To turn with and not against
Things my boss said to me without elaborating
Violet got to work early, coffee in hand, and dropped off her purse in her office before going to the break room in search of yogurt.
Walking through the lobby she caught part of Naomi and Addison's conversation as they exited the elevator, but couldn't follow it. Something about Sam and sex – though really, she had sex on the brain lately – but her questions were met with deflection after deflection. Okay, so Naomi and Addison were having a completely different conversation from the one she was having. Fantastic.
Then the boys – she was fairly certain that their recent behavior had downgraded them from men to boys – showed up and she forgot about Sam and Naomi. Cooper didn't even look at her and she felt her heart sink. So it was going to be one of those days. Again.
Tuning back in to the conversation happening next to her but not including her, Violet silently willed Naomi to fill her in. But then Addison was going in search of Pete and Naomi was moving away as well, leaving Violet standing alone at Dell's desk.
Naomi hadn't even responded to her offer to talk, staring right through her instead to reply to Addison. But, why didn't Naomi need her? People always needed her. Usually while she was busy with something else, but still. It was nice to be needed.
Violet went to her office, glancing at Cooper's as she passed, and setting her coffee down hard, so of course it sloshed out onto her patient files. She sat down and put her head in her hands.
Then she raised her head. Her office smelled disgusting.
Personals from Nonpersons
By 10 AM she had seen a patient, organized her date book and checked her email six times. She'd also agreed with Naomi that Sam should look into Dell's grandfather's case some more, but Violet was still feeling entirely useless. Glancing at her planner she absentmindedly marked an X through yesterday's date. Thank god yesterday was over.
She sighed. Needed: One friend. Since all of hers had vanished. Or were avoiding her. Whatever.
Violet tapped her toes against the floor and contemplated twiddling her thumbs. She twirled her hair instead, glancing up whenever anyone walked past her door. Damn it. She really needed a distraction.
She watched people rollerblade outside her window and remembered that she needed to make a dentist appointment soon, and also that she was running low on milk.
Looking up, she saw Addison and Naomi walking through the lobby. She hurried to intercept them, hoping to finally figure out what that morning's conversation had been about. They were discussing their patient though, so she just rolled her eyes and followed them into the break room.
Things that if knowing is half the battle, might be the other half
Cooper had never said anything about a dad's class before. Usually they bounced ideas like that off of one another, working out details and logistics together. Whee. More fun results of avoidance.
Violet clucked at him to stop him from fleeing with the others, though she could tell he wasn't happy about it. And then he lied to her.
She knew Cooper better than she knew anyone, and she could always tell when he was lying to her. She knew the signs – the ducked head, the avoidance of eye contact, the completely unconvincing lie.
So he hadn't crashed early. Okay. She didn't care that he had avoided her call – she cared that he lied about it. Also, she cared that he avoided her call. But still, the lying, that was the salient point here. She and Cooper didn't lie to each other. They told each other everything. Or at least they used to.
This day sucked. They were out of honey and her best friend hated her and her other friends were busy with work and also personal problems that they kept forgetting to enlighten her about.
She stormed back to her office in a huff and the fact that no one stopped to ask what was wrong only made her angrier.
Zen parable or just someone being cruel?
Her two o'clock canceled, leaving a light day almost entirely empty. Violet walked into the hallway, looking for some form of entertainment. Her earlier annoyance had mostly drained away, leaving only a pervasive sense of melancholy. She needed a distraction.
Maybe Addison and Naomi could use a consult for their fertility patient? She passed rows of empty offices though, and then empty exam rooms.
The practice was deserted. It was disconcerting. Well, except for the horde of dads playing with dolls in the conference room, but Cooper had made it clear she was unwelcome there. She glanced in as she walked by, catching Pete's eye and offering a half-smile. Cooper was still doing a great job of pretending that she didn't exist.
Her office still smelled like something had died there, so she wasn't keen on retreating to it. Plus, it was boring. She required stimulation. Mostly she required that Naomi let her in on what the hell was going on with her and Sam, and that Cooper decide to be friends with her again. Cooper was always good for a little entertainment.
Violet wandered the empty halls purposelessly, wondering where everyone was. Without Dell to answer it the phone just rang and rang, and the floor seemed to echo beneath her feet. She toyed with a string on the hem of her blouse idly as she walked, watching her reflection in the glass walls of the office, the angle creating an army of bored, lonely Violets.
Finally she said fuck it, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach, sweater wrapped around herself and eyes squinted against the wind. Bikers and the occasional intrepid surfer in a winter wetsuit flowed around her but she didn't see them. She saw Cooper's face, telling her that he wouldn't sleep with her; she saw Naomi looking straight through her. She hugged her sweater a little tighter around herself.
Two things that aren't covered by your friends with benefits
Violet walked in to work the next morning determined that today would be better than yesterday. Because yesterday … was not a day she was anxious to repeat.
A glance at her schedule though showed an almost empty day. What, had everyone in L.A. suddenly decided that shrinks were passé? She needed some melodrama, people! She needed trophy wives bemoaning their pampered existences and people shoving unlikely items into innocent orifices. She needed some crazy, because right now it was all coming from her and it sucked.
But no patients meant no distraction and no distraction meant that her thoughts returned, as usual, to thoughts of Cooper.
This … wasn't supposed to happen. Cooper was supposed to be happy and grateful to sleep with her, and the sex was supposed to be fun and emotion free. He wasn't supposed to stare at her naked body and then decide that it couldn't mean nothing. Whatever the hell that meant.
