Fireworks and Resolutions

By Leandra Dohman

Something big happened at the office Christmas party between Joseph and Carter, his coworker and ultimate crush. Too bad Joseph doesn’t remember it. Now, it’s New Year’s Eve, and Joseph finds himself locked in the bathroom with Carter. Joseph doesn’t understand why his natural confidence fizzles out whenever Carter is around, but the man reduces him to an awkward mess. If he can just find the courage to be himself, there might be more fireworks in his future than the ones they watch from the balcony.

T
O
BE
frank, Joseph had not planned on ending up locked in a bathroom in the middle of a New Year’s party. It’s not as if he’d made a conscious decision to spill a glass of merlot on his formerly pristine white shirt. It’s not as if he’d wanted to wear such a shirt in the first place, but a little bird—aka his best friend, Mike—had told him this New Year’s party would not be attended by casually dressed people. With that, Mike had saved him from further humiliation in the very last possible moment. So there Joseph had been, awkwardly holding a glass of wine when he’d much rather have been drinking beer. He’d been doing great until a tall blonde had bumped her elbow into his arm.

He’d fled to the bathroom and tried to get the stain out with some water and made it worse. He’d checked for a solution through a damn search engine on his phone. After reading the hits, he’d realized that he couldn’t ask Carter whether he had some milk or salt or hydrogen peroxide. After all, Joseph had been avoiding a conversation with the host for the last three hours (ever since arriving) and he preferred it to stay that way. Even if said host
was
currently sitting on the edge of a bathtub a few feet away from him. So, somewhere between cursing at the shirt and looking up “How to remove wine stains off your shirt,” the door had decided to play him for a fool by refusing to budge. Oh, and Carter had come in after the first two and just before the third phase.

After admitting defeat over the wine stain, Joseph kept on jiggling the doorknob, willing it to magically pop open. The darn thing wouldn’t budge. There were no bobby pins in a man’s bathroom for him to pick a lock like they did in the movies. Mike wasn’t answering his phone, and nobody else attending the party could hear him yelling for help over the loud music and playful chatter.

“You’ve been doing that for the last fifteen minutes, Joe. It’s not going to budge,” the familiar, gut-warming voice spoke from behind him.

He’d had his back to the guy ever since Carter had snuck inside the bathroom. Joseph had promptly ignored him for as long as he could by keeping his back to him and his gaze averted.

“Why did you even lock it?”

The exasperated sentence met sudden silence. Oh. Joseph at last dropped his hand and forced himself to turn around toward the other person in the world’s smallest bathroom. An exaggeration. Gross exaggeration. You could fit in at least four more people, and it still wouldn’t be crowded. But being locked in a small room with a person you’ve been deliberately avoiding for the last ten days… well, that somehow warped your perception of confined places and intrusions into your personal space.

Carter was still sitting there as if the situation didn’t irk him at all. He wasn’t fazed the least bit. His shirt was, of course, without a wine stain or a wrinkle. Those eyes, sparkling with mischief, were focused solely on Joseph, and those tempting lips were curved into a small smirk.

“You’re enjoying this,” Joseph sighed, leaning back on the doors. There was no way in hell he was moving closer to him and risking doing something stupid, for example climbing onto his lap or nibbling his earlobe. His body never played by the rules when Carter was around, and gravity’s pull had too often caused him to face-plant.

“Of course I am. You’ve been avoiding me since you stepped inside my apartment. I’m surprised you even came.”

“Mike convinced me to come.”

“So you have a habit of kissing a person and then running away as if your life was in danger?”

Joseph visibly flinched at that one.
What?
Was there a way out of this conversation? See, this was the very reason for his reluctance over attending the party. Right now he could be at home, watching a marathon of Indiana Jones movies with a bowl full of caramel popcorn, a six-pack of beer, and Zelda the Turtle chilling on the couch next to him. Instead, he was locked in here with an attractive coworker in front of whom he had completely embarrassed himself at a Christmas party his firm had held ten days ago.

At last Joseph’s brows shot up: “I… no. I didn’t kiss you. I think?”

Carter chuckled.

Memory like Swiss cheese. Fucking alcohol.

“You kissed me.”

“Did not!”

“You sure?”

“No.”

“Then I’m telling you—you kissed me.”

Joseph kept quiet, gnawing at his underlip. It didn’t seem all that impossible. It would be just like him to go ahead and try something. He had been in a heavy drunken haze that entire night and not entirely aware of what was real and what was a product of his imagination.

H
E
TRIED
recalling everything that had happened that evening, but certain details were hard to get a grasp of. He remembered arriving at the party, and then the champagne glasses never seemed to leave his hand. But at some point he had switched over to eggnog because it was absolutely delicious, and there was no such thing as a Christmas party without eggnog. He kept on telling everyone how wonderful and heavenly the eggnog was. Someone’s boyfriend even nicknamed him “the eggnog man.”

Then at some point, he was standing next to Mike, and Mike was telling him about… broccoli? About… something? But he hadn’t been listening to him at all because his eyes had gotten glued on six feet and three inches of pure male hotness. Carter Jensen. A moment later he was already on the move; he’d strutted across the room and didn’t stop until he was standing right in front of him. He remembered Carter looking at him in surprise and his eyes flickering down to the half-empty glass in Joseph’s hand.

