Blushing Pink (18 page)

"But it's Friday," Reese said. "What about work?"

"Oh, um..." Angela shrugged guiltily. "I'm playing hooky."

"Okay, well, have fun," Reese said, grabbing a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. "I'll see you later."

"Wait, sweetheart, I packed you something to eat!" Joanna called, as Reese made her way down the front hall. Joanna caught up to her at the foot of the stairs and handed her a brown bag.

"Oh, you didn't have to do that."

"Listen, don't forget about tonight," her mother said breezily.

"Huh? What about tonight?" Reese asked.

Joanna blinked. "You're coming with me to the women's clubhouse to hang decorations for the annual Christmas party."

"I am? I didn't know that."

"Sweetheart, I told you that a while ago."

Usually her mother told her things a thousand times, so it made sense that Reese hadn't retained the information after being told merely once. "All right, but Ally's going too, right?"

"No, she has plans with Ben. You're not going outside like that, are you? You need to wear a coat; it's freezing out!"

"My coat's in the car—"

"You left your coat out in the freezing cold!"

"Mom, please, it's not even that cold out."

"It's December."

"
Mom, I really don't have time for this. See ya later."

"Okay, okay."

Reese headed out the door. She turned back quickly to wave. Joanna waved back with one hand, and used the other to run up and down her arm in exaggerated shivering gestures.

"Bye!" Reese called brightly, still not cold, and hopped into her car.

* * *

Joanna had just gotten back to the kitchen when the phone rang. She picked it up, gushed her hellos, then handed the phone to Angela.

"Hello?"

"Hi." It was Drew.

"Hi, is everything all right?" she asked.

"Yeah, fine," he said through audible cell phone static. "Listen, sorry I forgot to tell you I had an early meeting this morning." That made her feel a little better. She'd woken up that morning to find him gone—no note, nothing. She'd almost burst into tears. Instead she'd called in sick and headed straight for her mother's. Yes, she really was thirty years old.

Drew was a business consultant who worked on different projects with varying companies, which was why he was able to take so much time off after his heart attack. He'd started working again only last month.

"That's okay," Angela said, walking into the pantry with the phone and closing the door behind her. "How did the meeting go?"

"It went fine. Remember that software company I told you about?" While he went on to give a brief description of his meeting, Angela took a seat on a large plastic barrel labeled
The Pretzel Keg.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked after he finished.

"I called you at your office, and Cyn told me you weren't coming in. I tried our place, so I just assumed... Are you sick? I didn't know you weren't feeling well."

"No, I just didn't feel like going today," she said truthfully.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Silence. She sighed and looked around the pantry and wondered if it would ever be normal between them again.

"Well, I guess I'll get going," he said. "I have another meeting in twenty minutes."

"Okay... Drew?"

"Yeah?"

"Um... nothing."

"I should go."

"Yeah, okay."

"Love you," he said quickly.

"Me, too," she managed, and after they hung up, she hugged the phone to her chest and whispered into the emptiness, "So much."

Chapter 13

"Let's go over it one more time."

Reese and Rhoda had been training the new girl, Amy, for the past three hours. Amy remained eager to please, but Reese had to stifle her twelfth yawn in twenty minutes. It wasn't Amy's fault; the register
was
confusing. And Rhoda's cryptic, pompous directives didn't exactly expedite the comprehension process.

"Okay, so, lemme see if I have this right," Amy said hesitantly, holding a scanner in one hand, and a discounted hardcover in the other. "For sale books, I type in zero-zero-one."

"Right," Rhoda said, nodding. "Same code for the mass-market paperbacks. For trade paperbacks, type in zero-zero-two."

Amy scrunched her forehead. "I'm sorry—what's the difference between the mass-market and trade paperbacks?"

"Oh, well," Rhoda scoffed righteously, "trade paperbacks are just
way
better books. They're the higher-quality, more intelligent types of books." Amy nodded vacantly. "See, the mass markets are, let us say, not too stellar—you know, from a
literary
perspective." Amy looked more confused than before. So Rhoda continued to "clarify." "You know, think of all the incredibly vapid mystery novels we sell."

"Oh, I love mysteries!" Amy said, obviously not getting that "vapid" wasn't a good thing.

Rhoda recoiled as if she had fleas, and Reese finally interceded. Straightening up from her slouch, she said, "Amy, the mass markets are usually smaller, and their ISBN numbers are printed on the inside front cover. Trade paperbacks are bigger, with the ISBN on the back. Also, they feel more like this." She handed one over for Amy to touch.

"Oh, I get it now, that's easy!" Amy sounded very relieved that she didn't have to determine on the spot whether or not a customer's purchase was "high-quality."

At that moment, Reese was experiencing a particularly strong urge to tell Rhoda just how full of baloney she was. But she realized that most of her irritability stemmed from the fact that she hadn't had coffee before work. Not to mention that as soon as she had entered the break room that morning, Darcy had accosted her. Barging out of her office (closing and bolting the door immediately behind her), she'd adjusted one of the pastel butterfly clips that ran in grooves down her scalp,, and barked,
"You!"

Reese had barely gotten out, "Me, what?" when Darcy had rolled her eyes and started singing, "Hello, Brock! Wake
up
—you're on the
clock."
And after that, she'd ordered Reese to conduct register training with Rhoda, and return to cafe duty when they had finished.

Amy was the real victim in this, of course. The poor sucker, she really had no idea what she was in for. She'd even made the comment that Darcy seemed "really cool." Reese knew that it wouldn't take Darcy long to show her true colors, and when she did, Amy was in for the disillusionment of a lifetime. In other words, standard Roland & Fisk initiation.

