Bond Girl (25 page)

The craziest side effect of the turmoil was that Will was no longer my biggest problem, and I was no longer his. It was hard for me to believe, but the spring and summer of 2008 wouldn't go down in the history books as the end of Alex Garrett's personal life—it would go down as the end of life as we all knew it.

The rest of April was so busy I couldn't possibly worry about Will and what an asshole he turned out to be. I forfeited five hundred bucks to disenroll from pastry school and buckled down. I had to focus on my job, learn as much as I could about what was happening, and try not to let my face register the fear that I felt. By the time the first week of May rolled around, the group was so beaten down and exhausted we needed something to cheer us up. As always, the answer lay in lunch.

“Viva May-heee-co!” Marchetti sang as he approached my desk. “Alex, did you give Patty your lunch order? We're getting burritos today in honor of Cinco de Mayo.”

“Patty!” I yelled down the row. “Put me down for a burrito.”

“Sure,” she said as she came over and leaned on the back of my chair. Since Patty had rescued me from abject humiliation the Monday following my birthday, she'd become a good friend. My loyal sidekick. As difficult as it was to believe, the “new girl” looked up to me for guidance, and she kept a protective eye out. She was one cool chick.

“Will's staring at you again. Are you even going to talk to him?”

“Nope. He's dead to me.”

“Me too,” she said. “I've already ‘forgotten' his enchilada order.”

“I appreciate that. I'd prefer you have him killed.” She laughed.

After lunch I was tired, so I headed out to get an iced tea at the coffee stand and stretch my legs. As soon as I hit the hallway, I saw Will exiting the elevator and walking toward me. There was nothing I could do to avoid him. I took longer than necessary to extract two dollars from my wallet, because it kept my eyes focused on something other than him. Jashim had decorated the counter for Cinco de Mayo. There was a donkey piñata hanging from the ceiling, and a little wooden bat rested on the counter.

“Miss Alex, happy Cinco de Mayo!” Jashim kissed the back of my hand.
Take that, Will.
Maybe you don't want to date me, but the Bangladeshi coffee guy knows a good thing when he sees it.

“Thanks, Jashim. I like what you've done with the place.” Will patiently waited for me to finish stalling. It was obvious I was ignoring him. He didn't seem to care.

Jashim gestured to a small toy dog sitting on the counter. “Did you squeeze the little dog? Go ahead, squeeze him!” I obediently squeezed his back. The dog's mouth started to move and in a Spanish accent it said, “Drop the chalupa.” I laughed and turned to leave.

Will was standing there, wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeved green-and-yellow button-down shirt. I hate those shirts. Unless you're responsible for delivering mail or milk, button-down shirts should have long sleeves.

Will cleared his throat before he spoke. “You can't ignore me forever. We sit twenty feet apart.” I realized I was still holding the stuffed dog, and so I squeezed it over and over and over again, so that as Will started talking, I was able to drown him out with “Drop the chalupa, drop the chalupa, drop the chalupa.” Finally, Will snatched the dog from me.

“I'm sorry, Alex. I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know what to say. I was so wrapped up in my own fucked-up life, I didn't realize . . .”

I snapped. I wanted to punch him in the stomach, but I'm sure that's grounds for dismissal according to the Cromwell handbook.

“You'll have to be more specific as to what, exactly, you
wanted
to tell me. The list of things you
should
have told me but didn't is long, Will. It is really fucking long. Did you
want
to tell me that you were seeing someone else at the same time that you were seeing me? Or did you
want
to tell me that she works here also? Or maybe you
wanted
to tell me that the real reason you never answered my phone calls, and were never around on weekends, or stood me up on my birthday was because you were with your fiancée? Exactly which part rendered you speechless?”

“Alex.” He tried to put his hand on mine, but I snatched it away and crossed my arms over my chest. “I should've done a lot of things differently.”

“Deep thoughts, Will. I'm so happy we had this conversation.”

“No, I mean I'm not happy with myself for the way I handled everything. I . . .”

