Authors: Tara McTiernan
He swallowed and turned to her, his eyes far away for a moment before focusing on her face. He blinked, glanced at her hand, and said, “Whoa. Where are my manners? Can I get you something to drink?”
He glanced again at her hand and she pulled it away, feeling as if it was magnetized to his shoulder, invisible currents pulling at her fingers. She pushed her left hand down on her lap with her right one. “Oh, thanks. That would be nice. Do they make strawberry daiquiris here?”
“Strawberry daiquiris? I doubt it. But let’s find out. Hey, Pat?”
Pat turned his head, raised his chin in a nod, and pushed away from the other end of the bar to walk toward them.
“Chelsea? This is Pat, the best bartender ever. Pat, this is Chelsea. She works with me at TMB. Wait, what was it you said today? TMB stands for…”
Chelsea smiled, still feeling contrite after being called out for passing off Sharon’s joke as her own, and said, “Too Much Bullshit.”
Pat squinted and let out a bark of a laugh.
Chelsea continued, “Actually it’s someone else’s idea, not mine. Sharon? Wozniak?”
“Oh,” Travis said, nodding. “I don’t know. I kind of like when you say it. You look too sweet to say things like that…so it’s funny. Hey, Pat. Any chance you can whip up a strawberry daiquiri for my friend?”
Pat shook his head. “Sorry. No blender. But I make a mean Alabama Slammer,” he said, looking at Chelsea. “If you like sweet-n-fruity drinks, you’ll love it.”
“Okay. Sounds nice,” Chelsea said, a warm tingling still zipping up and down her arms and neck from when Travis said she looked sweet. He liked her! Now if only she could switch the “friend” to “girlfriend”.
Pat mixed up a reddish-orange concoction over ice in tall drinking glass, plopped a maraschino cherry on top, and placed it in front of her. She picked it up and sipped it. It
was
sweet and fruity - and had a little punch, too. “Yum!” Chelsea said, smacking her lips a little.
“I knew you’d like it,” Pat said, raised his chin at them again and walked back to the other end of the bar.
“Soooo,” Travis said, turning his chair to face her. “How come I’ve never seen you in here before? I’m not a real regular, but I come here enough to have noticed
you
if you were here.”
His smile was the wolfish one he’d worn in the conference room earlier, making Chelsea’s heart leap. Though, at the same moment it leapt, it started to plummet. She couldn’t lie to him even though she wished she could, knowing he’d like her better if she frequented "the Bedford" as he called it instead of fancy snob-cities like Ibiza. “Well, I really haven’t been here before.”
“Oh, for some reason-“
“I let you believe it. You know snob-city? That’s where I was tonight. With some girlfriends. Are you disgusted with me?”
His mouth twisted in a sad smile and he shook his head. “Nah. Disappointed, I guess. You seem really cool. Why would you go to a place like that?”
Chelsea looked at him. To meet men like you. And you’re here, at a nearby dive bar instead. She managed a shrug.
“You didn’t know any better, huh? Well…,” he said, leaning closer to her.
She smelled his cologne – a wonderful lime scent with a hint of something deeper – and looked up into his eyes. Oh, wow. He looked...like he was going to ask her out! Oh. My. God!
He leaned even closer, close enough to kiss her. “I was wondering. Do you want to go-“
A man cleared his throat loudly right next to Chelsea, making her jerk with surprise. Travis stopped mid-sentence and looked behind her before straightening on his bar stool. Chelsea turned around.
John stood there wearing a suit and tie under a dark cloth coat, his face cool and composed. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, his eyes sweeping over Travis before he looked at Chelsea. “But I’ve got a date with Chelsea here. Do you want to get a table, sweetheart?”
Chelsea was having that magnet-feeling again, though now it was like two halves of her were being pulled in opposite directions. She could still practically taste Travis’s nearly uttered invitation. And here was John, looking at her with desire in his eyes, desire she had yearned for and thought forever gone. Date? Sweetheart? What was going on? “Uh, sure. Oh, John. This is Travis. From work?”
John nodded at Travis. “Hi, nice to meet you,” he said before refocusing on Chelsea. “Where do you want to sit? In a booth?”
Chelsea turned to Travis, whose open expression had hardened into stone. He was looking at John’s left hand, at the gold wedding band on his finger. “Uh, huh. Nice to meet you, too. Well, Chelsea. Have fun.” The last words were said with bitter sarcasm as he turned back to his beer.
Chelsea started to reach for her drink and then stopped, looking longingly at Travis. How had everything gone so wrong so fast? Travis didn’t understand. Nothing was going on. This was her friend’s husband.
John was also her ex-lover, her one-true swept-away lover, the man who still only had to wiggle a finger at her to make her come running.
“Leave it,” John said. “I’ll get us some champagne. We should celebrate tonight.”
“Celebrate?” Chelsea echoed, her voice faint. She slowly turned her head to look at John.
“Yes. I have so much to tell you.” He put his arm around her as she numbly leaned down and picked up her purse, and then he guided her in toward the restaurant area of the pub and back to the last booth in the corner, the most hidden of them all.
Vodka Martini
"Hey, Wozniak!"
