Page 2 of Crossing the Brooklyn Briggs
“Mark just came into my room.”
Her scream is almost as loud as mine was. “What? When? Just now? Tell meeverything.”
We spend the next ten minutes hashing out every detail of my pitiful conversation with Mark, from his words to his intonation to his body language (which, coincidentally, I amterribleat reading). Jaydin is good at peopling, unlike me, but I’m pretty sure she’s struggling to find the positives in my interaction.
“Maybe he was just as nervous as you were,” Jay says with a shrug.
“Ha! I don’t think Mark DeNiro knows what nervous is,” I grumble. “There’s no way he would ever be intimidated by me.” Which is why he’s going to get the final nomination and I’m never going to get the chance to get back into research like I want to.
“He doesn’t have to be intimidated to be nervous. Maybe he was scared because he’s really into you!”
I love that she’s trying, but Mark is always dating someone. If he was interested in me, he wouldn’t be out dating everyoneexceptme. Our school doesn’t have any policies against coworkers dating, so the only reason he would have to not ask me out is because he is decidedlynotinterested.
As if she can read my thoughts, Jay shakes her head and points to my phone. “Look up his social,” she says. “See the last time he posted a picture with a hottie.”
Though I really don’t like that she calls all of Mark’s girlfriendshotties—I’m sure they have lovely names and personalities—I do as she suggests and pull up the app that I pretty much only keep for the purpose of stalking my coworker. I type in his name in the search bar and wait for it to pull up the all-too-familiar photos, but instead it shows my own feed with his name front and center.
“Cookies and cream!” I curse, fumbling to delete my post before anyone— “How does it already have three likes?”
Jay takes my phone from me with a roll of her eyes and taps away, hopefully saving me from complete humiliation. I wish I could say that wasn’t the first time I confused the post box for the search bar. “How does someone so smart have such a hard time with technology?” she mumbles. Then her eyes go wide. “Brook, he’ssingle.”
“What?” I snatch my phone back and stare at the post that he put up only a couple of days ago.
Soloing once again. Let’s hope life brings new opportunities.
“That doesn’t mean he’s single,” I say, even if my heart has latched on to the idea.
Jay levels me with a look that even I can interpret. She’s spent the last few years listening to me pine over this man, and she can’t believe I’m not jumping at this rare chance when Mark is the kind of guy who has his next fling lined up right after he ends the current one. “Brooklyn Briggs, what else could that possibly mean? It’s not like he sings at clubs on the weekends and just lost his duet partner.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We really do. We would have heard about it. This man is nothing if not co…proud…of himself.”
I know that isn’t what she originally wanted to say, but I appreciate her attempt at being nice. She doesn’t understand what I see in Mark, but she hasn’t been watching him as closely as I have. (For the record, no one should do what I’ve done. I’m borderline stalkerish at this point. I’m not proud of it.) She doesn’t see his subtly good qualities, like the way he wishes his students good morning as they come into class or the smiles he gets whenever he tells the other math teacher that his kids aced their tests.
“Okay, let’s say, for the sake of argument, Mark is single.” Jay straightens her glasses as she fixes her gaze on me. “Let’s say he came into your classroom today because he’s interested in you and wants to ask you out but is a bit nervous. What are you going to do about it?”
What am I going to do about it? That answer is easy. “Absolutely nothing.”
She blinks, caught off guard by that response. “What?”
I stand by what I said, even if it makes me look pathetic. “I couldn’t even talk to him, Jay. How am I supposed to do anything beyond that? I’m awful when it comes to dating and guys and things.”
“So you say,” she mutters.
“It’s true!”
“You look like a Disney princess, Brook, and you’ve got a brain to rival Neil deGrasse Tyson. If you can’t get a guy, what hope do the rest of us have?”
She’s used that argument before, and I’ve learned not to refute her claims. (For the record, I am not that smart.) But I’m not like my brother, Houston, who has overflowing confidence, or my half-sister, Micah, who sees the world through the prettiest rose-colored glasses. I spend my days trying to look cool in front of teenagers who think I’m ancient, and then I go home to my empty basement apartment and grade tests and lab procedures. Men aren’t exactly dropping out of the sky to talk to me.
Jay grabs my hand. “Don’t sabotage something that hasn’t even happened yet. Pretend this is a game of chess. He’s made his move, and now it’s your turn. It doesn’t have to be anything big; you’re just starting the game.”
Okay, chess is something I do understand. “What if I make a mistake and do something like a fool’s mate?”
“I have no idea what that is, Brook.” She shrugs. “Just…if you like the guy, take your chance while you’ve got it. This isn’t rocket science.”
“Unfortunately.”
