LoveLines (35 page)

***

It was scary crying. I didn’t do it much, not even after terrible breakups, but this time I let it consume me because it was Reece who drove away. Not some other guy from my past who I learned was completely inconsequential. No. This was Reece. And I let him go.

I curled up on the couch under the pergola and wept bitterly. I couldn’t do it inside with Poppy. I couldn’t look at her. She sat at the front door waiting for Reece to return, like he’d gone
to the grocery store for milk and would be back in five minutes. I didn’t hear the latch lift. It wasn’t until Soledad took me in her arms that I noticed she was even there.

“Bailey, Bailey,” she said softly, rocking me side to side. “
Tu corazón duele.”

“I let him go!” I cried. “I let him go!”

“Shhhh,” Soledad said. “Sólo llorar se puede. A veces esa es la única cosa que podemos hacer.”

I clung to her, listening to the rolling, fluid sound of her foreign words. And I understood all of them. She was comforting me, trying to soothe the pain that lay heavy like a cinderblock on my heart.

“I had to,” I said. “I had to do it! I don’t deserve him. I never did!”

Soledad talked on and on, her tumbling words sending me out to sea on my surfboard, floating up and down and up and down on soft waves. I wanted her to keep talking. She could lull me to sleep, and then I’d have peace for a while. I could pretend in my dreams that nothing had really happened. I could put the earth back together under my feet, rework the shifted plates, and wake up
in the morning to see Reece standing in our back yard, asking me if I wanted pancakes or eggs.

“Keep talking,” I whispered. And she did.

She rocked me to sleep, singing a love song in Spanish, or at least that’s what I imagined. I drifted into a memory. Him. Already a memory.

In the morning, everything looked different. I was
scared out of my mind but determined to see it through. Reece deserved better. And I was not better. I was worse off than before my dad died. I watched him gather his clothes from the closet, Poppy at his heels, worried and whining. When his car was packed, he just stood there, car door open, waiting for me to say something.

I gave him the ring. He resisted.

“
Please
take it,” I pleaded. “I don’t deserve it.”

He slipped it in his pocket without a wo
rd. And then he left. For good.

***

Christopher tentatively walked through the door carrying beer and a box filled with spicy chicken wings. He heard the sound of Reece’s favorite band floating from the back bedroom. They sang a depressing tune that complemented the mood of this “long December.”

“Reece!” he called.

He watched his friend emerge from the bedroom, disheveled and dazed. He wore a ratty white T-shirt and even rattier pajama pants. He shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen, leaving a faint acrid stench behind him.

“Dude,” Christopher said under his breath, then plopped dinner on the kitchen counter.
“I love you, man, but you stink.”

Reece
ignored him and grabbed a beer. He trudged to the couch—the only piece of furniture in his living room.

“Where your dishes?”
Christopher called.

“I don’t know.”

“Reece, did you leave your box of dishes in storage?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got any napkins?”

“I don’t know.”

Christopher paused. “What day is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“For Christ’s sake, man! When’s the last time you ate?”

Reece guzzled his beer.

Christopher took a deep breath and peered into the box. He pulled out some napkins and packets of wet wipes, then brought everything over to the couch.

“You
lucky they put some napkins in here,” he said, setting the box between them on the middle cushion.

“I have toilet paper,” Reece offered.

Christopher snorted. “Man, you use toilet paper on your hands after touchin’ one of them wings, and you tell me if you like it.”

Reece smirked.

“You plannin’ on takin’ a shower any time soon?”

“What’s the point?”

“It’s called being a human being and living,” Christopher said. “Brush your damn teeth!”

Reece slurped his beer.

“When you comin’ back to work?”

Reece shrugged and turned on the TV.

“You made sure to get the cable working, but you couldn’t be bothered to have plates and, oh, I don’t know, furniture and shit in your place?”

“This isn’t my place,” Reece replied. “It’s just temporary.”

Christopher grew quiet. The men ate a few wings before Christopher dared to broach the subject.

“Did you fight hard enough?” he asked tentatively.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Kind of tired of being discarded, Chris. I know you don’t understand that, but when you’re a kid who gets shuffled around from home to home throughout your entire childhood, it’s bound to give you a complex.” Reece finished his beer. “I’ve got a complex.”

“She does, too,” Christopher pointed out. “So how does that work?”

Reece grunted. “She’ll come to her senses. This is temporary.”

Christopher took a deep breath.
“Reece, you gotta be okay with it if this winds up being your permanent place. And maybe get you a chair in here and a table or something.”

“What are you saying?” Reece asked, alarmed.

“I’m just sayin’ that you can’t function like this much longer. You gotta get yourself together. Come back to work. Dan’s only gonna be so patient with you.”

“Is she
back?” Reece asked.

Christopher nodded. “Yeah. Bailey
was back on Monday.”

