Page 16

MARLOW

Surprise, surprise…Ryan’s plan backfired.

Ever since our hike, he’s been walking on eggshells around me. I can’t help but feel embarrassed over talking about my past with him. Now he feels sorry for me, which is my least favorite thing ever.

This is how it usually goes. I finally get comfortable with someone, open up to them, and then things change. Pity is the natural reaction to my situation, I suppose, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

Honestly, I’d prefer the asshole version of Ryan over the version that asks me how I’m doing every single time we bump into each other around the office.

Luckily, my first group of summer interns started this week and they are keeping me pretty busy, even though there are only four of them.

Jeremy is the oldest at twenty-three. He just finished a graduate certificate program in Parks and Recreation Management.

He’s a know-it-all who is driving everyone crazy by constantly reciting useless facts and figures, but can’t seem to remember how to make coffee properly.

He has nearly burned the building down twice already.

Beth is nineteen and majoring in environmental science. She’s smart but takes everything too seriously. I swear she’s written down every single word I’ve said this week.

Brayden is, quite frankly, a hiring mistake on HR’s part. He seems to have zero interest in anything we do around here. I’m not sure that he’s even enrolled in college, which is a prerequisite for the internship program. Most days he reeks of weed.

And Kayla…well, I haven’t quite figured her out yet. She’s twenty and majoring in public administration. She seems smart and eager to learn, but she also spends a good amount of her time flirting shamelessly with the male interns. Neither of them seems to have any complaints though.

I sneak out of the conference room after putting on another boring orientation video. On my way to the break room, I bump into Ryan.

“Hey, how are you?” he asks.

It makes me want to strangle him.

“Fine,” I say a little too curtly. Ryan notices it and pulls his eyebrows together in a concerned stare.

Yep, I’m going to strangle him. Maybe then he’ll stop treating me like I’m so fragile.

He follows me into the break room. The coffee is a cold sludge, so I pour it out and start a new batch. Ryan leans casually against the counter and traces all of my movements with his eyes.

“Those training videos are horrible,” I say as the coffee machine sputters and gurgles to life between us.

Ryan laughs. “Yeah, I’ve been asking for new videos for years, but they always shoot me down. They don’t want to waste money on updating them because the information hasn’t really changed.”

“Yeah, but the hairstyles have. And so has film technology. Those videos are so grainy and fuzzy, it could honestly be a talking bear narrating it and I don’t think anyone would know the difference.”

Ryan lets out another laugh. When the coffee pot lurches to a stop, we take turns filling our cups.

His shoulder brushes mine and I can smell his cologne.

I wonder when he started wearing that to work.

Ryan pauses from stirring the half and half into his coffee to look over at me curiously.

That’s when I realize that I was staring.

My eyes dart back to the cup on the counter in front of me, but the color that rises to my cheeks gives me away.

The stupid thing is: I want Ryan to tease me about it. I want him to make one of his cocky little comments about wiping the drool off my chin. Or something. Anything other than this weird, hollow shell of a friendship that we’ve stumbled into.

If I had known that this is what being friends with Ryan looks like, I would have never agreed to it.

I think Ryan feels it, too. The tension between us is thick and palpable, but there’s something else there as well.

It’s a hint of sadness in the way that Ryan peels his eyes away from me.

It’s a micro-expression so tiny that I would have missed it if I didn’t look up at him again for that fraction of a second.

His shoulders heave as he lets out a long, deep sigh. It’s the unmistakable sigh of someone who has something to say but is buying themselves some time. I’m on edge beside him, waiting for him to speak.

“Are you going to happy hour tomorrow?” he asks.

Totally not the conversation I was expecting. It’s disappointing, to say the least.

“I don’t know,” I say, stretching the words out while I try to conjure up some reason why I can’t go.

Ryan turns to face me. His chest is right there by my shoulder. His head is bent down, and he quietly asks, “Please, will you come?”

I glance up at him. He looks desperate, tired, sad…

and I can’t say no. I nod slowly, but even after he has the answer he wants, he doesn’t stop staring at me.

An urge to reach out and touch him snakes up my spine and out to my fingertips.

Almost as if he knows, Ryan’s eyes flick between my lips and my hands in the small space between us.

