can make some new friends in the city. I hope I can be one of them.
Oh, Tarek. Invoking my presence so he seems safer? So transparent.
But I type Giselle’s answer.
Giselle Bisset
That would be great. I’ll message Marissa and see when she’s available.
A chuckle escapes as I push send. A giddy bubble of happiness rises up inside me just picturing Tarek twiddling his thumbs, unable to bag his most recent intended conquest because he has to wait on my schedule.
I giggle under my breath until I’m laughing out loud. It might be hysteria, or it might be the fact that for the first time since Liam left me and Tarek humiliated me, I feel a little spark of hope.
“Excuse me,” a voice says behind me.
I swivel around in my rolling chair and face the opening to my cubicle. A tallish, handsome-ish man is standing there gazing down at me. He appears to be about six feet in height, with sandy, light brown hair, and a slightly crooked nose. Dressed in khaki pants and an ironed button-down shirt, he’s holding a dog leash and regarding me with soft eyes.
“Can I help you?” I lean in his direction, trying to make my butt donut less noticeable. Suddenly I feel self-conscious to be sitting on something I’ve only ever seen grandmotherly hemorrhoid sufferers use.
He clears his throat. “Um, yes. Thanks. I was looking for the classifieds reporter, but a sign at her desk said to come here?” His statement shouldn’t have been a question, but he said it like one.
“Oh, yes.” Blaire no doubt had some relationship emergency she had to attend to and decided to pawn off any unexpected walk-ins on me. Typical Blaire. But if it helps her with her pursuit of Troy and her happily ever after, I’m glad to help.
“What can I do for you?”
He holds out a scrap of our print edition. It’s a classified ad that reads, “Missing God. My god went missing Monday night. Loves his leash. Answers to the name of Ridiculous Poopoo. Call the number below, and I will listen to you talk about your day.”
I look up from the copy. This prank smacks of Blaire. No wonder she’s not in her seat, awaiting the fallout. “Is any of this accurate?”
He switches the empty leash from one hand to the other and massages his neck with his free hand. “My phone number? That’s what the problem is. People keep calling me to chat and I…I just don’t have the time.”
“What was your original ad? Do you have a copy of it with you?”
He produces the order confirmation from the submission he’d done online. “It said ‘dog’ obviously,” he tells me, “and my dog’s real name is Lady Kensington…which I guess is pretty ridiculous. My little sister named him, though. When I first got him. She was younger then—” he trails off.