Page 68 of One on One
Be still my heart.
“I’m heading upstairs,” he tells me.
“You have fifteen more minutes to party,” I tease. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long.
“Come say goodbye before you leave,” he says, giving me an extremely unprofessional look, and strides off.
The party stretches on long after the team goes upstairs. Everyone is excited and loose and silly. The people with the checkbooks like to hang, drinking serviceable wine from the ticket booth masquerading as a bar. I sit at a table with Cassie and Taylor and Jess, and other people who come and go. Williams’s wife wanders by, tipsy, and tells a story about the time her husband caught their oldest son sneaking out of the house. She has me in tears.
“And to top it all off,” she says, gesticulating with one hand, “since he climbed out the window, every time we dropped him off or picked him up somewhere for the next month, Travis made him use the car window to get in and out. Even when his friends were watching!”
This is a perfect night, the kind you miss before it’s over. There’s a lot to take in. I’m brimming with it all, like a plant gorged on sunlight: elation and relief and an unexpected sentimentality. I’ve had nights like this before. I’ve had nights like this before in this building. But those are wrecked in my mind and this one is solid and warm, like bread tucked fresh into a crisp paper bag.
I made an assumption when I came back here. I convinced myself this job was going to be as shitty as any other, and three years here would be like a punishment. That I didn’t lose anything valuable by leaving here the first time.
But it’s not as shitty as every other job. The institution ofArdwyn University, my employer—I’m indifferent about that, after everything I went through. But the work, and the people? They don’t suck at all. In fact, they’re great.
I’ve spent the last eight years steadfastly choosing jobs that did suck over this. I lost eight good years by leaving. Maynard took them from me.
I don’t know what to do with this realization. I’d like to say Dad would have the perfect advice if he were here, but it’s not true. This was the one subject area where he struggled to understand what I needed. He tried, but he couldn’t comprehend why I didn’t lick my wounds and bounce back stronger, like a player after an injury. “Try again somewhere else,” he urged me for years. “Don’t let your talent go to waste.” I felt like a failure for not being strong enough. I think he felt like a failure for not protecting me, for introducing me to this industry, for not knowing Maynard’s true nature despite being well-connected. Eventually, we stopped talking about it.
Tonight isn’t for reflecting on painful things, though. Tonight is for celebrating.
Eventually people say their goodbyes, and the few conversations still going rattle in the big empty room. Cassie slips away to head home, but the rest of the group decides to head to a bar. I run upstairs to leave Ben a note telling him I’m gone. I could text him, but I want to include a drawing of Williams in the driver’s seat while his son’s legs hang out the car window.
It must be later than I thought, because Ben is back at his desk, not at the team meeting. He’s in deep concentration, working his bottom lip between his teeth. I wait a moment—yup, there goes the tongue, sticking out of the corner of his mouth. An internal pom-pom shakes in my stomach.
“Hey,” I say breathlessly, hanging onto either side of the doorframe and leaning into the room.
“Hey,” he repeats. “Are you drunk?”
“What? No. Why?”
He shakes his head. “You just look really happy.”
I am really happy. Being here makes me happy. Being with you makes me happy.
“Tell me about the meeting,” I say.
He’s almost vibrating as it spills out of him: his analysis so far and the strategies they’re putting together. The defensive matchups, the other team’s playing style. He’s completely unself-conscious as he rambles on. His hair is everywhere, one piece arcing over his forehead, and his face shines.
“Everything we’ve worked for is happening,” he says. “Tonight is a good night.”
It’s how I feel too. And the longer I stand here, the fainter my plan of going to the bar with Taylor and Jess becomes in my mind. And what replaces it is this thought: The kissing is not enough.
It can’t hurt, to celebrate together. We deserve this. At most, there are three weeks left. And there’s his mouth, and his hair, and the way he looked at me earlier. The sweat in the hollow of his throat after his pickup game. That first kiss. I’m harboring so much tonight, everything I’ve absorbed, and I want to turn it outward. Toward him.
I pull my keys out of my bag. “Are you almost done working?”
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing left. I can’t look at a screen anymore. I was going to see if you wanted me to walk you to your car. You heading out now?”
I fidget with the metal in my hand, prying the metal loopsof the key ring open with the tip of my thumbnail. “Yeah, I’m ready to go,” I say. “Come home with me.”
We exchange looks, asking questions and answering them wordlessly. His eyes do this hot hypnotic thing that grabs me by the solar plexus. And then he practically hurdles the desk, grabs my hand, and pulls me down the hall.
TWENTY-ONE
At my apartment, I pacefrom room to room, trying to burn off the restless churning sensation in my stomach. I move my night guard from the bedside table to a bathroom drawer and stuff the explosion of dirty clothes back into my half-unpacked suitcase. I debate lighting a candle and decide against it. It’s what I would ordinarily do when I get home, but he doesn’t know that. He’ll think I’m trying to set some type of mood, and I’m definitely not.