"Okay, I think we're done," Rhoda said, fiddling with one of her immense hoop earrings. "Do you have any more questions?" Her bored tone of voice must have deterred Amy, who shook her head no, but still had stressfully pinched eyebrows.

Reese said, "Well, if you're confused about anything, definitely ask me. I'll be over in the cafe." Amy smiled and gave thanks. Rhoda did not jump to offer the same accessibility. A few minutes later, Reese headed to the cafe.

As she took a shortcut through the New Age section, a man approached her. "Excuse me?" he said angrily, "I noticed that this store only has two books on hypnotherapy."

"Oh..."

"Well, here's what I think of your store!" he barked, and swept his hand along one shelf, sending eight hardcovers tumbling off and clattering onto the floor.

One slammed right onto Reese's foot. "Ow!" she yelped. As the man stormed off, Reese hopped in place and frowned in pain until her nerve endings numbed. Then she stooped to pick up the books, sighing in frustration with all of the crackpots in this city who insisted on doing their shopping at Roland & Fisk.

So much for a shortcut,
Reese thought, and bustled limpingly on to the cafe.

She spotted Brian right away. He was reading the paper, but his mug and soup bowl were pushed out in front of him, indicating that he was finished with them. That made her look up at the clock. Damn, it was even later than she'd thought.

Fortunately, there wasn't much of a crowd in the cafe, so she stole a moment to go say hi. "Hey," she said as she approached Brian's table.

He looked up from his paper and smiled. "Hey. I wasn't sure if you were working today."

Her heart kicked up.
He was looking for me—wondering about me.
"Yeah, I had to work at the register for a while."

"How's it going?" he asked.

Better now, more nerve-racking, but definitely better.

"Want to sit down?" he asked her.

Yes, she would
love
to sit down, and preferably on his lap. But when she pictured that happening, and Brian screaming in pain, the fantasy quickly passed. "Well, I was gonna start my shift," she said, motioning toward the counter with a loose,
who cares
gesture. Then she realized that she had worked four hours already, and was eligible to take her break. "Hold on a sec," she said, as she shuffled over to the counter.

Tina was breaking rolls of quarters into the cash drawer—brutally slamming and shattering each one. She did it with such military precision and intensity that Reese truly hated to interrupt. "Hey, Brock! How ya doing?"

"Okay."

"We missed you this morning. I had Marnie fill in but it just wasn't the same." Tina shook her head and blasted another roll open against the side of the drawer. "The girl's helpless with a marble loaf, that's for sure." Then she slammed the drawer shut, unwittingly so hard that the whole cash register vibrated and the display case rattled.

"Um, Tina? Do you mind if I take my break now? I know I just got here, but I've been training with Rhoda for, like, four hours."

"Four hours working with Rhoda?" Tina said, sounding disgusted. "You deserve a break after that bullshit!" She punched Reese in the shoulder in a gesture of friendship.

Reese wobbled, and held back a wince of pain. "Thanks a lot; I really appreciate it."

"No problem," Tina said, and started stacking baking pans (the metal clinked and clanged and echoed). Meanwhile Reese poured herself a cup of coffee and headed back to the seating area, hoping Brian was still there.

He was. And he looked as handsome as ever, too, in his navy work shirt, gray tie, and charcoal pants. Reese made her way over to him, eyeing his legs and doing her ultra
cazh
act.

"Hi," she said, smiling, and sat down.

"Hey, how was the register?" he asked.

Instinctively, Reese stuck her tongue out. Then she sucked it right back in, realizing how immature that must look.

But he just chuckled. "This store doesn't seem to... what's the word I'm looking for? Fulfill you." He grinned, and a laugh slipped from Reese's throat.

"Hmm, I must not be as subtle as I thought," she said, grinning back at him. "So how do you feel about your job? Does it fulfill you?"

Shrugging, he said, "Yeah, I guess it's all right."

She pushed for more information because to her, it wasn't just small talk. She wanted to know every possible thing about him. "So what's it like to be a structural engineer?"

Brian leaned back in his chair. "Well, what would you like to know?"

"Hmm... What's a day in the life?"

"Well, let's see." He ran his hand along his jaw, as if trying to come up with an interesting way to sum up his job. "I don't know, right now I'm working on a pretty big development project."

"Really?" Reese leaned forward with interest, and clasped her coffee cup to give her idle hands something to do. "What's the project?" she asked.

"It's called Project Blue," he explained, "It's a plan to develop a corporate complex uptown."

"Ah... I see." She figured the world had enough corporate complexes, but hey, he had to make a living. "So how far along is it?"

"Oh, my team's still in the planning stages."

"Your team?"

"Yeah. I'm team leader on the project."

He said it very offhandedly, as if it were nothing special, but Reese heard an edge of pride in his voice. She grinned, toying with the idea that he might want to impress her—maybe he didn't, but she let herself think it was a possibility, and smiled into her next sip.

"What?" he said, letting his elbows rest flat on the table.

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking. So, you mentioned the other night that you worked for Manhattan C and S. How long have you been working there?"

"A little over two years," he said. "Before that I worked for a small firm downtown."

"Oh, are you from New York originally?"

He shook his head. "Boston."

"No way!" she said, pushing her coffee to the side, because she no longer needed the crutch. She could talk about Boston till she was blue in the face.

"Yeah, you've been there?" he asked.

"I went to BC," she replied.

"BC, really? Did you like it?"

"Are you kidding? After I graduated, I lay around in my robe for six months, staring into space, saying, 'I can never go home again.' My mom was freaking out." Reese stopped just short of admitting how many Price Club sacks of Oreos had helped to weather the crisis.

"I was majorly disillusioned with life after college, I guess," she went on. "You know, like a
St. Elmo's Fire
kind of thing." Brian looked confused for a moment, then nodded. "So is your family still in Boston?" she asked.