Page 16 of It's Complicated

Ah! Not gonna have a problem with that.“You’re my goddess, and I worship at your altar. Got it.”

“Great.” Lori smiles, then as if we hadn’t been discussing me pretending to be in love with her for the near future, she asks, “You want another Coke?”

“Sure.”

She stands up and opens the fridge. “Shoot, I’m out. I’ll grab one from the basement.”

While she’s gone, one cat, the tabby silver one, stretches a paw over the table, enormous eyes boring into me.

“Okay, but be quick.” I pick four slivers of pork and give each of the cats one.

By the time Lori comes back, they’ve finished the contraband meat and are sitting straight-backed in their chairs again.

Lori drops the Cokes on the table and freezes. “Did you give the cats food?”

“Just a little pork,” I confess. “They looked so hungry and it seemed mean to eat a full meal in front of them.”

Lori laughs at this. “Oh, poor baby, they’d just had a double serving of their favorite dinner.” She caresses my cheek. “They tricked you. What did they do? Purr? Gave you the puss-in-boots eyes?”

I glare.

“You’re cute,” Lori teases.

“And you’re a gigantic pain in my—”

“Language, Dr. Barlow.” She gestures at the cats. “Not in front of the kids.”

Lori never calls me Dr. Barlow, and it’s a good thing because the words send a shiver down my spine.

“You think you’re so funny,” I say, opening my Coke.

“I’m pretty hilarious, actually.” She opens her can, too, and takes a sip.

Whatever comment I was about to make dies on my lips as I get distracted by the movement of her throat as she swallows.

The skin of her neck is so smooth, so… bitable.

Lori takes another sip and smirks. “What’s up, Jacey Pooh? The cat got your tongue?” She winks.

I throw my napkin on the table. “Well, thanks for dinner and for trapping me in a fake relationship, I’m gonna go home now.”

Lori stands, too. “No need to be such a sourpuss.”

“Make another cat joke and I’m out.”

“Of the house or the fake relationship?”

“Both.”

Lori comes over to me and hugs me. “You’d never do that to me, you’re too good a friend.”

No, I’m a patented idiot, that’s what I am.

By a stroke of luck, I manage to avoid seeing both Lori and Aiden all of Friday. Quite an accomplishment, considering we share a lobby, a secretary, a nurse, and a lab. But then I make the rookie mistake of wanting to leave work at the end of the day and bump into both of them at the same time, with the awkward additionof Aiden’s fiancée, Kirsten. In a freakish coincidence, we all get out of our offices at the same moment. Except for us, the lobby is empty, as it always is at 6p.m. on a Friday.

Aiden’s office is the middle one while Lori and I are at the extremities. For an awkward moment, we all stand still. The green pastel walls Lori insisted on having to make the ambience more welcoming are the only witnesses to the uncomfortable silence. The situation becomes even more embarrassing when Lori blushes and, eyes on the floor, crosses the space to come by my side and clumsily hold my hand.

Aiden pouts while Kirsten’s eyes fly wide open.

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