Authors: Tara McTiernan
“Was it your boss?” Bianca said, leaning toward her and craning her neck to look at Chelsea’s phone.
“No,” Chelsea yelped, hitting delete and hurrying to push the phone into her purse.
“No one important, huh?” Bianca was looking at her strangely again.
“No! Just a junk text! You know, sales thing.”
“Oh, really?” Kate interjected, leaning forward, her thickly-applied makeup preceding her by a quarter-inch. “I never get those?”
Chelsea tried to smile at her and failed. Why did Kate always have to butt in? And that terrible “look” she was working. Gerbil goes to Hollywood or something. Chelsea also had to admit it: she was jealous of Kate now that Bianca and Kate were besties, worried that she had been relegated to some back room in Bianca’s affections.
She had never had to compete for Bianca's friendship before and felt it slipping away from her now that she'd heard about the fabulous parties that Bianca had started inviting Kate and her husband to, parties that she, Chelsea, would have been attending if only she had a husband. If only she was married, then Bianca would be her best friend again. It was completely understandable that Bianca had more in common with a married woman like Kate; they were in the same place in life, experiencing the same things, while Chelsea fell farther and farther behind, practically a spinster. If only she was married, then John would have left her alone, known better than to pursue her the way he was.
If she had known what would happen, how things would only get worse, she never would have met John at that bar. The minute they were ensconced in the booth and drinks ordered – the promised champagne unavailable - he’d reached across to take her hands that were folded on the table.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, his dark eyes intense on hers.
She dragged her hands away from his, feeling the old pull and resisting. “No, you haven’t. You’re married.”
He chuckled and shook his head a little. “So? Does that make me stop missing you?”
“Why did you want to meet? I thought there was something wrong. About Bianca.”
His expression sobered and he leaned back. “There is.”
“What? What’s the matter?” she asked, feeling an electric buzz of fear and shameful excitement. Here she was, supposedly helping Bianca, all the while wishing her friend’s marriage would fail so that John could be hers again.
“She’s not who I thought she was.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s…cold. I thought she was warm, kind, but it’s just an act.”
Chelsea wrinkled her forehead. Bianca? Cold? Headstrong passionate Bianca? The woman who had come to Chelsea in tears, desperately and uncontrollably in love with John and wanting to die rather than hurt her friend? Never! Chelsea said, “No, that’s not true. I know her. She’s wonderful, caring - a victim of her own heart! I don’t know how you could say something like that.”
The waitress, who seemed disgruntled to be serving patrons at this late hour, dropped their drinks unceremoniously in front of them, Chelsea’s Alabama Slammer slopping onto the table. “Anything else?” she asked as if challenging them.
John looked up at her mildly. “No. Thanks.”
The waitress made a huffing sound and walked away.
“What was that drink called again?” John said, smiling again and leaning forward on his elbows.
She bit her lip and looked down at the glass filled with the fruity concoction. Maybe she should have just ordered wine. But, no. John had stolen her moment with Travis. He wasn’t going to steal her delicious drink, too. She put her nose in the air and said as haughtily as possible, “It’s an Alabama Slammer.”
He laughed, his eyes sparkling. “Slammer, huh? That sounds like the Chelsea I know. Hot. On fire," he said and lowered his voice to a husky whisper, ducking his head, "I’d like to slam you. And then some.”
“Stop it,” she said, the impact of his words hitting her right between her legs and making her throb. No. It was wrong. She sat up straight and focused at her drink, refusing to look at him, be drawn in more.
“Oh, come on. You love it. At least you used to. Don’t you love it anymore, Chel? Or have you dried up like a prune? I bet you’re wet right now.”
She couldn’t help it. She looked up at him. Oh, God. She wanted him still. Right now. “Stop it, please."
“No. Don't you see?” he said, reaching across and cupping her face with his warm hand. "I already made that mistake once."
She looked away again, a part of her crumpling inside at that: his admission of their perfection together. Still, she'd refused him that night. She knew better, and with Lucie's support she had resolved to avoid him going forward. But that didn't stop him from continuing his pursuit.
Thus far, John's efforts had been limited to emails, voice-mail messages, and texts, all of which were increasing in frequency until they were almost hourly, distracting and distressing her until she started making mistakes at work. They were small mistakes, mistakes of forgetfulness. She wasn't one for lists or notes, she had always been able to rely on her super-sharp memory, and now it kept failing.
She'd forgotten updates of spreadsheets she managed, failed to submit several of Kevin's expense reports which had piled up in her inbox, lost a client file which remained mysteriously at-large in spite of much frantic searching, and double-booked her boss for meetings by verbally agreeing to them without checking his calendar because she typically remembered things like meetings she had scheduled for him. The sheer volume of errors had continued to build until Kevin reached his frustration-saturation-point earlier that day in an episode that not only threatened her job, it threatened his.
He'd been late for a meeting, jogging past her and into his office without a glance in her direction. A moment later he emerged.
"Where are they?" he shouted.
"What?" she said, swiveling in her chair.
His booming voice grew even louder. "The weekly run-down reports? Twenty copies? Where are they?"
