Short Stories: Part I

I love short stories.  And am so inspired by the colorful context in which the good ones are written- a retired doctor in a lakeside cabin, a young boy climbing on mossy castle steps in Edinburgh...  Think of all the places you could take your characters with backdrops like these.  But my short story does not have such scenery.  It takes place in a windowless office, with orange walls, a copier, and 30 too-close desks with glass partitions that only go halfway up.  

We'd worked together for two years and this was our "new" office.  None of us could believe that someone in 2008 would actively choose orange walls.  But it just added to our general, suppressed contempt for the mindless work we were doing.  We were bored.  And our walls were orange.  

As in any office space, we socialized.  Mostly, the 20-somethings (which were most of the 20 producers on the project) were friendly.  As time progressed we'd learn on a random Monday that so-and-so had gone out and got wasted with so-and-so over the weekend.  At first it was surprising to hear this news, but then it became normal.

One day, early on, a new boy came into the office.  Let's call him "Evan."  He was tall, with olive complexion, a brooding, serious glare.  He wore cool sneakers.  All the girls thought he was dreamy.  I never really got what they saw.  I remember showing my mother a picture of him on Facebook and saying, "Do you think this guy is good looking?"  She did.  And I really didn't see it.  

Also, I found the fact that he never spoke to any of us to be pretty smug, so I decided not to give him any attention.  But I remember, the second Evan walked into the room my friend, "M," emailed me and declared her love.  

A few months after Evan started, our company had their annual holiday party.  It was held on the set of a very famous TV show.  But for the party, it was decorated like different subway stations in Manhattan and each subway had a different ethnic food to match the neighborhood.  Our project stuck together at one table, somewhere between the skewers at Canal Street and the canolis at Mulberry.  We didn't know anyone else at the company.  

At one point our coworkers went to scavenge for more free food and left me alone at the table with another friend, "E."  We were chatting and giggling when a guy from a different department waltzed up to us holding a beer.  He had blue eyes and a big smile.  I bet he thought he was pretty charming.  "So, where do you girls work?"  We mumbled back, "...this website..."  

I don't know what we said to this guy.  The awkwardness went on for a while.  Then, I could see over Blue Eyes's shoulder that Evan was watching the whole exchange.  I looked at my feet uncomfortably.  Evan walked over, slid in right next to me and said loudly, "SO where do YOU work?"  I snorted, trying to hold back a big loud laugh.  

It was the first time I ever spoke to Evan.  And maybe it was the beer he was drinking, but he was very comfortable and funny.  He wasn't silent or smug.  After he scared away Blue Eyes I talked to him the rest of the time.  Periodically I'd call over all the girls we worked with who loved him secretly.  I'd say "you have to hear this story" and nudge Evan to tell them what he'd just told me.  After the party I texted my friends:  "he doesn't have such a bad personality after all!"

But it didn't matter for me.  I had a serious boyfriend.  Evan knew that.  And I sort of fell into the safety net that I often do, and I assumed everything was platonic because we both knew I was off limits.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.  

One Monday, a few weeks after the holiday party my friend and coworker, E, and I took a coffee break.  She had a nervous smile and I knew that well enough to ask about it.  She said that on New Year's Eve Evan texted her at around 11pm to ask her if she had anyone to kiss when the ball dropped.  She didn't respond to this message.  E is the nervous, shy type.  And I'm not going to lie, I was shocked to learn that the coveted guy in the room was advancing on the shy/nervous girl.  It's like the laws of high school were all warped.  Not that I minded- it would have been a nice twist in the typical short story.

But she was wary of the known hot guy's forward messages.  "I don't know if I like him," she said.  And I said, "If he's flirting with you, then you should go for it."  And I gave her that advice because honestly, I honestly thought maybe he wasn't a typical "hot guy."  And maybe Evan had fallen for the girl who was a nerd (not the sexy nerd, mind you) for Halloween.   And the thought made me like him even more.  What a good guy he was turning out to be.

So the following weekend E and Evan met up for a classic New York City brunch at an outdoor restaurant.  And while they ate and chatted a crazy-eyed man approached them from the sidewalk and surprised them with a pencil sketch of the two of them that he'd drawn-- with a heart around the picture.  I could just imagine E's blush as she looked down and away.  Evan just swatted at the guy when he asked for compensation for his art and said something along the lines of "aaah, get the hell outta here."

So, everything's going swimmingly, it seems.  But then there was M.  The girl who immediately liked Evan.  (Oh gosh this is so complicated and it's only going to get worse).  

M was pretty shocked that Evan appeared to be putting the moves on another girl in the room.  M swore he flirted with her one time at the copier.  But oh well, she must have misinterpreted.  We shrugged it off.  Then M got a job at a different department and she left us for a new desk down the hall.  And one afternoon she ran into Evan in the hall.  They shared smiling, mindless busy talk.  When she got back to her desk there was a message waiting for her from him-- "How are you?  Do you like your new job?"  Her heart skipped a beat, she got butterflies.  And an email rapid fire began.  

Meanwhile, Evan was hanging out with E on weekends.  But he'd yet to make a move.  Weeks had gone by- months even- since that New Years Eve text.  I was already aware of his new flirtations with M.  I advised E to hold back but didn't tell her why.  I told her to be less available.  To disappear for a while.  But she refused to believe that his emails to her and the nights they'd hung out at bars meant nothing.  Even if he'd never bought her a single drink.  

So she didn't take my advice.  Which is fine, you know, I'm not the type of girl to say she told you so.  A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.  I made plenty of mistakes, while being completely aware that I was making them and those were some of the best times of my life.   So, I get it...

Then we got our new, orange office.  And I was seated one glass partition away from Evan.  Whenever I looked up from my keyboard he was right there.  And we all became better friends. 

Then one night, after months of E and Evan going on these sporadic "dates" together (with no end-of-date kisses or concrete romantic advances, only innuendos and texts in which Evan called her "baby" at the end of some of the messages)-- we all went out dancing.  E, M and myself and a bunch of other friends.  At 2AM, E got a text message from Evan and we all huddled around her phone to read it.  She was squealing in delight.    

I read the words out loud, "who... are you... with?"  

What difference did it make who she was with?  By that time, as I'd mentioned earlier, I was skeptical of this relationship.  At first I imagined him as a nice guy who maybe felt comfortable with the quiet girl.  But I'd already started to think he was after something else.  Maybe he was just looking for a friend?   After reading that message, I realized he was after someone else.  

I don't know what E responded, but later that night (or earlier that morning) Evan showed up and later still, after all of us had gone home, Evan drunkenly confessed to E that he liked M.

Yes, that night was a disaster.