She popped outside the cubicle, grabbed the umbrella she’d left leaning on the wall—it was broken and opened inside out, the way she wanted it to—and held it up. It had actually taken quite a bit of work to get it to stay, and she’d sliced her finger trying to bend the metal prongs, she explained to Matt. Another few seconds passed, Matt’s face still blank.
“It’s my Halloween costume!” Lucy said. “Gone with the Wind. Get it?” She held the umbrella up again, but off to the side this time, and tried her best to take a stance that made it look like there was a strong gust of wind blowing her from right to left.
Matt laughed, loud and booming. “You’re amazing,” he said, sliding his glasses on top of his head, where they nestled in his short, wavy hair. She took a bow. Then his smiled faltered. “It’s the Halloween party.” He looked around his cubicle, sparse aside from the mess of papers on his desk, a few half-empty coffee mugs, his messenger bag in one corner and his bike leaning against the opposite wall with his helmet dangling from one of the handlebars. “I forgot my costume at home. Shit!”
One of their colleagues, Jake, and his roommate were hosting a party for a bunch of people from work. Things had started at 8:00 p.m., and it was already nearly eighty-thirty, which was why she’d come to track Matt down. He had his phone on Do Not Disturb and they were supposed to be heading over to the party together.
“What was your costume again?” Lucy asked, trying to remember if he’d told her already—her mind a bit sludgy, thanks to the few pulls she’d already had off the large bottle of rum Brooke kept at the back of her filing cabinet.
“It’s lame, but best I could come up with because, as you know, I suck at this sort of thing.” She nodded. Matt was brilliant at business strategy but less so with anything creative. They’d been friends long enough for her to know this. “I was going as a serial killer. But like ‘cereal’—the stuff you eat—versus, you know.” He shrugged. “I had all these mini cereal boxes on string I could hang over my shoulders, with fake plastic knives sticking out of them.”
Lucy nodded, smiled. “Got it.” He admitted there would probably be at least five other “cereal killers” at the party tonight, but it had been all he could think of. “Okay, I have an idea. I’ll be right back.”
She was back five minutes later with one of the wire hangers from the dry cleaning she hadn’t yet taken home, and the bottle of extreme-hold hair gel she’d used to secure her hair for her costume.
“Just finishing up,” he said, typing without taking his eyes off his screen. While Lucy waited for him, she started to unwind the metal hanger, being careful not to reopen the cut on her finger. “And...done.” He turned everything off and slid his phone into his suit jacket pocket as he stood. He glanced at the wire hanger, the bottle of hair gel she’d placed on the edge of his desk. “So, what’s your idea?”
Lucy held up the partially unwound hanger and smiled.
“I still don’t get it,” he said, looking from her to the hanger and back.
Rolling her eyes, Lucy continued to unravel the hanger. “This,” she said, struggling a little to straighten a particularly gnarly bend, “is for your tie.”
He glanced down at the black-and-gray-striped tie lying flat to his chest. He lifted it off his shirt, waggled the end. “For my tie?”
She stepped closer to him, tripped as the wire hanger in her dress caught on the edge of the chair and nearly took a header into his desk. “Easy there,” he said, chuckling as he grabbed on to her, steadying her. “Did you already start the party?”
“Shh,” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “Brooke may or may not have a bottle of rum in her office, and I may—or may not—have helped her make a dent in it.” Then she noticed he was still holding on to her arm and didn’t seem like he was going to let go, which caused Lucy to blush and focus harder on the hanger.
The truth was Lucy had a bit of a thing for Matt...though this fact seemed to be lost on him. Besides working together they were also good friends—and their friendship had moved beyond Jameson Porter, past workday lunches and watercooler visits. She’d cheered him on as he crossed his most recent marathon’s finish line, and when Lucy was sick with the flu, he brought her soup and the first season ofGame of Thrones, which she had yet to watch because she was so ill she fell asleep with her head in his lap that night.
Over the past year they’d gotten to know each other pretty well, and Matt counted Lucy among his closest friends. And Lucy had admitted to Jenny nearly six months earlier she was smitten—Matt was reliable and trustworthy and kind and handsome, in a nerdy way she loved. And he was altogether different from her ex Daniel (in both personality and looks), which made him even more appealing. But Matt, for as much as he obviously cared for her, had so far kept Lucy firmly in the friend zone.
“Take off your tie,” Lucy said, unfurling the last of the wire hanger kinks. He did, handed it to her. She folded and bent and twisted the wire, positioning it at the widest end of the tie. “So, how much do you love this tie?”
He shrugged. “Not much.”
She started pushing the wire up and through the inside of the tie. “Good. Me, neither.”
Matt laughed. “Noted.”
“Here, hold this end,” Lucy said, handing him the skinniest part. She pushed the wire in more firmly and it popped through the fabric at the front. “Oops,” she said, cringing. “Sorry about that. I guess I owe you a tie.”
“Good. You can get me a nicer one.”
“And...going to try to bend it around this part here...” Lucy tweaked the wire through the fabric until it bent enough to come down the other side, making sure the part he would tie around his neck was wire free. “There. Done.” She recoiled the wire a bit inside the end of the tie so nothing was sticking out, then told him to put it back on. He did with a little difficulty, and after some adjustments Lucy took the wire-filled end of the tie and bent it in a few waves, making sure it stuck out to the same side as her hair and skirt. “Now, a little gel here...” With goo-slathered fingers she worked the gel into his dark hair, pulling the longer bits the best she could—his hair was fairly short and the waves seemed impervious to the gel—out to the same side as the tie, then stepped back.
He took the same stance she had taken earlier, like a huge gust was blowing him over, and Lucy clapped her hands together. “Perfect. We can be Gone with the Wind together.”
“Now I won’t embarrass myself at the party with my lame costume.”
“Well, I can’t prevent you from embarrassing yourself,” she said. “Because we have some drinking to do, and who knows what’s going to happen after that.”True, true, he said. “But at least we’ll do it together. Ready to head out?”
He glanced around the office, nodded. “I’ll leave my bike,” he said. “I have a feeling I won’t be in the best shape to ride home.”
“Definitely wise,” Lucy said, pushing him toward the bank of elevators down the hall from the offices. “Now let’s get out of here. You have some catching up to do.”
They laughed and then the elevator doors opened, and in their haste to get in, they got caught against the slowly opening doors, his tie and her skirt preventing a graceful entrance. They untangled themselves and he gently nudged her forward first into the elevator, his hands on her hips and her smiling at his touch.
