E.G.: It’s not the plague. Is my 9:00 am coffee going to be late?
Me: Yes! Because I’m sick and have the flu and can’t come to work today.
E.G.: You’re lying. Now man up and get your ass in here and start acting like an adult.
Me: Are you saying I was behaving like a child? Because I cried on your shoulder?
E.G.: Not Thursday night. Then you were feeling a lot of complicated emotions. Which makes sense. I was delivering body blows. Now be an adult. Come to work. Face the music.
Me: Adulting is hard.
E.G.: Yes. Where the hell is my coffee???????
Me: Be careful. I’m might spit in your coffee.
E.G.: With the cold foam on top, I doubt I’ll notice.
I putmy phone in my back pocket and sighed.
I was already in line at the damn Starbucks.
I’d had a hundred conversations with myself this morning, why it was perfectly okay to take a sick day and not have to see him. Then another hundred conversations that predicted he would see right through that and I didn’t want to look like a coward.
Except the closer the bus got to the office, the more I started to panic. I don’t know what happened on Thursday. I don’t knowwhy I broke down like that. I just did. I could look at it maybe a little more closely, but I really didn’t want to.
I was delivering body blows.
Yeah, there was nothing good about digging too deeply into that. I was embarrassed that it happened and I didn’t want to see the person who had witnessed it.
That was fair, wasn’t it?
Apparently not.
“Order for Anna!”
I stepped up to get my order. His venti nitro with sweet cream, his one and only daily indulgence. My tall latte with sugar free vanilla. I didn’t always treat myself, but I thought today warranted it.
I took the tray and made my way down the sidewalk to our building complex. When I stepped inside our office door it was just past nine.
I guess I hadn’t hesitated all that long.
Dropping my stuff off first, I made my way to his office, coffee and newspapers in hand.
“Wow!” he exclaimed upon seeing me. “What a miraculous recovery.”
“Venti nitro cold brew with sweet cream cold foam and one lugee,” I said, as I put it down in front of him.
He smirked. “As if that would put me off my coffee. Sit.”
I sat. “Are we going to do a whole thing?”
“Whole thing?”
“A breakdown analysis of Thursday, because I would rather not.”
“God, no,” he said. “That was all way too heavy, don’t you agree?”
I did, but still. “This is what adulting looks like? Willful denial?”
