Like You Read About (5 page)

She drifted off to sleep, full of endorphins and
serotonin and dreams of what could be if she were just brave enough to take the leap.

Chapter 4

The conference finished as expected, she learned some new stuff, made some new contacts and drank a slew of apple martinis on her expense account.  And every night she went to bed the same way as the first.

Kaelyn texted her every day, since Cora was avoiding her calls, it was amazing how many ways a person could be called a coward.

During the drive home
on Sunday, she decided she’d go for it and started to draft the response in her head.  Listening to her romance mix put her in the mindset to just grab life, for now, maybe Dan later, by the balls and go for it.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: January 14, 2008, 2:00 a.m.

Subject: Dates4You Response

Daniel,

I want to start out by saying I’m not a crazy stalker, but it’s me, Cora from accounting, and if that freaks you out you can stop reading now and delete this and there will be no hard feelings, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

I’ll answer your questions first:

Glass half-full or empty: depends on what’s in the glass ;-) but to be serious, I do try to be optimistic although it doesn’t always come easy to me.

The road less travelled or the well
-worn path: Always the road less travelled, my favorite part of going anywhere is taking the long way, finding little out of the way shops and restaurants and meeting locals. Okay, I will admit that I’m a Disney nut, so I do some wearing out of that path every couple of years and I’m a sucker for a Broadway musical and have friends who live in NYC so I head there a few times a year.

Life of the party or wallflower
: I’m definitely the wallflower; I’m a big time geek girl and always feel a little socially awkward, have ever since high school. I have a group of friends who are my self grown family, with them I let my hair down. Kaelyn from the office is part of that group and I don’t know where I’d be without that little pixie some days.

Your perfect weekend: Well
, I think having an expectation of perfection can set you up for feelings of failure, but a weekend that would rank pretty highly for me would include a nice meal on Friday and maybe drinks or trivia with some friends, or some live music if anything good is in the area.  Saturday would include a bike ride (although I don’t actually own a bike), a drive to nowhere stopping at the littlest hole in the wall that you know will have the world’s best pot roast. Sunday would be sleeping late, reading the paper in bed, cooking breakfast together, and then me making a delicious traditional Sunday dinner. Relaxing and reading while whoever I’m sharing my weekend with does their thing, watching the Pats, the Red Sox, or puttering around the house.

I know the work thing can be awkward but I am interested in getting to know you better, seeing if we have anything in common
.  If nothing comes of it then I’ve made another friend and that’s never a bad thing, right?

I’ve been single for a long time, only had one
serious long-term relationship.  I’m looking for something with potential as well, I don’t want to go into anything with preconceived notions or a plan, but like you say in your ad I’m open to possibilities.

Isn’t that a wonderful word, possibility, the beginning, anything could happen, the future isn’t written.

Okay, I’ll stop babbling now.  Like I said earlier, if this isn’t something you’re interested in for whatever the reason then no harm, no foul.

Be well,

Cora

p.s. I really do like the beard

She edited and revised and when she got home, she typed it all out and emailed it to Kaelyn.  Twenty minutes later, her cell rang, it was Kaelyn, “I love it, we’ll tweak a little more tomorrow, but you need to do this, you have to take the leap.”

“I know, I know
, and I’m going to, but I need to sleep on it, for a couple of days. I know I sound all breezy and casual, but I think rejection could be really, REALLY tough for me, Kaelyn.” She sighed as she plopped into her chair and a half and picked up her e-reader.  “I’m going to walk away from this for now and read a book, wallow in someone else’s fantastic romantic life.”

“O
kay, later kiddo, but we are doing this, YOU are doing this. He spent a lot of time smiling at you during the meeting, and that isn’t the first time I’ve caught him looking at you, Cora. I think there might be something there.  Just breathe and go read some of that soft-core porn you call literature and stop stressing. I mean it.” With that, the line went dead.

Curling up in her chair Cora flipped on her e-reader and got cozy, as she settled in
Guinevere jumped up on the back of the chair and headbutted her looking for some love.  “Oh sure, now you want to talk to me, are you done being mad at Mommy for leaving you?”  She scratched her head and she curled up next to her while she settled in to while away her afternoon reading about star crossed lovers destined to be together. 

When she got up to get a drink and stretch she noticed it was pitch black outside, looking at the clock she saw it was
ten o'clock, crap, she needed to pack her bag and get a good night’s sleep so she could be fresh for her wordplay with Kaelyn tomorrow. This had to be perfect.

Chapter 5

A
larm goes off, playing 'Tell me why I don’t like Mondays'

Cora hops out of bed with nary a smack to the snooze, throwing on her workout gear she grabs her bag, her iPod
, and lunch and heads out for her morning workout.  When was the last time she bounded out of bed on a Monday?  Probably the fifth of never, but today was ripe with possibility, wasn’t it?

After
ninety minutes of blood (stupid untied shoelaces making her trip), sweat, and tears, because well, falling down stairs hurts, Cora hit the shower and got dressed in another of her favorite outfits, a pair of dove gray slacks and a pink boat neck sweater. She blow-dried her hair again and considered getting it cut after work tonight, it had been a while and her ends were looking frayed.  No makeup today, but some classic pearl jewelry and she was on her way to dump the gym bag, pick up her lunch and head to her building. She was trying really hard not to skip, and she didn’t, at least not all the way.

