Chapter Two
Working as an intern was a strange existence. She was there to give up free labor in return for the knowledge she garnered from around the office. However, she never had time to learn anything that would change her whole perspective on the media business and help her grow into the unstoppable reporter she one day hoped to become. She was too busy fetching coffee, making copies, and answering phones for men and woman seated directly in front of the ringing telephone. She was the lowest of the low on the totem pole of the business world; she wasn't even qualified to be here yet.
"Rory!"
She was in mid-bend when her name was suddenly called out. The unexpected voice spooked her, causing the arm full of papers she had picked up to slip right out of her grasp as she jumped into an upright position. With a helpless look, she watched the papers hit the ground, scattering around her feet. They had been in an order, she reminded herself. An order that she didn't know.
"That's… bad," the voice behind her remarked.
"Thank you for the assessment, Rob," Rory replied icily.
She bent down to grab the papers, conscious of the eyes glued to her backside. After only three days of working here, Rory had dubbed Rob the King of all Jackasses. His favorite pastime was to push her buttons by assigning her the most mundane tasks before criticizing her lack of skill. She pegged his behavior as immaturity, his playground tactic of flirting with her. But she refused to show signs of weakness or irritation. No matter what, she was ecstatic that she was working at The New York Observer, and nothing was going to deter her happiness. Besides, she didn't even have that much time left.
"Let me help you with that," Rob said, kneeling down beside her. Her mouth dropped open in surprise but he was too busy gathering the paperwork to notice. As he handed her the pile, his fingers brushed hers, but he expressed neither a smile nor lewd remark. It was almost a pleasant interaction.
She stood up with him following suit. "Thanks," she mumbled, puzzled by his actions.
"Yeah, well, my fault."
She blinked at him, stunned at his readiness to admit error. Rob was the type of guy who was right all the time. The fact that he was the boss's son added to his indisputable frame of mind. The only reason he even had this job at this green age of twenty-five was thanks to his father.
"Going to send those out?" he asked.
"I am."
"Great, I'm headed down too."
He led the walk to the elevator, and she fell in step behind him, head down. Every few seconds, she glanced over the top of her papers to eye his shoes and make sure she wasn't going to hit anyone, but for the most part, she was trying to decipher the hidden order that this paperwork was supposed to be in. She had collected it from Cathy, a girl who could never find the pen she had stuck behind her ear, but always kept her files in a precise order. An order that very few understood.
Rob came to an abrupt halt in front of the elevator, causing Rory to crash into him from behind. Embarrassed, she quickly sidestepped him and took her place at his right. She was beet red as he studied her. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, mentally begging one of the doors to open.
"Is there something I could help you with?" Rob asked with a hint of childish amusement. Bastard.
"I can't figure out how to get these papers back in order," she reluctantly admitted, showing him the pile.
He wagged his finger at her disapprovingly. "Come on, Rory. Numerical order is quite important in the newspaper business. The media business in general, really. Actually, I'm almost positive proper counting skills are needed for any basic job."
She bit her tongue before she said something that would cause her immediate dismissal. "They belong to Cathy."
"Oh." He paused. "You do have to share her enlightened understanding of the world before you see things the way she does." He held out a hand. "Here, let me see."
He began to reorganize the stack for her, continuing the job even as they stepped onto the elevator. He was so consumed with it that for a couple of seconds, the ride was entirely silent. For that, Rory was supremely grateful.
"So, do you have an elevator list?" he unexpectedly asked, shoving the papers back into her arms.
Rory looked up at him. "Excuse me?"
"You know." He grinned. "An elevator list. A list of people you'd have guilt free sex with in an elevator if it ever became stuck?"
Her jaw dropped. "What kind of question is that?"
"A creative one."
"A borderline sexual harassment one," Rory shot back. She liked to think that in the years since her high school career she had grown bolder, even unapologetically blunt when she had to be. She was still fairly shy, but she could stand up for herself.
Rob slinked closer to her; she took an unconscious step back. "You think I'm hitting on you?"
Uh, yeah she thought he was hitting on her. Not only did she refuse to flirt with him, but she also avoided smiling lest she become the star of his wet dreams. "I think you treat me differently than any other intern here."
"Rory, I do not play favoritism."
"Trust me, I wasn't trying to nail you for that."
"Nail me?"
She tightened her grip on the paperwork, mashing them against her chest. "Would you please stop?"
The elevator opened on the ground floor, marking the end of her irritated question. She was about to give Rob a haughty goodbye so she could go off and do her job, when she was brought up short by the sight of the person waiting to board the elevator.