“You probably shouldn't be happy with the way things turned out. From where I stand, you gained a fiancée who files papers for a living and probably only likes you for your money, and lost a friend whose stomach now turns at the sight of you. If I were you, I'd be unhappy with the way things turned out, too.”

“Can't we talk about it? Alex, come on, we have to work together. We have to figure out a way to coexist here five days a week. You aren't very good at hiding the fact that you hate me.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“There was a way for that to happen. But it went out the window the day you allowed that announcement to run in the paper without talking to me first.” Without thinking, I picked up the bat from the counter and with two hands, swung as hard as I could at the donkey piñata, hitting it with such force that the hook ripped out of the ceiling. The donkey flew toward the back wall of the coffee stand, forcing Jashim to duck. It ricocheted off the wall and split in half, sending pieces of candy raining down like sugary shrapnel. The Chihuahua was knocked off the counter, landing with a thud and a “Drop the chalupa.” Jashim and Will both gawked at me like I was nuts and, for those few seconds, I probably was. I threw the bat on the counter, picked up my Snapple and turned toward Will. “Be happy that the donkey was there, because otherwise I would have swung at your head. We will never, ever be friends, and you have no one but yourself to blame for that.”

I left Will to help Jashim pick up the candy and headed back to the floor. When I looked up, I saw Patty frozen in the hallway, holding three singles in her hand—an eyewitness to the piñata massacre. Great.

I stormed back to my desk. I felt Chick's eyes follow me as I passed, but I refused to look at him, knowing for sure that I had left my poker face in the hallway with my pride and most of my sanity. Suddenly, two hands landed on my shoulders. I jumped before I realized who they belonged to. Chick squeezed and whispered in my ear, “You're the best thing that ever could have happened to him. He will
never
do better than you, and he knows it.” He patted my head and went back to his desk. For a second I was shocked by what Chick had said, and then even more so when I realized that he'd known the whole time that Will and I were seeing each other. I guess it wasn't the well-kept secret I had thought it was. I figured I'd add it to the list of things that I was oblivious to.

I
looked at the clock. Three thirty. Two more hours. Only two more hours standing between me and some much-needed margaritas.

Patty and I burst out of the office at 5:30 on the dot and squeezed into a small booth at Tortilla Flats with Annie and Liv. As soon as we were seated Patty poured margaritas into our glasses and placed the empty pitcher down on the floor. Annie leaned forward on her elbows and narrowed her eyes. “Alex, what happened? You went berserk in the office?”

“Berserk is a strong word,” Patty said as she reapplied her lip gloss. “But I think it's best if in the future we keep Alex away from blunt objects and baseball bats.”

“I wasn't really going to swing at him. And that's what you're supposed to do with a piñata, for the record.”

“Hit the piñata? Yes. Smack it into the next decade? Maybe not,” Patty pointed out.

“I had to vent. You know how hard it is to sit on the floor with a smile plastered on my face and listen to his voice all day long? It's agonizing. I'm sorry, but I think I'm allowed to be just a little irritated.”

Patty was laughing. “Absolutely. Poor piñata.”

“You know who he is?” Annie asked as she played with the salt crystals on the rim of her glass. “He's a leave-her-at-the-altar kind of guy. He's the guy who does whatever he wants because, at the end of the day, he doesn't care about anyone else but himself. Just because that poor girl is wearing a ring doesn't actually mean they'll get married. If he bailed on her, it wouldn't surprise me.”

“Wow, Annie.” Liv nodded in approval. “That's actually a great point.” They clinked their glasses together and I drank the rest of my margarita just as the waitress dropped another pitcher in the middle of the table.

“How are things otherwise? Things at work going okay?” Liv asked.

“Not really. Work's a shit show. The markets are in really bad shape, the housing market is getting crushed, our earnings are abysmal, and everyone's worried about getting paid at the end of the year.”

“Who cares about the housing market? We rent,” Annie said.

“Oh Annie, my dear little grad student. It's not as simple as that. It's all connected. Seven guys were fired yesterday. One minute they were at their desks, and then poof, gone. There's more coming.”