Then footsteps near the doorway send us both backward an inch or two. We each turn our attention to our coffee cups as Kayla enters the room.

“Oh, hi, I just need to refill my water,” she says as she holds up her pink water bottle. Her eyes linger on Ryan for a second before she walks over to the water cooler.

Ryan and I exchange a quick glance. A ‘Holy shit, did it look like we were about to make out all over the break room counter?’ smile and a quiet laugh.

A loud gurgle from across the room draws our attention away from each other. It’s the death rattle of the water jug as it deposits its last few drops into Kayla’s plastic bottle.

“Oh, shoot,” she says dramatically. “Is there another jug around?”

Obviously, there is. It’s sitting right in front of her on the ground.

“Yeah, I got it,” Ryan says. He seems eager to have something to do other than stare awkwardly at his coffee mug until she leaves.

Kayla is a small woman. If she’s more than five feet tall, I’d be shocked.

She has a small, but athletic frame with breasts that, um, stand out.

It makes sense that she wouldn’t want to swap out a forty-pound jug of water, given her height and stature.

But what doesn’t make sense is the way she doesn’t step out of the way as Ryan tries to help.

With the new jug in his arms, he has to navigate awkwardly around her to place it on top of the cooler, causing him to splash some water onto his shirt in the process.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Kayla says as she rushes over to the counter. She returns with some napkins and starts dabbing the wet spot on Ryan’s shirt. Right on his stomach, just above his belt buckle.

I am not proud of my reaction to this. My ears get so hot that I wonder if steam is shooting out of them. My pulse quickens in my throat and my teeth clench together as if they’re trying to keep my heart from jumping out of my throat and onto the floor. It is pure, unmistakable jealousy.

Ryan, on the other hand, is unreadable for a split second. Is he seriously going to let this woman that he doesn’t even know dab his stomach dry right in front of me? Doesn’t he know that I’m two seconds away from marching over there and dumping that entire jug of water over both of their heads?

Then he grabs Kayla’s wrist gently and takes a full step backwards while holding her in place.

“It’s fine, I’ve got it,” he says to her dismissively.

When he turns and walks over to the sink with his back to her, Ryan shoots me a look that unmistakably says, ‘What the fuck was that?’ I shrug and smile, hoping he can’t see the jealousy written all over my face.

Kayla fills her water bottle and quickly disappears from the room.

Ryan grabs a paper towel and picks up where Kayla left off on drying his shirt. After glancing back to make sure she’s gone, he quietly says to me, “That was weird.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I should get back in there.”

Ryan nods. I think we’ve both had all the awkwardness we can handle at the moment.

___

Friday is a mess. Brayden shows up an hour late without an explanation. Jeremy offers an unprompted (not to mention unnecessary) critique of his orientation experience thus far. The gist of it is that he could do it better. Beth takes notes on this for some reason.

Kayla is…well, she’s Kayla. She bats her eyelashes and squishes her breasts together like she doesn’t have a single brain cell in her head, but then contributes intelligently to the conversation. It’s bizarre and frustrating.

Honestly, I wish that the summer internship didn’t start at exactly the same time as Abby’s program. I’d much rather be helping her with the kids right now than sitting here at the office dealing with these four interns.

Five o’clock rolls around at a painfully slow pace. I haven’t seen Ryan all day, but it’s not unusual for him to spend the entire day out in the field.

Maybe I’m off the hook for happy hour. I’m still trying to figure out why Ryan wants me to go so badly. He probably hopes that seeing other women flirt with him will make me realize how much I want to sleep with him.

Ironically, I’m already fully aware of how much I want to sleep with Ryan.

It’s a thought that plays on repeat when I’m lying in bed at night.

The only thing that could make me want to sleep with him any less is seeing him flirt with a bunch of other women.

It’s a giant reminder – a huge, blinking neon sign – of why things would never work out between us.

On my way out of the lobby, I see Kayla parked in front of Emmett’s desk, giggling over something he just said.

There, that’s a better match for her. Anyone but Ryan.

Emmett interrupts whatever Kayla is saying so holler across the lobby, “Are you going to happy hour, Marlow?”

I shake my head. “Not tonight.”

“Bummer,” Emmett says. Strangely enough, I think he actually is bummed that I’m not going.

“Have a good weekend!” Kayla chirps over at me.