“How?” Reece asked. He couldn’t comprehend it. She pushed him out of her life on Saturday night. How could she be fine to go to work Monday morning? Wasn’t she as heartsick as he was?

“That’s not to say she didn’t look like shit. She’s walkin’ around like a zombie. I don’t even think she hears anything anyone says to her.”

That provided a small measure of relief, but Reece was still concerned. If she was functioning better than he was, that didn’t bode well. That meant this shithole he was currently
living in could actually become his permanent residence. And suddenly he understood Christopher’s words.

“She’s fine, isn’t she?” he asked.

“No, she’s not fine. But she’s trying. And you gotta try, too. You gotta get back to work. Focus on some ad campaigns.”

“I can’t see her,” Reece replied. “I can’t face her.”

Christopher sighed. “This is why . . .” And then he caught himself, but it was too late.

“Why what?” Reece snapped.

“Nothin’, man. Nothin’.”

“Why coworkers shouldn’t get involved with each other? Is that what you wanted to say?”

“No, Reece. I wasn’t gonna say that,” Christopher lied.

“Yes, you were,” Reece spat. “And you’re right! This is exactly why coworkers shouldn’t get involved! Now I’m
gonna have to find another job!”

“Don’t do that,” Christopher said.

“Why not? It’ll be hell every day of my life working in the same building as her. The same fucking room as her!”

“You don’t have to see her much. She’ll be in her cubicle in the corner, okay? I’ll email her the campaigns to proof. You don’t have to interact with her at all.”

Reece scratched the back of his neck. “I need another beer.”

“Then go get it. I
ain’t your maid. It’s enough that I brought over something to begin with.” He watched Reece plod to the kitchen. “But I figured I better. I thought maybe I’d find you in here passed out from starvation. Thought I could shove a chicken wing down your throat and bring you back to life.”

Reece chuckled as he walked back to the couch. He sank into the cushion and cracked open his beer.

“Thanks, man,” he said softly.

“You’re welcome,” Christopher replied.

They fell silent.

“I don’t want any fun stuff,” Reece said after a time.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t
wanna work on any fun stuff. If I go back to work—”

“
When
you go back to work,” Christopher corrected.

Reece nodded. “
When
I go back to work, I want some serious products to work on.”

“I can’t do magic, Reece. We get what we get. And if you turn baby formula into something depressing,
ain’t no woman gonna buy it.”

“Baby formula is depressing,” Reece argued.

“It is?”

“Have you ever tasted it?”

“No, have you?”

“No.”

Christopher furrowed his brow. “Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Reece sighed.

Pause.

“You
losin’ your mind?” Christopher asked softly.

“Maybe a little,” Reece confessed.

“Well, I know the remedy for that.”

“What is it?”

“A shower, some perspective, and a plan,” Christopher said.

“I’m not ready to see her,” Reece replied.

“Monday. I’m giving you the rest of the week and the weekend to sulk and stink and not brush your teeth. But then you better report to work Monday.”

Reece didn’t respond.

“You hear me?”

“I hear you.”
Reece ate another wing. The more he consumed, the hungrier he became, his body begging him to never neglect it again. “I had a chance,” he said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“I was almost adopted.”

Christopher waited.

“It was a couple who couldn’t have a baby, or so the doctor told them, and so they were seriously considering me. Actually, more than that. They’d made it through all the paperwork. I was six.”

Christopher nodded.

“Put my room together and everything.” Reece snorted. “And then she got pregnant. And two kids are too much, you know? They only planned to have one. They only wanted one.” He stared off at the TV. “I have some hang-ups. You understand? Maybe I didn’t fight harder to stay with B— her, but all I could see was that couple trying to explain to me why they didn’t want me any longer.”

Christopher sighed. There were no words for that revelation, and he knew Reece wasn’t looking for them. He reached inside the box and pulled out a wing, extending it to his friend. Reece smiled
ruefully and took it.

They finished the chicken wings and beer, talking sports and politics and any topic that didn’t involve Bailey. When Christopher left, Reece went to bed. He hoped she would surface in his dreams, and then he could spend just a little more time with her before the healing in his heart took place.
He knew it would. It always did, time after time, home after home. It’s the healing that taped up his construction paper heart, eased the ache, and eventually made him forget.

The mood in the office shifted abruptly. The change was so sudden that it jarred even me, and I was still walking around half
-oblivious to everything and everyone. I finally understood the importance of the company policy about dating: it had nothing to do with the couple involved. It had to do with protecting company morale, and right now, there was no morale. There was Marjorie sitting with her face propped in her hands staring at the blinking lights on her phone. There was Christopher caught in the middle of Reece and me:
Who do I talk to?
I heard him think. There was Dan wondering where the hell Reece’s pizazz went. I actually heard him say it yesterday: “Where’s your fucking pizazz?” he snapped. “This campaign is shit!”