Jess sauntered on with a smug expression on his face. The look provoked violent urges within her, but somehow, she restrained herself.
"Going up," Jess announced.
"Getting off," Rob returned. He stepped off, putting out a hand to hold the doors. "Rory?" he asked.
"She's going up too," Jess replied for her.
Rob cocked his head to the side. "Excuse me?"
"Up," Jess repeated. "Now if you could just take a step back…"
Dumbly, Rob moved backwards and without another word, the doors shut.
"Are you stalking me?" Jess immediately asked, spinning around to look at her.
"Stalking you!" The air seemed too thin now with Jess standing too close and Rob's aftershave lingering behind. She jerked a hand through her hair, roughly pulling it behind her ears as she tried to curb her urge to flee. But she had nowhere to go. "I'm not the one who suddenly showed up at your place of work."
He shook his head. "You were at Myers yesterday, right? Asking cashiers and the manager when I worked. You were trying to get my hours so you could 'casually' bump into me."
"I was not!" She shifted her paperwork to her other hand; the weight had become too much. "I just wanted to know when you worked so maybe we could do that 'awkward, heart-wrenching reunion thing' you sounded so excited about."
"I didn't come here to start a fight with you."
"No, you came here to accuse me of stalking you." She sighed, turned and hit a button on the panel. They hadn't been moving for the past minute. "How did you even know I worked here? At least I accidentally ran into you."
"You were wearing your badge," he pointed out, tugging on the lamented picture ID that hung from her shirt pocket.
"You looked?"
"It was staring me in the face."
"You looked and you memorized the name, so you could come here." He had wanted to find her again, just in case. He had wanted to talk to her like she had wanted to speak to him. She wondered if he had reasons for it, had a conversation lined up. Or maybe he was as lost as she was.
"I was curious," he defended himself. He paused, and then said, "You didn't graduate yet."
"School?" she asked, startled by the swift change in subject. "No, I'm going into my last year. I'm an intern," she explained. "I'm gathering valuable real world knowledge."
"Huh. And how's that going?"
By this point, she was frowning, wanting to distance herself from him in this impossibly small place. "Can we not do this?"
"Do what? I asked you a question," Jess said.
She didn't understand how he could do this; wipe away the past few years so effortlessly. "Can we not pretend to have a normal conversation?"
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened, giving Rory her necessary escape route.
"I have work," she said, mustering up her most flippant tone.
"Rory, could you not…" He followed her into the office and was immediately met with a burst of activity. Dozens of voices overlapped one another as reports were discussed and phones were answered. A synchronized team of printers went off nearby as more and more people appeared from all sides of the room. Jess dodged a mail cart and nearly ran into a woman blinded by a stack of paperwork. He took a quick step toward Rory, overwhelmed by the concentrated mass of chaos in such a small place. The only thing that unnerved him more was that Rory didn't even flinch. She was at home here.
Before he could wander too far in, Rory whipped around and began to walk him back toward the elevator. "You can't be here right now." Her eyes were clearly on his casual jeans and The Clash t-shirt. It was obvious he was out of place.
She backed him up until he hit the now closed elevator doors. Blindly, she swiped at the button until she finally pressed one. The doors opened, but Jess refused to budge.
"Come on, Jess, you'll get me in trouble." She glanced over at her shoulder, anxiously searching for any onlookers.
He grabbed her wrist. "I just want to know now why you came looking for me."
"I don't…" She trailed off, unable to formulate an actual answer to give him. She didn't even know herself why she had gone back to find him. There had been this feeling, this need to see him, talk to him. "I don't know." She shrugged and looked away, her eyes sweeping across her feet, her paperwork, and the water cooler that sat directly to her left. His thumb was still on her pulse.
"That's not good enough."
"Too bad." She put a hand on his chest, and gave him a gentle push backwards. It was strange, touching him again after so long. His body heat left a tingly impression on the palm of her hand.
He took a step back into the confines of the elevator and pressed the number for the ground floor.
"It's okay that you did," he told her just as the doors closed between them, dropping him back out of her life.
>
In comparison to yesterday evening, she was much calmer. More than anything, she felt sullen and maybe even a small, tiny bit sad. Jess's visit had left her confused and stressed, and he had only been there a total of five minutes.
To counteract the quickly spreading uneasiness, Rory dug out a spoon and once again turned to her ice cream. As she began to weave through the meager contents of the freezer, she did her best to ignore the wallowing theme that accompanied her snack.
