Twitterpated (6 page)

Chapter 8

I
STOOD ON
Y
ESLER
W
AY
, glossed, spiffed, and shined. One more block straight down and I would be in front of Trattoria Fredo. I like Trattoria Fredo, so I felt bad for my stomach’s behavior. The craziness in there went far beyond butterflies. Maybe more like acrobatic hedgehogs. Mean-spirited, dive-bombing hedgehogs. No way could I eat.

Get it together, Jessie
, I admonished myself. I reached deep down inside, searching for my inner confident, modern woman. Nope, not there. I checked my reflection in the window of a nearby café. When I saw my anxious expression, I smiled. This was silly. This was lunch—not even a real date. I looked good in my skirt and wore rocking lip gloss—even my winter-lined, dark-denim peacoat looked sharp. Ultimately, this was just a guy. I might not turn heads the way Sandy did in any room, but I could hold my own in a conversation. Rumor has it, I’m kind of funny too. I started that rumor, but it didn’t make it less true. At the very least, I would get tasty food and a good story out of the whole situation. I set off toward the restaurant again with a bounce in my step.

I slipped inside the door to check the place out. Several business types sat in pairs or groups, and they all looked older than twenty-seven—Ben’s age, according to his profile. Finally, I noticed a lone guy sitting at the bar, nursing a soda and picking at a plate of garlic bread. Working my way over, I honed in on the black frames of his glasses and his dark hair. I studied him while I held the advantage of being undetected. No white socks with dark pants, no sports jersey. Even overly feminine highlights in his hair might send me skittering back to the safety of my Macrosystems cave. But he wore unobjectionable khakis, brown loafers, and a navy polo. And no highlights.

I took a deep breath and slid into the seat next to him.

“Hi,” I said.

He looked surprised. “Hi.”

“So this is kind of weird, right?”

“Uh, sure. Kind of,” he fidgeted. His voice sounded more anxious than it did on the phone. I had checked his profile picture again before leaving work, but since it wasn’t a close up, I couldn’t get a real sense of the details. Seeing him in person, I realized I had managed to fill them in using my imagination, and he differed from my mental picture in subtle ways. He had a rounder jaw and shorter, straighter hair than I had expected. He wasn’t bad looking. If anything, his looks put him on the pleasant side of plain. He reminded me of one of Jason’s high school buddies who came off as exceedingly average until he opened his mouth and became cuter because of his personality.

Trying to break the ice, I said, “So . . . I’m Jessie,” and tried not to wince at my mastery of the obvious.

“Hi, Jessie,” he said.

I tried a joke. “Glad to see you wore pants.”

He furrowed his brow in confusion.

“You know, instead of trousers.”

“Right,” he said.

“Which are still better than slacks,” a voice said from behind me.

I jumped and spun on my barstool to see a tall, dark-haired guy standing there with his hand outstretched to shake.

A sinking feeling unfolded in the pit of my stomach and deepened when he said, “Hi, I’m Ben.”

Oh no.

I looked at the random stranger sitting next to me. “Who are you?” I blurted helplessly, my embarrassment making me stupid.

“I’m Jeff.”

I closed my eyes for a brief moment. “Sorry to bother you. I thought you were
him
,” and I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the real Ben.

Jeff shrugged. “No problem,” he said and turned back to his garlic bread.

I turned to face Ben again and found him standing there, looking amused.

“You
are
Jessie, right?” he asked, faint hesitation in his voice.

“Yes. You’re the
real
Ben?” I asked with a glare at the hapless Jeff.

“I am.” He paused and looked unsure about what to do next. Finally, he nodded to a table and said, “Window seat okay?”

“Sure,” I said as coolly as possible, trying to recover my dignity.

When I stood to follow him, he measured every inch of the six feet plus he had claimed in his profile. He had blue eyes, and his dark, wavy hair looked significantly less floppy than in his picture. Also, no glasses. Without them, his sculpted cheekbones stood out, balancing a strong jaw. Oh yeah. This looked much more like my mental picture.

He held my chair out for me, and I slid into it, trying not to slouch under my crushing humiliation.

“So, you look suspicious. It really is me,” he said.

“I don’t believe you. The Ben in my computer has glasses.”

He looked sheepish. “That’s one of the differences from my picture, I guess. It’s from grad school, but like I said, it’s the only photo I had when I joined Lookup, so I used it. I can afford regular haircuts now, and I’ve had laser eye surgery since then.” He smiled. “It cost less than replacing my glasses every time I broke them.”