Reece and I were experts at avoiding each other. It was easy when we knew each other’s schedules. Or schedule.
We had the same one for so long. He would visit me at my cubicle during a short break at ten every morning. We ate lunch together outside at noon. If it rained or was too cold, we’d eat in his cubicle. He checked in around three o’clock every afternoon just to say hi. And sometimes to sneak a kiss. And then we would leave together around six. All those things disappeared, and we moved like ghosts to one another about the office.

We may have succeeded in
being invisible to one another, but we weren’t doing the best job being invisible to Dan. Reece’s “pizazz” had still not returned even after two weeks, and my proofing skills were slipping. I was horrified when a document was emailed back to me with a note attached from the boss—the boss who never looks at my work because he doesn’t “have time for that shit.” (His words.)

The note read, “Bailey, you
wanna take another look at this? Because I’m sure Kevin from ‘Kevin’s Autamotive’ would like his company name spelled correctly. Your friend, Dan.” As scared as I was, I knocked on Dan’s office door at the end of the day to apologize. He seemed understanding, but there was something in the way he looked at me, like he was trying to figure out what to do with me. I was a problem that needed solving, and the idea sat like a boulder in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the day.

***

“Let’s talk about it,” Dan said. He propped his elbows on the desk, and Reece thought he was trying for a non-confrontational approach.

“About what?” Reece replied.

“The work you’ve been turning in,” Dan explained. “Come on, Reece. Don’t pretend like you don’t know.”

“You
gonna fire me?” he asked. He thought absurdly that he’d like that. Then he wouldn’t have to look like a coward for quitting.

“Never,” Dan replied. “And you know it. You’re the best one we’ve got in Creative.”

“Not right now,” Reece mumbled. He smoothed his shirtfront then folded his hands over his stomach.

“Well, I can’t argue there,” Dan said. “So now we have to figure out how to get you back.”

“I’m just dried up right now,” Reece said. “It happens. I can’t be on all the time.”

Dan considered this. “I hear what you’re saying, Reece. And you’re right. Creativity can’t happen twenty-four seven. I understand that. But we both know this isn’t a dry spell for you.” He paused. “Don’t we?”

Reece shrugged.

“I know about you and Bailey,” Dan said. “And I ignored all of it because you’re adults. And once you got engaged, I didn’t worry about anything except what the hell I was going to do with a married couple working together under my roof.”

Reece rubbed his face.

“Did I go about it all wrong? Should I have pulled you both into my office and given you an ultimatum? Force you to make a decision between your job
or each other?”

“No,” Reece said.

“Then how do I fix this problem? Because it’s a big fucking problem. I’ve got a guy in Creative who’s turning in kindergarten work and a proofreader who can’t spell automotive,” Dan explained.

“I’ll go,” Reece whispered. “I’ll go, and then things will get better for her.”

“No.”

Reece jerked his head up at the sound of Dan’s voice. It was forceful and decided.

“You’re not going anywhere. I already told you you’re the best thing I’ve got. And I know you’ll get better. I have plans to make it better,” Dan said.

“And those are?”

“I’m gonna let Bailey go,” Dan replied.

“No!” Reece cried.

“It’s the only way,” Dan insisted.

“No, it’s not! I just told you I’d go!”

“I can’t let you do that, Reece. You’ll regret it.”

“I’ll regret it if I let you fire her!”

Dan’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t need your permission to fire someone, and I wouldn’t be firing her. I’m eliminating her position . . . for a while.”

Reece jumped up from the chair. “No, Dan.
It’s wrong, and you know it.”

“She can’t spell!” he argued.

“You know she can fucking spell!” Reece countered. “Please don’t do this! If you do, I’ll walk out of here. I will walk out in a heartbeat! I know five firms who would hire me on the spot!”

Dan bristled at the threat.

“I swear,” Reece went on. “I can call them now.”

It was partially true. After the success of the Haute Digital
phablet campaign, several firms showed interest in Reece. But none of them formally offered him a job, and as the months went by, he stopped hearing from them.

“Stop,” Dan said. “Just stop. And sit down.”

Reece sank into the chair slowly.

“One week. I’m giving you one week to get back on your game. You understand me?”

One week wasn’t enough time to land a new job. And he couldn’t be without one while he looked. What was the old adage? New adage? “The best time to look for a job is when you have one?” Of course, he did say he’d quit on the spot, but that was really just an empty threat. He needed Dan to believe it so that he could protect Bailey. Bailey and her house and her mortgage payments. His only option at the moment was to get his shit together, and so he took a deep breath and nodded.

“I promise I’ll be fine,” he said.

He left the office and saw her standing there in the hallway talking to Marjorie. She looked his way, and his only thought was that he had work to do. He had a killer campaign to write. And her job depended on it.

***

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, pulling Christopher aside. He wouldn’t look at me as he tapped the water cooler.