“That's awful! Tonight is just what you need to take your mind off everything,” Annie said.

“Amen to that. Pass the margos,” I said as I reached for the pitcher.

An hour later we had drunk three pitchers of margaritas. Between the alcohol and the sugar content, the entire table was very drunk and very rowdy. A dangerous combination.

Annie clapped, “Ohhhh, I have such a good idea. Gimme your phone, gimme your phone.”

“Why?” I asked as I moved it out of her reach on the table.

“Just gimme it. Is his number still in there?”

“Yeah, why? Oh, no, we are NOT calling him, Annie!”

She snatched my phone and scrolled through the address book. “Shhhhhh,” she said, her buzz making her braver than she would normally be. “Don't worry, I star-six-sevened. He won't know it's us.”

“He's not gonna answer. He never answers his phone, so this is pointless! What are you planning on saying?”

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” she said as she frantically waved her hand in my face. “Perfect. Voice mail!”

“Told you, so hang up!” (Shit like this is why guys think girls are crazy.)

But she didn't. “Hey, Will, it's Kimmy. I just wanted to tell you that I had a really good time, but I still haven't found my underwear, so if you wouldn't mind checking your pockets, I'd appreciate it. I'm looking forward to next week!”

She closed the phone and burst into hysterics.

“I can't believe you just did that,” Liv scolded.

“Annie!” I cried, horrified. “He's so going to know that was me!”

“Oh puh-leeeze,” she said dramatically. “He's probably cheated on his fiancée with a lot of girls. I bet you he has to think about it. He won't know it's you.”

I just stared at my phone, horrified.

“You know what you could do to drive him crazy?” Liv said. “Date someone else in the office.”

“Bad idea!” Patty pointed her finger at me from across the table and started talking about me like I wasn't even there. “She can't do that, because, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? She can't be, a . . . ummmmm . . . come on, what's the word?”

“An office tramp?” Annie offered.

“A financial floozy?” Liv dragged out the word
floozy
so that it sounded more like fluuuuu-hooooo-zeeeeee.

“Guys? I'm here, you know that, right? I might be very, very drunk, but I can still hear you.”

Patty ignored me and kept going. “The feeee-awwwwn-saaaay, I heard she's the floor whore in Boston. At least she was. Maybe now she's not, since Will is going to make an honest slut out of her.” Now this caught my attention. I grabbed Patty's wrist from across the table.

“What do you mean? She's the
floor whore
? She's hooked up with other guys?”

“Apparently. From what I hear, she's made out with guys at more than one Cromwell party. And I don't mean that she dated these guys; I mean she hooked up with them once or twice—and that was that.”

“How is it possible that you know this and I don't? I thought I was up on all of the floor gossip!”

“I don't know. One night at drinks people were talking about it and I happened to be there. They were ripping her to shreds.”

“He's marrying the office slut?” I just might have found it funny if I wasn't having a horrifying flashback. The Christmas party. I knew she looked familiar! It was her. That was right when Will and I started our e-mail relationship. Oh my God. He was marrying the bathroom slut. Which meant they got together
after
he started seeing me, because there is no way that would have happened if he was already with her. Holy shit.

I received a text message. Will. Perfect timing as always.

SMS from Patrick, William:

Can we please talk? Violence is never the answer.

I held my phone up for them all to read. Exasperated, I wailed, “See? Do you see what I'm dealing with? How . . .” I had something I wanted to say, but I was drunk and I lost my train of thought.

“How what?” they all slurred in unison.

“How am I supposed to respond to this?” I tapped the screen violently with my left index finger, just to make sure that everyone knew what
this
referred to. Before anyone could answer, the phone beeped in my hand again, prompting everyone to become silent, like it was a ticking time bomb or something, which I guess, in some sense, it was.

Annie screamed, “Read it! Actually no, gimme it. I'll read it. I wonder if he got my voice mail?” She reached across the table for my phone. “Come on, give it to me!”