No. No, no,fuckno.
She had to taste like tart cherries and her body had to be as taut as I imagined. If that annoying friend of hers hadn’t dragged her away, I would have taken Andy home with me and it wouldn’t have been to watchTop Chef. If I hadn’t been a giant idiot, and left her swollen lips and flushed cheeks in that bathroom, well…I was giant idiot.
Fuck my life.
Even if getting my hands on her body wasn’t a sneak preview of heaven itself, the smart, witty conversation with Andy rivaled the best of my life. She thought about architecture in such a passionate manner I couldn’t help getting lost. If restlessness hadn’t ejected me from my seat and sent me in search of Andy, we would have talked through last call.
I kept reliving the moment when her façade melted. I saw her, really saw her, with aroused vulnerability in her eyes, her fingers clawing and begging for more contact, her disheveled breathlessness.
I spent more time replaying those memories, while simultaneously cursing myself for leaving the most complex, alluring woman I ever touched, than was healthy.
She said it changed nothing, and that sounded like a tray full of glasses hitting the floor, each crash louder and more jarring. Though I knew blurring the lines with Andy was quite possibly the riskiest move I could make, I wasn’t interested in a quick fuck in a bar bathroom. Touching her, kissing her—it changed things.
It changed everything. At least for me.
Somewhere in that bathroom I found it in me to walk away because she wasn’t giving me exactly what I wanted. And that was it: she never gave me quite enough.
It was my own personal Bermuda Triangle.
I spent the week breathing fire and raising new sorts of hell.
I threatened to block new projects until someone discovered more office space. I took on Shannon during the Monday meeting, and found new ways to dig myself deeper in that pit each day. Marisa—or was it Melissa?—the newest in a long line of short-term solutions and hiring errors, quit when I kicked the habitually jammed copier and requested she get a technician to replace it by end of day.
Naturally, Shannon and I went a few rounds about my inability to keep an assistant for more than two months, and she refused to find a new one until I handled my alleged rage issues.
Through it all, Andy regarded me with the same unaffected calm that made me want to bind her wrists and ankles to my bed and lick her until her eyes rolled back in her head and the “hm” was nowhere to be found.
She was completely cool and impassive, and while I didn’t expect anything less from Andy, a small part of me wanted to see her flailing in the sea of awkward formality that developed between us.
In a moment of supreme weakness, I started stalking her Facebook and Instagram pages to fill my sleepless nights. It was a special variety of punishment, and I resented Andy for leaving her privacy settings open. As if she wanted me to suffer.
I scrolled through years of photos, fully expecting to find things I didn’t want to see. There were the obligatory girl group line-ups before a night of partying, rueful commentary attached to pictures of epic Ithaca snow banks, several happy years of Cornell’s Slope Day festivities, and I counted at least six different guys in various forms of embrace with Andy. I noted, with some disdain, they reminded me of Mumford and Sons: all hipsters who represented a broad spectrum of beardedness, favored plaid, and were in the range of seven to ten years younger than me.
I was also pretending my recent shaving hiatus was related to the obscenely cold weather rather than a fucked up attempt at gaining her attention.
She went to the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee last spring, and wore a few scraps of fabric meeting the loosest criteria of a bikini.
As if I could pretend I didn’t see that.
Her most recent Instagram post was from one our properties on demo day, and captured a sledgehammer as it connected with a wall. The caption read, “hammer time” and like the deranged fool I was becoming, I laughed hysterically when I saw it.
She traveled extensively during her school breaks, and filled entire Facebook albums with photos of architecture and food from all over the world. By Thursday, I was itching to ask about her travels, but I didn’t want to reveal my creeptastic tendencies.
“Didn’t peg you for a matzo ball soup guy,” she said, pointing at my bowl with her spoon. “I learn something new about you every day, Patrick.”
“Really?” I asked, glancing across the table. “What did you learn yesterday?”
She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms. “You hate traffic circles.”
“You’re in Boston, Asani. They’re called rotaries. And they’re only acceptable when traveling by horseback, and even then, I bet they were a pain in the ass. And everyone hates them.”
“Okay,” she said. “I know you refuse to acceptTop Chef’sawesomeness because you can’t try the food, and I know you like fish dives.”
“You would like them too, if you gave them a chance.” It was rocky territory, but I continued, “Offer still stands. And no, I’m not getting into anotherTop Chefargument with you right now.”
She spooned a bite of vegetarian lentil soup into her mouth while staring out at Sullivan Square. After a long pause, she said, “Maybe.”
I rolled my shoulders and studied my soup, waiting for the flare of adrenaline in my system to slow. “Maybe you’ll consider the possibility that fish dives aren’t terrible, or maybe you’ll take a ride with me this weekend and actually try one?”