“B . . .”

“Don’t ‘B’ me,” I snapped. “Just tell me straight up what the fuck is going on! People have been looking at me all weird for the past week!”

“It’s Dan. It’s . . . just a rumor, but I think he’s letting you go,” Christopher said.

I gasped. “Why?”

“All this shit with Reece,” Christopher said.

“I’ve been doing my job just fine,” I argued. I conveniently forgot about the “autamotive” misspelling and the numerous other slipups.

“But he hasn’t,” Christopher replied, and then he groaned. Apparently he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“So I’m being punished because Reece isn’t performing?” I grew instantly angry. “He can’t fire me for that! I’ll sue his ass!”

Christopher winced. “He’ll say he’s downsizing. He’ll outsource your job. He’s got an arsenal of excuses for letting people go. You won’t have a leg to stand on, and I’m not saying that to be cruel. I’m telling you how it is ‘
cause I want you to be realistic. Start looking.”

I seethed.
“For?” But I already knew what he meant.

“You know what for. Look, I’m telling you this because you’re my friend,” Christopher said. “And I care about you.”

“I’ve been with this company for six years,” I said slowly.

“I know, Bailey. I know.”

“And I’m that expendable, huh? The work I do here isn’t nearly as important as creating ad campaigns, is it?”

“Bailey . . .”

“Did they talk?” I asked abruptly.

“Who?”

“Dan and Reece.”

Christopher cleared his throat. My heart sank.

“Did Reece give him an ultimatum or something?”

“What?
!”

“You know what! Did Reece tell Dan he had to make a choice?”

“No! God, Bailey, this is Reece we’re talking about! He’d never do that. He threatened to quit if Dan fired you!” Christopher’s eyes darted around the room, and then he pulled me into the corner and spoke softly. “He stuck up for you.”

I believed him. Of course I believed him. I knew Reece’s nature. It wasn’t sinister. It was genuine and transparent. If he plotted with Dan, I would have known it. I would have
felt
it without even looking at him.

“Dan’s a jerk,” Christopher whispered. “I won’t deny it. I mean, when he’s great, he’s great. When he’s not great, well . . .”

“I didn’t catch the ‘autamotive’ misspelling,” I confessed. I needed to tell someone.

“Huh?”

“I haven’t been doing a good job lately either,” I said. “Maybe this is all for the best.”

Christopher squeezed my shoulder.

“But I’ll be damned if he’s going to fire me,” I added. “That’s humiliating. I’ll just quit. Hand in my two-weeks notice tomorrow.”

“This is so unfair,” Christopher said. “Reece would leave for you. I know he would.”

“I don’t want him to,” I replied. “And anyway, Dan wants him, not me.”

Christopher hung his head.

“This has been a disaster, hasn’t it?” I asked after a moment.

“I don’t know, Bailey.”

“Are you still gonna be my friend?”

His head shot up. “What
kinda question is that?”

“I won’t ever see you,” I replied.

“Girl, we got surfing to do this summer. What are you talkin’ about?”

I smiled.

“I got your number. You know I’ll keep in touch with you. And I’m not just sayin’ that.”

“But it’s a conflict of interest,” I pointed out. “You’re Reece’s friend, too.”

“Okay,” Christopher confessed. “You put me right in the middle of it, but I’ll handle it ‘cause I care about both of you.”

“Will you share our conversations?”

He smirked. “Only if you want me to.”

“Like high school, huh?”

“All day long,” Christopher said.

I giggled. And then I remembered that I wouldn’t have a job in two weeks. I cleared my throat.

“Chris, I’m scared,” I whispered.

“I’m
gonna help you look,” he said. “Don’t worry. I ain’t working on anything but that for the rest of the day.”

He went in for a hug. And then he thought twice.

“Bad idea,” I said, and he nodded.

At 5
:52 P.M. I received an email from Christopher. He attached applications for eight proofreading jobs. They could all be completed online, but I printed them out anyway, using company paper and company ink. In fact, I printed each one several times. One hundred times, to be exact.

I snickere
d as I walked to the copy room.

***

We had a good long run of it, but I couldn’t avoid him at the end of the day. He walked into the copy room, completely oblivious to me, eyes fastened to some papers he carried. I moved aside quickly before he smacked right into me.

“Oh gosh, sorry!” he said.

“I’m almost finished,” I replied.

There were several copy machines in the room, but what I meant was, “I’m almost finished so that you can have the entire room to yourself since this is really awkward.”

“I’ll use this one,” he said, pointing to his right.

He started the machine, then stood shuffling his feet, every now and then glancing in my direction. I knew because I was doing the exact same thing. When we caught each other’s eye the third go-around, I spoke up.

“I know about Dan.”

He tensed. “What about him?”

“His plans to fire me.”

“Bailey, I have nothing—”