“Oh, you’re accident prone,” I said and made an exaggerated show of moving the flower vase and glass salt shakers on the table out of his immediate reach.

“The vase is safe. But if I told you about all the crazy ways I’ve destroyed my glasses over the years, you’d never believe me.”

“Well, to be honest, I’d probably feel better if we could even the score,” I grumbled. “You can tell me your most spectacular spectacle deaths, but maybe make them all be your fault so you come off looking kind of like a dork, and maybe I can forget about how I tried to pick up on a total stranger at a bar.”

He grinned. “I will possibly owe you forever for that. I’m so much less nervous now.”

I ignored that. “About your glasses . . .”

“Um, crushed by a horse, run over by a train, drowned in the Mediterranean, melted in hot lava, and snapped in half by an elephant.”

My jaw dropped slightly. “Are we talking about your glasses or an Indiana Jones movie?”

He laughed. “Those are all true stories.”

“Wow.” I paused for a moment. “I’m sad your glasses have a more exciting life than I do.”

“Don’t be. The elephant was in a zoo, the horse was at a ward Halloween hayride, and the train was the monorail stop at Seattle Center.”

“Leaving merely the Mediterranean and an active volcano. How lame,” I teased him.

“Okay, those were pretty cool.”

A server appeared at the table to take our drink orders. I stuck with water, but Ben skipped the fountain sodas and ordered a microbrew root beer. “Are you a root beer expert?” I asked.

“No, more like a root beer junkie. My older brother hooked me on it after he brought back this stuff called Old Dominion from his mission in Virginia.”

“And all this time I’ve been thinking A&W was the good stuff,” I said.

“You can’t argue with a classic. Besides, I should confess something.”

“What’s that?”

“I worry that servers who get a nondrinking table are bummed when no one orders alcohol because they think they’re going to get a weak tip. I feel better when I order expensive root beer.”

That made me laugh. “I order appetizers for the same reason.”

“Now there’s a plan.” He reached for his menu and scanned the list of starters. Little did he know he faced Sandy’s first test for dates involving food. Her theory is that guys who don’t like spicy foods are bad kissers. I waited for his selection with interest. “I think the artichoke fritti sounds good,” he said. It came with a spicy aioli. Score.

“Sounds perfect,” I said.

We discussed the rest of the menu options while we waited for the server to come back with the antipasti. Ben settled on the pesto ravioli, and I succumbed to the chicken fettuccine Alfredo. I couldn’t resist a good cream sauce.

Our food arrived quickly, and the last traces of my embarrassment over the identity mix-up evaporated with the clouds of savory steam. Bye-bye hedgehogs, hello hunger pangs. I practically wiggled with happiness with the first bite of Alfredo. Heavenly. I savored it for a minute and then focused on Ben again. “I hope yours is at least half as good as mine,” I said.

“It’s pretty awesome. Great lunch choice.”

“How does it compare to the food in Italy?” I asked. He had listed it as one of the places he had traveled in his profile.

“It kind of depends on which part of Italy we’re talking about. The food in Rome was good, but the food in Florence . . . talk about amazing.”

“I’ve heard that,” I replied. “It’s on my list of places to go. I’m planning a world food tour, where all I do is eat amazing food and shop.”

“I’m with you on the food, but I’m not too big on shopping,” he said.

“It’s good planning. If I spend the whole vacation eating, I’ll have to buy clothes to fit as I grow.”

He gave me an admiring look. “That is a good plan. I hope you never use your talents for evil.”

“No worries. It’s against my religion.”

“Oh, right. Mine too. Hey, can we skip France on the tour? I spent three days in Paris, and I think French food might be overrated.”

“You’re so right. I hear it’s better when you get out of Paris, but when I visited there after high school, we never left the city, and I would have starved without the crepe stands.”

“Tell me about it,” he agreed. “I think . . .” and then he trailed off, staring at my chin.

Uh-oh.

“Um, you have something right here,” he said, pointing to his own chin.

I snatched my napkin and took a swipe at it.

“Did I get it?” I asked, mortified that I even had to.

“No, it’s more on the left,” he clarified with a small wave.