And as if that hadn't been awful enough, now she got avoidance on top of it. Perfect.
For once, just once, why couldn't something turn out the way it was planned?
Things that Pandora could have opened that wouldn't have produced such unpleasant results
In a fair imitation of yesterday she walked the hallway, gazing at the empty offices of her colleagues.
On her eighth circuit she saw dads waiting for the elevator and Cooper talking to Charlotte King in the conference room. Great. He wouldn't talk to her, his supposed best friend, but he would talk to Charlotte King. Though it looked like Charlotte was angry, so that was something, at least. Someone else should join her in suffering.
Any other time and she would have eagerly anticipated the upcoming rant Cooper was sure to deliver – Cooper intensely disliked Charlotte, as they all did – but now all that waited in her office was silence and stale air.
Resolutely, she started lap number nine.
State mottos for the severely depressed
Why was Cooper being such a weirdo? She was the one who was humiliated, who was rejected by someone who slept with people named DoMe536. She should get to be the weirdo. But no. Cooper had that market cornered, apparently, so here she was trying to be friends and failing.
She wandered to Naomi's office to see if she was around, because Violet really needed someone to mope at. But her office was empty and Dell distractedly said he had no idea where she was as he and Sam walked quickly toward the elevator.
Violet felt like screaming in frustration. She didn't, though, because respected psychiatrists did not scream for no reason in the middle of the office. They just didn't.
Lifetime television movies of the future
By lap fifteen her feet were starting to hurt so she returned to her office and flopped down on her couch.
This was so pathetic. She had to get Cooper to stop avoiding her before she went crazy from boredom and loneliness. It was also possible that she needed to make some friends outside of work.
Her mind was racing around in circles, never getting anywhere. Cooper was avoiding her, and had been since their talk two nights ago. She was trying to get over it. Cooper was avoiding her. Since the talk, which was not about the sex but sort of was still about the sex. Her brain screeched to a halt.
Cooper was upset about the sex. Okay, problem isolated, she could solve it now.
Solve the problem. Solve the problem. Cooper was upset about the sex. The sex which was her idea. Her horribly misguided, idiotic idea. Well, it seemed fairly clear that an apology was needed here. She could do that. If it meant getting Cooper back she could definitely do that.
His hand on her back when he pushed her into his office was warm.
It was hard for her to apologize. She and Cooper usually didn't; didn't usually fight, actually. But they tended to show their regret in small gestures, rather than words.
She felt a little twinge, when he confirmed that it was the sex, like maybe he was lying to her again, but she ignored it. He had been making eye contact, at least mostly.
Okay. They were good. This was good. Violet practically bounced out of his office.
Rarely used parenthetical statements
She smiled all the way back to her office, happy that things could finally go back to normal. Or what passed for normal around here, at least.
Checking her email for the twelfth time that day, Violet noted that her schedule for tomorrow was at least half full. That was very good news for her sanity.
After dropping by Naomi's office one last time – it was still empty – she gathered her things. Maybe Cooper wanted to hang out? She hated that she had to think maybe. Usually there was no maybe.
But she tamped down the regret, because they were good now. Things would be better now.
Twist Endings
Cooper had plans and they didn't involve her. Okay, that was fine, she would just go home and heat something up for dinner and watch TV – her brain screeched to a halt again. Cooper had plans? Who the hell with? And then she realized.
His yelp of denial confirmed it.
She was happy for him. She was. Happy. For him and his girlfriend. His girlfriend who he undoubtedly met on the Internet, and who would probably steal his computer. Happy.
Cooper was being a grown up. Okay. She could deal with that. She often told him that he needed to grow up – he was just taking her advice.
But she was being shrill and his voice was about four octaves higher than usual and her brain was screaming that this was not good; this was not good.
She was smiling her fake smile, but she knew Cooper was too disinterested to notice. She could see it in the line of his shoulder, in the flick of his eyes away from hers. He was far away, leaving her here alone.
Their hip bump as he left sent a rush of warmth through her, but it soon faded. She watched him go, watched his pace increase as he neared the elevator, obviously eager to get home. As the elevator doors closed on him she turned and walked away. Time to take the stairs.
The seven stages of drunk
Violet opened a bottle of wine when she got home because, she reasoned, she deserved it. Wine wasn't enough, after a while though, so she moved on to whiskey, trying to blur the images filling her mind – Cooper with his new girlfriend, making love, going on picnics, getting married. She didn't want those images.
But no, they were good. Good. She'd said that words so many times today that it didn't even sound like a word anymore. Good. Good to be adults, to move on, to be happy.
Anyway, this stupid girl and Cooper wouldn't last. Cooper was incapable of making things last – even with normal women, which she highly doubted that his new Internet girlfriend was. But Cooper needed a normal woman. Someone to call him on his bullshit and console him when he had a hard day.
She and Cooper. They were a team. They were a pair. He was who she called when she needed fried food and comfort movies, and she was who he called when Internet hookers stole his car. She didn't know how to be anything other than that. Than Cooper's other half. So he needed to not be going home to Internet women, he needed to come over with pizza and movies and they could mock romantic comedies in their own version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. They could talk about patients and their coworkers and everything else, and it would be good. It would be better than good.
And no, it looked like they couldn't do the friends with benefits thing. But from this side of the line, friends seemed just fine to her.
Violet took another sip of whiskey, felt the burn as it slid its way down her throat, duller now. Good.