After throwing her lunch in the fridge, grabbing her fruit and yogurt and a cup of coffee
, she headed to her cube and booted up her computer.  While waiting for everything to wake up she turned and noticed a bag of sugar free strawberry candies on her desk with a purple post-it, “These are to replace the giant handful I stole on Thursday afternoon while updating your anti-virus software. – D”

Fuck, he was in her cube, on her computer, he had access to everything while she wasn’t around to supervise, did he read her chat logs?  No, of course he didn’t he isn’t nosy like that, and when he works on someone’s computer he always logs in as the administrator, so he probably doesn’t have access to her personal files, right?  For safety’s sake
, she was just going to go and delete all those archives today.  But before she did that…

             
Cora:
Get your tiny fairy ass over here young lady

             
Kaelyn:
What? I’m busy reading Perez before I start my actual work

             
Cora:
reading Perez is not busy and this is D related so hustle

After going to the history and deleting everything between her and
Kaelyn since the dawn of time, she closed the chat box and turned to face her “door.”

“What is so important you had to tear me away from gossip about who John Mayer is fucking these days?”
Kaelyn snorted.

“That,” Cora pointed to the bag of candy, not touching it
, too scared it wasn’t really there.

“Oh that, after he worked on your computer he realized he’d emptied your candy dish so he
asked where you got them so he could replace them for you, he said he’d have hated for you to come in on Monday and not have any to enjoy while you crunched your beans.” Kaelyn said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“And you didn’t think to mention it any time we’ve talked or texted since then?”
A death stare was what she was shooting at Kaelyn, because this was important news, as in we interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast kinda stuff, and yet not once had the broadcast been interrupted.

“A. I didn’t think it was a big deal he was doing something nice
, and 2. I didn’t want to muddy the waters or sway your decision, you needed to come to it on your own, decide that you wanted to be brave with no other forces at work.”  Buffing her nails on her sweater and then looking at her garish blue polish Kaelyn plopped in the guest chair. She knew how Cora’s brain worked; this might be a long one.

“O
kay, you should know a correct ordering schema but that’s a broken record, but he was here, in my cube, sitting in my chair, touching my stuff, you should have told me. He could have read our chat logs.” Her stomach roiled in that nervous way as her crazy ramped up and up and up.

“He didn’t read the logs.
I would have seen your icon light up and it never did, and even if he did, we never mention him by name; there are like 5 guys who work in IT. You could be crushing on any one of them, and I did you a favor not telling you, and he did something sweet, which just gives more weight to the ‘answer the ad for fuck's sake already’ argument.”

“I thought you wanted to edit it, tweak it
?” Now she was wringing her hands, this was not good. She twisted the emerald ring on her right hand, around and around, a usually calming gesture, which was having no effect on her at all today.

“I slept on it and decided it was perfection, it should come from you, and it shouldn’t be copy edited
. You’re an accountant, not an English Lit major, it’s perfect, Cora.” Kaelyn got up from the chair. “Now if that’s all I need to catch up on what night club Paris Hilton was at last night.”

As
Kaelyn started to turn Cora whispered, “Good, because I sent it last night.”

Kaelyn
’s jaw dropped, and she shook her head as she walked away.

Unable to sleep last night around
two a.m. Cora fired up her laptop, copied and pasted her response, hovered the mouse arrow over the send button, closed her eyes and clicked send.  That was why she bounded out of bed this morning, that’s why she needed to know when the candy arrived, possibilities—that was why.

Turning to her computer
, she fired up her email program.

T
o: Daniel Santagata

From: Cora O’Malley

Date: January 14, 2008 9:15a.m.

Subject: Thank you

Daniel,

Thank you, that was (artificially) sweet of you to replenish the candy stock for me, don’t know how you knew the brand but I appreciate the effort
. You’re always welcome to steal the candy, replacement not necessary.

Cora

To: Cora O’Malley

From: Daniel Santagata

Date: January 14, 2008, 9:20 a.m.

Subject: You’re welcome

Cora,

Only a cad steals a little
girl’s candy and doesn’t leave anything in return.  I’m glad I got it right; although I will admit that, I may have had some help.

Please let me know if
your computer gives you any trouble with the new updates. Sorry I didn’t tell you in advance. I don’t like to invade people’s space without them knowing about it but there was a critical update and I would hate for you to have logged in this morning and had your computer crash on you.

Daniel

“Deep breaths
, Cora. That was polite, not flirty, don’t think anything of it. It’s unlikely he’s even seen your message yet, and if he did it’s not like he’s going to flirt via work email.” After one more deep breath, she opened her spreadsheets and started to count the beans.

Chapter 6

Noon rolled around and the lunch bell chimed, at least in Daniel’s head, he grabbed the guys and everyone went up to the
eighth floor conference room to eat in peace and quiet and to shoot the shit about yesterday’s football game.

“So what was up with Cora on Wednesday after the meeting,” Rajesh asks, obviously fishing.

“What do you mean?  She got a couple of departments, including us extra operating funds, nothing up with that but job security for you knuckle heads,” Daniel was their supervisor, technically, but he wasn’t a dick about it he was just one of the guys.  A guy who had a real door and a bigger paycheck, but a guy nonetheless. 

“No, I mean after the meeting, you two were the last to leave,” Raj waggled his eyebrows at Dan
. “You trying to make time with our shy bean counter?  Or was she trying to buy your affections?”