“You look incredible tonight,” he had said back then, instead of a proper greeting. He’d placed his hand on Carter’s shoulder to stop himself from losing his balance and toppling over. And because he wanted to touch the guy and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

After that it was a whole bunch of gibberish and his revelations. He’d said a lot of things—that he liked him, that his ass was divine, that he sometimes looked for excuses just to stop by his office, and that he’d been nurturing the biggest crush on him. But the kiss? He could hark back to the last moment before a complete blackout of memory. He was pretty much gawking at Carter’s lips and thinking how his dark, scruffy beard would feel underneath his fingertips. Then… then he had moved his hand to the back of Carter’s neck and pulled him closer while he leaned in.

F
UCK
. I
T
really had happened. He couldn’t remember anything beyond that, but…. Fuck. Holy fuck, he’d kissed Carter Jensen. Was it good? Did Carter like it? Fuck… did Carter even kiss him back?

“I have to say I’m disappointed that you don’t even remember it. This observation is based on the perplexed and confused expression on your face.”

Carter’s words shook him out of the trance, and his knees went weak and wobbly, and the room seemed to be without a droplet of air. He didn’t often find himself in such a situation—at a point where he was filled with deep shame and utterly self-conscious. Yes, he was the firm’s IT guy. Yes, he worked better with computers than with people. But no, he wasn’t shy and awkward or a klutz in spite of his unfortunate accident earlier this evening. Or that time when he’d spilled coffee on himself when Carter had entered the office. Or… when he’d bumped his green succulent off the office table when Carter had appeared—that had happened only once.

The mutual factor of all those minor blunders was the guy in front of him. Joseph just happened to transform into a tremendous lummox whenever Carter was around. It had all started back in September when Carter began working for the same firm. When Joseph got called into his office on the guy’s second day at work, he had not been prepared to find a fucking GQ model sitting behind the desk. Dark blue tie, black suit, neatly trimmed beard, dark brown hair, eyes the color of a molten lava cake. He. Was. Not. Fucking. Ready.

“I
DON
’
T
remember,” Joseph confirmed after finding his voice again.

“That’s… not very flattering,” Carter replied, but he still held that amused look on his face, as if everything Joseph did or said was inevitably entertaining to him.

“We should focus on getting out of here. The fireworks go off in….” Joseph started, averting attention elsewhere and then glancing down at the watch on his wrist, “in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay, let’s use the window, then.”

Huh?

Carter rose up from his seat on the bathtub and pulled open the small bathroom window. Why hadn’t he mentioned that solution before? Perhaps back when Joseph had started almost hyperventilating upon realizing that the door simply wouldn’t open. Then might have been a perfectly good time to point out a probable escape route. But the apartment was on the seventh floor—underneath that window had to be nothing else but death, broken bones, and a bloodbath.

Nevertheless, Carter had already pushed himself up to the shelf and managed to wiggle through the small opening that seemed to be just big enough for this kind of a dauntless feat.

“Holy shit,” Joseph breathed out when Carter disappeared from view.

He darted to the window and pushed himself up enough to see nothing but dark snowy streets underneath, along with the traffic buzzing by. Right by the window, Carter stood on a cement ledge, walking alongside the building with caution.

“Just don’t look down, and you’ll be fine” came a useful instruction that had Joseph shuddering. Carter made it seem so easy, though, and Joseph was desperate to get out of the bathroom and back to the party where everyone else was. Back there it was crowded enough to hide away from Carter’s view again and silently sulk in a dark corner. He wasn’t keen on celebrating the New Year, so it made no difference whether he was shit-faced drunk and partying or being on his own.

Gathering every ounce of courage he possessed, he pushed himself up on the shelf and carefully maneuvered his body through the opening. He had a death grip on the window frame as his feet hit the ledge. Luckily, it was a tad closer to the window than the bathroom floor, which made it easier to stand up. He glanced over at Carter only to find him climbing over the balcony railing. Okay, two meters at most separated him from safety. He could do this!

Spreading his palms on the cold building wall for support, he started making tiny mice steps in the direction of the balcony. His exhaled breath was condensing in front of his eyes while he was looking down. The very thing Carter had told him
not
to do. But how else was he supposed to know where the edge was and how to move his feet and not lose balance?

“This is bat-shit crazy,” he murmured under his breath. One more meter.

Finally, his hand gripped the railing, and as he reached over, Carter gripped his other hand and steadied him. He lifted his leg over the rail, and the other one followed suit. Woof, that was… thrilling. Crazy, sure, but it had also sent a rush of adrenaline through him. He was trying to catch his breath when his body went on alert. Or better said, he noticed a certain something and froze.

Carter was still holding his hand—nothing new there. His other hand, though, was firmly settled on Joseph’s waist and seemed as if it were the sole thing keeping him grounded.

“We’ve been working together for several months now, and it seems I barely even know you,” Carter spoke up, surprising Joseph, who thought he would rather go back to climbing the side of the building round and round than have this conversation.

Joseph knew that any conversation with Carter was a danger zone. Who knew what other shit and blabber might leave Joseph’s mouth if given an opportunity?

There was nothing particularly interesting about him. Not in that striking extraordinary way. He had grown up in an average middle-class Mexican family, gone to school, gone to high school, enrolled in a university, and managed to get a job almost right away. Life had been good to him, and he got by just fine. He’d had three serious relationships so far and had also gone through a period of a few months when he’d indulged himself in a series of one-night stands. Therefore, whatever he might tell Carter would be either terribly ordinary or terribly boring. Probably both.

“What do you want to know?” he circled back to the question without properly answering. How many times had
he
wondered about Carter? What he was like outside of the office, what things he liked, was he in a relationship? Well, now Joseph knew that he wasn’t (he’d made Mike ask around), but several months ago he hadn’t known a single thing besides how fucking attracted he was to the guy. He felt Carter’s eyes on him now when he didn’t say anything. Instead he lightly tugged his hand away and took a step back.