After a thorough search, she came up with nothing. Confused, she repeated her hunt and yet again was disappointed. With an irritated sigh, she pulled out the garbage can kept beneath the sink, and sure enough, at the very top of the pile was her empty carton. She wasn't sure what infuriated her more: the fact that it had been eaten, or the fact that her roommate hadn't even tried to hide it. Amelia had left evidence in the most obvious place!
"You promised you wouldn't!" Rory called out, shoving the garbage back in. She slammed the cabinet door shut, and turned to find her roommate standing in the entrance to the kitchen, a look of perplexity on her face.
"What'd I do now?" Amelia groaned, miles past fed up with Rory's anal behavior.
"You ate my ice cream."
"You do realize that you sound like you're five, right?"
"It was mine!"
Amelia leaned forward to rest her elbows on the counter, as if this was a casual conversation. "Okay, now I'd say four. You're regressing, Rory."
"I just wish you would stop using and eating my stuff! You've done this since the beginning of the summer. My make-up, my clothes, my laptop…"
"And your ice cream. My God, the world is surely ending."
Rory had to restrain herself from lunging across the counter. Her only comfort was the multitude of vengeful scenes that began to play out in her head. The past couple of weeks had been so busy and overwhelming, the last thing she needed was a petulant roommate. But that was what she kept getting!
"Look, Brian got a little hungry, and…" Amelia shrugged as if it had been completely out of her hands.
"A little? That man is like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. If you're not careful, he's going to eat you."
The side of Amelia's mouth twitched as her eyebrows shot up behind the cover of her bangs. Rory immediately winced in disgust.
"I did not mean it like that."
"Well, it was all a matter of wording…"
"You're gross."
"And you're such a prude!" Amelia exclaimed.
"I am not. We simply have different standards of decency."
"No, I know what this is about. Built-up sexual frustration." Amelia nodded knowingly as she settled on the couch. "You're upset because you haven't gotten any all summer! Wait, you haven't since… what was his name? Logan? No, he was the one before…"
"Could you refrain from discussing my love life while I'm standing right here? I'm not even sure how you know all this."
"Andrew! That was his name," Amelia continued as if Rory wasn't even there. "Logan came before him, and then… well…" Amelia trailed off, surprisingly showing an ounce of discomfort. This was the girl who had been known to have phone sex within Rory's earshot; discomfort was not part of her programming.
"What?" Rory asked.
"There was this rumor that you and this… married guy…"
Rory's eyes widened. Over two years later, and she was still being reminded of it. A wave of heat crept over her back, leaving her sweltering within her work suit. She was certain Amelia could see the red in her face; a shade of embarrassment and regret.
"I've done some pretty wild stuff but I never… with a married guy?"
"How long have you been waiting to ask me about this?" Rory asked with unmasked disgust.
"Just tell me…" Amelia bit her lip, leaning over the arm of the couch. "Did he take off the ring?"
And with that final question, Rory turned, grabbed her keys and left the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
>
Her face was still flushed despite the cool evening she had stepped into. She didn't notice the weather or her surroundings, as her mind narrowed to the singular event of her first time two years ago. Reflecting back on it now, she could easily name a hundred things that were wrong with that night. She could cite reasons and misconceptions and erroneous beliefs; she could recall exactly how hard she fell.
As she made her way through a crowded corner, she finally noticed where she was unconsciously heading. The realization was enough to purge her mind of all its unpleasantries. Instead, she could only concentrate on how ridiculous she was acting.
It was her third time at Myers in two days. She would be their top customer if she ever purchased anything.
She made a move to go inside then promptly turned toward home. She spun around again, took two steps forward, a step back, and froze. The spastic polka, she remembered her mother saying.
Forget this. She would no longer demean herself by hopping back and forth between the entrance to a grocery story and the sidewalk outside. She didn't have to go home just because she couldn't make up her mind about what in the world she was doing, thinking, or feeling; she could simply wander around the city. There were plenty of places to go, and she bet all of them were more fascinating than a crummy shop.
Before she made it a full yard away from the store, she spun around with a fierce determination and stormed over to the front entrance. She barely managed to sidestep the person coming out, and instead slammed her right shoulder into the door.
This was a sign.
"Wow. I did not see you," the man remarked as Rory rubbed her sore spot.
"No one ever does," she mumbled.
She took a step to the right so she could go around him, but unfortunately, he simultaneously mirrored her movement. She tried to go the other way; he did too. Both paused and regrouped. She was about to try to go to the left again when she noticed the nametag hanging haphazardly off his t-shirt.