I swiped again, but he immediately shook his head and said, “I meant your other left.” He reached over with his own napkin to help while I wondered if humiliation could literally petrify me. Just then his elbow brushed against the vase on the table and sent it flying off the edge. It crashed to the floor with a cringe-worthy shatter. He froze too. That freed me to move, and I grabbed the napkin from his hand that had been en route to me. I did a full side-to-side swipe of my chin and returned the linen to the table. I made a split-second decision between slinking out and never showing my face in public ever again or rolling with the punches.

“So you lied about being a klutz?” I asked, as our server scurried over to handle the mess.

That startled a laugh from him, and the next half hour disappeared in a blink as we swapped embarrassing moment stories. I didn’t realize how fast it went until the waiter appeared with a dessert menu and I snuck a glance at my watch.

“What do you think? They have great pie,” Ben said.

“I like pie.” More to the point though, I liked spending time with Ben. Unfortunately, my job intruded. “The desserts look awesome,” I answered. “But I have to get back.”

“Oh, right,” he said, looking vaguely disappointed . . . a good sign? “Let me get the check.” He handed the server some bills and sat back while he waited for the change. “I hate to tell you this, but . . .”

My stomach clenched.

“I don’t think you’re going to make it as a TWIT,” he finished.

“I’m crushed,” I said, relieved to know I didn’t have anything clinging to my nose or more food decorating my face.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. You’re kinda normal.”

“It’s a curse.”

“Well, I’m on a twelve-step program to quit clubs anyway. I resign from the TWITs. I have a new plan.”

“Oh, do tell,” I encouraged him.

“I thought I might ask you out again—no clubs involved. What do you think?”

“Hmm.” I pretended to mull it over while doing a victory dance inside. “A chance to get to know the man behind the title. Tempting.”

“I’ve got all kinds of hidden talents you don’t know about yet.”

“Like what?”

“Like dope mime skills.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

“Thank goodness. And I’m not a big fan of clowns either,” I confessed. “Is that un-American?”

“Do you like hot dogs and baseball?” he asked.

“Only if the hot dogs are grilled and the games are live. I can’t watch it on TV.”

“I guess I know what to plan for our next date,” he said.

“There’s no baseball in January,” I protested.

“There is if you want it.”

“This I gotta see.”

“So it’s a date?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I guess it is.”

“Cool. Let’s plan for this weekend. I’ll call you tomorrow, and we’ll firm up the details. Work for you?”

“Work.” Dang. How did I lose track of time again? “I have to go. But yeah, call me tomorrow. We’ll figure it out.” I hurried to grab my handbag and slid out of the booth. Ben jumped up to walk me out. On the sidewalk, I turned and said, “It was nice to meet you.” So lame! I gave him a dorky good-bye wave and set off for the Macro cave before I could try to shake his hand or something equally dumb, trying to hurry so I could outrun my lameness and get back in decent time.

“Hey.”

I turned at his soft call.

“I’m glad you came,” he said with a small smile. Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled off the other way.

I watched for a moment. Nice walk. And then I sped off again toward my office. Time to see what kind of havoc Craig had wreaked in my absence.

Chapter 9

H
E WAS THE
M
ASTER OF
Disaster, for sure. And to give Craig credit, he rallied quickly. I had been gone from the office for fewer than two hours, and he still managed to turn it upside down.

As soon as I walked in, Katie rushed up to me, breathless, her bangs in spiky disarray, and pointed toward my office. “In there, in there!” I shut the door behind her and watched in alarm as she clutched at a fistful of her hair. That explained the bangs. “I’m toast!” she wailed.

Okay, then.

“Calm down,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Craig is going to tell Mr. Court I’ve been stealing office supplies, and I’m going to get fired.”

“Why would he tell Dennis that?”

“Well . . .” she hedged.

“Katie! You didn’t actually steal anything, did you?” I asked, shocked.

“No! But I didn’t fill in the log.”

That didn’t make much more sense. “What log?”

“Craig made everyone fill out a log whenever we took office supplies from the closet during his audit so he could track what we used. It took forever to get a pen, so I skipped it whenever I got stuff. I never stole any of it. It’s all right here in our pod.” I hated that expression for the group of cubicles outside my door. It made me feel like the queen of an alien colony that hatched earnest and underpaid office assistants.

Office assistants who needed defending. Craig had executed an end run around me, threatening me with the loss of an assistant to even the playing field. I considered the options. First, kill Craig. Second, maim and then kill Craig. Third, give him what he wanted.