A flutter of light behind her eyes, a blip of a memory emerging and then expanding. Of course. That was what she'd forgotten. And Kevin's boss, Mitchell Rosenberg, was here today. Would be in that meeting, the one that Kevin was now unprepared for. Because twenty copies of the report - the report this meeting centered around - were supposed to be printed and bound on her boss's desk right now.
She cringed, making an apologetic face. "I'll do them right now. I'll bring them in to you."
He stared at her. "They're not ready? You know how Mitchell is?"
She nodded, feeling sweat breaking out all over her. Unrelentingly perfectionistic is what Mitchell Rosenberg was: a real ball-buster. Even though Kevin was a screaming horny jerk, she still felt sorry for him, having a nightmare of a boss like that. The only good thing was that Mitchell worked in the Manhattan office and was rarely in Stamford. But he was here today and waiting for his copy of the run-down report.
Kevin, usually tan and healthy looking, was turning a frightening bluish-white color. "I can't believe this. Again. We're...I can't deal with this right now. Get the reports done and in Northwest as fast as you can. Got it?"
Chelsea sent the reports to the copier and literally ran after that. But it was too late. Kevin had a grim-faced meeting with her in his office later that afternoon, followed by a meeting with HR. She had been warned. It was on paper, a written warning she had been required to sign, so the trail had started. Two more incidents and she was out according to her once handy-dandy and now ominous employee handbook.
When Chelsea had arrived at Cafe Luna, she had been filled with a defensive righteousness, but it had deflated since in spite of Sharon's and Lucie's sympathetic assurances, which would have bolstered her if she had any ground to stand on. But she didn't. And she knew it. And now, to make matters worse, John wasn't only threatening her job, he was threatening her most treasured friendship. Bianca had almost seen, had peered at the message right there in Chelsea's phone! What if she'd been able to read it? What if she knew that J was for John, her husband?
The waiter had tried to convince them to order desserts a few minutes before and now arrived and placed the check on the table. Chelsea pulled out her wallet and plucked out a ten, her portion of the split bill that she had already figured to include tax and a hefty tip, and put it on the tray with the bill.
"I'm going to the ladies. Be right back," she told the table and stood, planning how she was going to "discover" the missing lipstick in the bathroom and launch part one of her mission.
Sharon and Lucie looked up and nodded at her. Bianca and Kate were engaged in another of their intimate discussions and didn't seem to notice her departure, making another piercing blade of jealousy cut through Chelsea.
She clenched her teeth, turned away, and headed around the clustered and now full tables on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, noting what Bianca had said earlier was true. It was a dates-only kind of place. Every table had one couple or two. There were no other groupings of women like them and certainly no single men. Cafe Luna was the wrong place for a single woman on the make.
It was a good thing that they were going to the Latin dancing place afterward where the single men were thick on the dance floor and all around it, hips moving to the salsa rhythm. On the other hand, the ultimate prize of the night could be sitting in a seedy dive bar two blocks away. She wondered if she would even return from her mission or if she would have to call one of the girls, make up a story, and then run back to the still-warm bar stool next to Travis, an Alabama Slammer waiting and sweating onto a promotional cardboard coaster in front of it.
As she turned in the little path carved between the sidewalk tables that led to the door of the restaurant, she saw that, no, there
was
a table with two women sitting at it over here. And, a crazy coincidence, Molly from HR, the same Molly who had pushed the piece of paper across her desk toward Chelsea to sign only a few hours before, was one of the women.
Molly looked up as Chelsea approached and saw her. "Chelsea! What a coincidence! What are you doing here?" she said in her usual warm super-friendly way.
Chelsea smiled widely at Molly, who was as round-featured, cute, and chubby as a teddy bear, making Chelsea want to hug her whenever she saw her. She was so grateful it had been Molly she'd talked to. She was the nicest one in HR and had been so kind and understanding about the whole thing. Chelsea would never understand why Lucie and Sharon hated Molly so much. How could you hate such a nice person?
She said, "Molly! It is, isn't it? I'm just here with some friends having cocktails and apps. Then we're going to Bembe, for those free salsa lessons they give on Thursdays? So much fun!" She forced herself to stop, realizing she was gushing.
"Jill," Molly said, turning to her friend, a dark-haired skinny woman who was looking at Chelsea with appraising eyes. "This is Chelsea Hays. You know, the one I was telling you about. Chelsea, this is Jill. We've been best friends since grade school, can you believe it?"
"Oh! I can! My best friend from high school and I still hang out all the time. She's over there at the table we've got in the corner, the group of us?" Chelsea said with pride, pointing across the outdoor dining area.
Molly turned her head and craned her neck to look across, lifting herself off of her seat so she could see. "Isn't that nice? Oh, Sharon Wozniak is with you. Huh. And, wait,...that's not...that's not Lucie Scott? Lucie Scott is your best friend from high school?" she asked, screwing up her face a little.
"No, no! Bianca Moretti, I mean Rossi; she's married now. She's the one with the long dark hair. We've known each other forever. Like you guys!"
Molly sat back down in her seat and looked up at Chelsea, her face still screwed up with an unusual look of distaste. "I didn't know you were friends with Lucie?"
"Yeah," Chelsea said, shrugging and wondering again about the whole Molly-Lucie thing.