When I called Gail and told her I had my first draft, I told her everything that happened. She had the audacity to ask me to get even moreresearchand cackled like the Wicked Witch. She said I was the magazine’s rom-com gold. I sent my draft right into editing instead, and boom, it was an instant hit.
Well, at least my awkward love stories could make other people laugh.
“Are you okay?” he asks pointing to my hand, which is bright red from the coffee. “Was that hot?”
Scalding, a layer of my flesh boiled off and I’m scarred for life, thanks for asking. “No, no.” I wave my scorched digits in the air. “It was lukewarm.” Just like my love life.
“Hey, girl.” Julia bounds into my workstation. “I just read the article, what a comedic piece—” She turns toward Nate and her eyes pop, “Are those flowers for me?” She squeals the ending of her question. My ears pop.
I glance back down to my half-empty coffee and the wads of brown-tinged tissue paper covering the top of my desk, and feel guilty as hell. I’m still thinking about sitting on his face.
In real life, his arms are wrapped around Julia in a sweet embrace, and she’s kissing him and whispering thank you in his ear.
My real life stinks. I can’t help watching them hug and I have to swallow down the lump that knots in my throat.
Julia pulls away from Nate and tosses the bouquet on the desk. I catch a quick glimpse of Nate’s reaction to it and it hurts my heart to watch. He doesn’t know this, but Julia receives a lot of flowers. Not only in her personal life, from the guys who want to date her, but from here at the magazine. She covers all the sports and interviews the hottest athletes. She’s discreet, but she loves being single and doesn’t have an inhibited bone in her perfect body. She gets loads of flowers.
I get gag gifts and books.
I think I’m the winner here, in this particular situation anyway.
“Hey guys, Gail just told me the magazine scored tickets to another game. Thursday night. What do you think?” She throws a playful look at me and lowers her voice, “Would you like to see if lightning strikes twice?”
“No!” I scramble for a legitimate enough reason to never be able to step foot inside a baseball stadium again.Allergies? It’s against my religion? I need to focus more on myself? I have this horrible headache that will definitely last all week? That’s the day I wash my hair?Nate’s staring at me, watching me struggle. I don’t want him to know how much that kiss meant to me. I can’t have her saying anything to let him know.
Oblivious to my inner turmoil, Julia wiggles her eyebrows at me and waits for my excuse.
“I, uh, I’m really not interested in sports. It’s not my thing,” Nate blurts.
What a liar. But now I like him even more for fibbing for me. I wish there was medicine that changes how you feel about someone.
“What? Since when?” Julia is wearing her charming flirty smile. She wants to go to this game and she wants to go for me. “I thought you loved sports, that’s what you said on our first date.”
I laugh, uncomfortably loud, and pat her on the back. “Oh, he’s just teasing you.” My coffee cup needs an immediate refill, so I grab it, and as I turn to walk to the kitchen, I use my best nonchalant voice, “You two have fun at the game, I have plans on Thursday.”
“What plans?”
I did not think this lie through to the end. Now I have to come up with another lie. Oh, my God my mother was right, lying is a slippery slope indeed. Small lies become the gateway to bigger lies.
“I have a thing.” This is one of my closest friends, she’s going to know I’m making this shit up.
“But, Jane, come on.” There’s a long pause and she nods her head like I’m supposed to get what she’s not saying. Oh, but I get Julia. I. Get. It. “What if Mr. Perfect shows up? Gail says they’re the same exact seats!”
Nooooo!
“Mr. Perfect?” Nate’s voice is no more than a whisper. The shock in his eyes lingers for two or three excruciatingly long seconds before his expression falls.
Julia sighs dreamily and rubs her palms over the front of his shirt, “Janie here, went to a baseball game a few—”
“No, don’t. Julia, please,” I urge, but of course she doesn’t stop. Why would she? She doesn’t understand how truly mortifying this is to me.
“Stop. It’s Nate, he’s a romantic guy. He’ll love this story. Okay, so our Janie was sitting at the game and the Kiss Cam falls on her and a total stranger.” Nate watches me. Sweat breaks out all over my body. “And they share this passionate kiss that makes her fall head over heels in love with him that very instant. She’s been looking for him ever since. He’s the one.”
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
The silence between the three of us is deafening.