Sharon, walking down the hall away from the team meeting in the small conference room that she was deeply grateful was finally over, stopped and tried to not cringe. Arranging her face into a semblance of calm, she turned to face her new boss, Bob Crandall, who was jogging to catch up with her.
"Hey," he said, reaching her side. "Just wanted to say. No hard feelings. Right? We just have to do the best job possible - don't want to get sidetracked."
She couldn't control herself. "So the flavor of the EdenBurger isn't important? Just the packaging, the way the product looks? No one cares what it tastes like?"
He made a horizontal slicing motion with both hands. "I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the client isn't asking for that."
The people at NatFoods had been clear in their RFP and even clearer in the meetings that followed after TMB had won the project. They were trying to boost sales of their frozen veggie burgers and wanted full consumer feedback. There was no reference to the product's flavor or texture not being altered if necessary. Some study requests specifically outlined that the product itself not be tested, only the packaging or marketing. Not so with the EdenBurger. "I'm sorry, but-"
"Don't be. We all make mistakes," he said, looking at her sympathetically, hands sliding into his front pants pockets.
Her mouth fell open. Mistake? She hadn't made a mistake! He was blantantly-
"Let's let it go," he continued. "I recommend, though, that you start making a priority of thoroughly reading all the RFPs. They're our bread and butter."
She wanted to smack that earnest look off his supercilious face. How dare he instruct her? He had just a little over a year of experience, his ears still wet and pink from his mommy scrubbing behind them. She had almost eleven - knew the business inside and out, breathed it so deeply it was in every cell of her body. The whole situation would be funny if it wasn't so horrible.
"I know," she said, just barely succeeding at keeping the irony out of her tone.
"Good. Thanks," he said. Then he gave a final nod at her and turned away, his hands still firmly rooted in his pockets, a habit not of nonchalance but of insecurity. She had noticed. Her new boss had to do something with his hands at all times. It was even worse than her pencil fetish, which was mostly evident when she was tired and the graphite and soft giving wood in her mouth made her feel both comforted and energized.
She watched him walk away, his large round buttocks straining at the fabric of his pants more than ever due to his fists in his front pockets. That ass...in every way!
Laughter bubbled up from within her and she stifled it, swallowing hard, while turning away and heading toward her office again. It was in moments like these when she wished she could veer off course, head over to Alan's office, and fall into a hysterical heap on his couch, Alan's ratcheting laughter prodding her own to greater heights.
But, of course, that office was empty and dark now. It would soon be occupied by Bob, who had demanded it in place of his current interior office. The phone technician was scheduled to come in the next day to switch the lines. Bob would soon be sitting only steps away from her and they would come face to face frequently every day. Just the thought of it made her want to scream. She let her mind linger again on the idea of working in Manhattan before she saw herself in her mind's eye, gray-faced in a shuddering train with the rest of the chain gang. She pushed the idea away.
At her desk again, she sat and dialed Alan's home number while glancing at the time display on her monitor. It was nearly five. He had to be home now. She'd been trying to reach him for over a week, hoping to finally make those plans to meet at Frannie's for dinner, and he never answered his phone. Where was he? Had he made good on his threat to join the local country club? Was he out on the golf course now, miserably swinging at a little pitted white ball?
The phone rang and rang. She waited for his old-school tape answering machine to pick up, for his recorded voice to tell her to leave a message, but the trilling ring simply continued in her ear. She put the receiver back down, silencing the eerie echoing sound. What if he was back on the bottle? She hated the images that rose from the buried place she'd put them: his poisoned face, his breakdown on the kitchen floor, the fug of the house with everything rotting simultaneously including her friend.
She shook her head. No, that was after Margie. This was retirement, not the loss of a spouse. Retirement was supposed to be fun - a dream come true! It was something you scrimped and saved your whole life for: the last and longest vacation. And although she loved her work, found it intrinsically enjoyable and fascinating, she had to admit she also loved the idea of never having to see Bob's face again...
But, no. No matter how she tried to frame Alan’s forced retirement positively, her gut knew something was wrong. And that feeling was sealed by his endlessly ringing phone. She stood and gathered her things. There was only one way to get rid of this anxiety: she'd swing by his house this weekend, bring a pie or something. See for herself. Hell, she'd bring the whole lot of chocolates she'd been getting and unload them on Alan. He loved chocolate.
Her eye caught on the large peony blossoms in a vase on her desk and her head echoed again with Chelsea's words.
"Oh, flowers! Are they from him? Dean?" she had twittered earlier that day, stopping by for her daily visit.
Sharon had shaken her head, sorry she'd ever told Chelsea his name. "Yes. But no, they don't mean anything. I just didn't have any place in the house left to put them, that's all. I'm not going to throw out perfectly good flowers."
Chelsea's eyes widened. "You have that many flowers? Oh, my God! He's so in love with you!"
"No, they're I'm-sorry flowers. Not I-love-you flowers," she said, feeling an odd pang and shrugging it off. "He's apologizing. I just wish he'd stop; it's over the top and its starting to get embarrassing. The most important thing is that he stopped having those all-nighters. That's what I wanted, not flowers and chocolate. It's been really quiet over there. I can sleep at last."
"Flowers and chocolates mean I love you," Chelsea said with a knowing nod. "He does."
"They come with cards. The cards all say, 'I'm sorry'. It's pretty clear."