"Eric," she read.
"Yeah."
With this new bit of information, she took a better look at him, noting his blue eyes and blond hair.
"Eric," she repeated.
"Yeah," he replied. Again. This time with a hint of frustration. Ten-hour shifts left him irritated and exhausted; he only wanted to get out of here.
"Is there another Eric that works with you?"
"No, I'm the only one."
"No dark haired Italian boy?" she queried. "Your manager thinks there are two of you."
He rubbed the bridge of her nose, irritated with her continual questioning. "Wait." He pointed at her, letting the pieces fall together. "You're the leggy brunette who came looking for me."
"Pardon?" She stumbled over the word, mentally preoccupied with the term 'leggy', before remembering what she wanted to say. "I wasn't looking for you."
His frustration lessened as he realized there was a point to conversation. "You were looking for Jess."
Finally, fortune had smiled upon her! "You know Jess?"
"I'm a friend of his," Eric explained. "You're trying to get in contact with him?"
"Yeah."
"Give me your number and I'll have him call you."
"Give you my number?" she echoed.
"Don't give me that suspicious look. I'll have you know brunettes aren't my type. I prefer redheads; they're friskier."
Rory gave him her strangest look, wondering why people were always ready to offer up more information than needed. At least that flaw had often helped her when she was writing for the newspaper at school. "O-kay."
"I know Jess, I promise. He will get your number."
When Rory still looked tentative (most likely caused by the illicit redhead comment), Eric offered up, "Mariano, right? Skinny as a chick… not much taller than one? Doesn't talk much and when he does, it's to insult you?"
With that, Rory accepted the pen and crumpled receipt from Eric and neatly printed her phone number. After he left, she found herself oddly calmed, and decided to head down the street back to her apartment.
>
Later that night, the phone rang, distracting Amelia from her current mind-numbing task of watching TV. She glanced over at the coffee table from her recumbent position on the couch. She had absolutely no interest in sitting up and answering the call, but it seemed that she would have no choice. There was no answering machine, and Rory was still in the shower.
With a heavy sigh to express her great sacrifice, she got up and grabbed the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi."
"Who is this?" she asked.
"Who's this?"
She frowned. "Amelia."
There was a pause. "As in Bedelia?"
"Nice one, asshole."
She hung up and threw the phone at the opposite end of the couch. It barely skimmed the armrest before taking a nosedive. Amelia grimaced as it collided with the hardwood floor. She cursed Rory's refusal to buy an area rug.
Catlike, she crawled across the couch and peeked over the side. She was reaching toward the phone to check how badly it was damaged when it rang again. She swore in surprise.
"What?" she snapped, bringing the phone to her ear.
"I probably shouldn't have insulted you within the first ten seconds of conversation. I should have given you a minute, at least."
"I'm counting to five and then I'm hanging up."
"Is Rory there?"
"Who is this? FYI, your answer will predict the outcome of this conversation."
"This is Jess."
"I don't know any Jess."
"That's because I'm not calling for you," he said reasonably. "Is Rory there?"
"Hold on."
Amelia jumped up and knocked on the bathroom door. Rory answered clad only in a towel; her hair was sopping wet.
"There's a jackass on the phone for you," Amelia calmly explained. "He also goes by the name of Jess."
Rory blushed as if by some miracle Jess could see her through the phone. She pulled the towel tighter around her before grabbing the phone from her roommate and shutting the door in her face. Sitting on the closed toilet seat, she took a deep breath.
"Hello?"
"Your roommate is unstable."
"I'm aware."
"You gave Eric your number."
"No, I gave Eric my number for you. Apparently, I'm not his type."
"So you're not going to deny your attempt to contact me this time," he stated. "Huh."
"No, I'm not. I even hunted Eric down. First I found him, then I ran after him down the street. He tried to ditch me once or twice by darting through an alley, but – " She stopped. "You called."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Why did you leave your number?"
She stubbornly stayed quiet; he followed her lead.
After the silence went on too long, she said, "Jess?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm kind of sitting in a towel in my bathroom. I need to go…" She trailed off.
"Oh, yeah."
He cleared his throat, and she thought he sounded just a bit uncomfortable. She tried to picture him squirming. The only image that surfaced was a younger version of him, back in the diner; crazy hair, jaded eyes, and a familiar mischievous glint. In her mind's eye, he smirked at her, and she had to wonder, was that still him?
"Will you call again?"
He hesitated before answering. She noticed.
"Yeah."
"Okay," she nodded to herself. "I'll talk to you soon."