No way. That would kill
me
.

But I couldn’t let Katie take the fall either. She might not have followed procedure, but she hadn’t organized an epic supply closet heist. This required drastic action. I jerked open my desk drawer and snatched up every pen, paper clip, and thumbtack I could find. “You’re not getting fired, Katie. Tell the rest of the pod to empty every single supply they can find onto your desktop and then get me a yellow legal pad.”

That’s how Craig found us, counting thumbtacks, like squirrels with a bizarre hoard of nuts, when he sauntered over to gloat a half hour later. I’d embarrassed him by showing him up in front of Dennis, and now he intended to undermine me in return. Ha. Good luck, sucker. I counted louder.

“403, 404. There are 404 tacks. Oh, hi, Craig,” I added.

“Well done this morning, Jessie.”

“Thanks.” I moved on to a pile of paperclips. By the ninth one, he twitched with impatience. The fifteenth undid him. He broke.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Counting.”

I could almost hear his teeth grinding.

“Right. And why?”

“We need to verify how many office supplies our team has borrowed from the closet. You supported us in our payroll audit, and now we want to support you.”

Craig was no dummy. He knew our “support” meant bad news for him. “That’s great.” He watched for another minute, trying to figure out my game plan, but he couldn’t make anything of the counting. Mike droned on behind me over a pile of pencils, “Twenty-three, twenty-four . . .”

“So what form is this help going to take?”

“I heard you’re concerned with the numbers from your supply audit. Something about a log book not getting filled out? I felt bad, so I put my whole team on figuring out exactly what we’ve used in the last two months. We’re going to present our findings to Dennis for you, and he can see how much time we invested for you in counting everything. Again. Because we believe in returning favors.”

Katie snorted and tried to hide it with a cough, but Craig’s face darkened. We had him up against a wall, and he knew it. He already looked bad for spending hours on the office supply audit, and this would make him look worse.

“That’s incredible you would do that, Jessie. Incredible,” he said, smiling. “But it turns out that we’ve been able to resolve the log sheet discrepancies. Our office supplies are at normal levels, so I’m sure there’s no need to worry.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I agreed. “Could you send Brad over? We lost some time on this, and I’d love to get caught back up. Might as well start his three days now.”

He clenched his jaw in irritation. “I’ll send him. Happy to do it. I’m sure he’ll only be a time suck though.”

“I’ll risk it. Thanks, Craig.” I watched with satisfaction as he walked away.

Katie turned to me wide-eyed. “Wow, we have 404 thumbtacks?”

“I have no idea. I made it up.”

“Oh man,” Mike said. “I only made up twenty-seven pencils.”

“That’s why I’m the boss,” I said, grinning. I swept my supplies up and headed back toward my own desk. “Pizza’s on Katie next time,” I called over my shoulder. Pizza was the traditional bribe when our team had to stay late.

My ploy had only taken a half hour, but I didn’t have an extra thirty minutes lying around, especially when I looked at the backlog of work on my desk. Even with Craig’s team now helping on the payroll project, it would only get worse. Not only would I have to bust my tail to get it done by the deadline, but I would also have to work harder to make sure we outpaced Craig.

To make sure
I
outpaced Craig, if I were being honest with myself. This wasn’t my team’s fight, although they would follow me wherever I went. Pizza and working beside them had bought me a lot of good will. But they didn’t care about beating Craig. Only I did. It was that hating to be pushed thing. I’d gotten so used to being the best at things that it’d become a bad habit.

I shoved away the stack of papers in front of me in frustration. This wasn’t how I wanted to invest all my energy. Sandy’s lectures on work/life balance occupied an annoying chunk of my mental real estate lately. Maybe she’d made some good points. Okay, she had. I would give Ben more of my time, but I wouldn’t be taking the Sandy Burke approach of throwing myself into a sizzle-then-fizzle romance.

Throwing myself into exploring things with Ben? No way. All or nothing had failed me with Jason, and I had learned from my mistakes. Time to try the middle ground. I’d eaten one lunch with Ben. That didn’t equal a relationship. I had no reason to neglect my job for something that might not pan out. As long as I stayed open to dating, like I promised Sandy, I could find the balance between excelling at work and having a bit of romance on the side.

Right?

I straightened up and grabbed for the papers I’d pushed away. Right. I could do this. Let Ben set the pace, and I would follow. I had work to do.