She glanced down at where her pants draped over her shoes and tugged at the waist a bit to pull them up.
“I know, I really need to get them hemmed. I just haven’t had a lot of time between work and my classes.”
That was a challenge if I ever heard one.
“You’re blaming me for your lack of fashion etiquette?” I asked her, incredulous. “I’m keeping you too busy? Because I’m forcing you to go to class to improve yourself and improve your life trajectory?”
Her face scrunched up. “Fashion etiquette? Is that really what I’m violating here?”
“You work in a professional office, you should appear presentable at all times. Dragging pants that are too long for you, gives people an impression of you, and, by association, me.”
“What do you think my overly long pants say about you, E.G.?”
I sneered at her. “You think you’re being cute. I’m serious about this.”
“No, you’re not,” she sighed. “You’re pissed about something else and you want a fight. You’re looking for a partner, but I’m choosing not to engage. Instead, I’m leaving for lunch. I have plans with Claire.”
“I can’t believe you’re still hanging around with her,” I snapped. “She’s a troublemaker who abandoned you at a club where any number of things could have happened to you.”
“She got too drunk, it happens, and everything turned out fine. Besides, I need a girlfriend at this very crucial time in my life.”
“What does that mean?” I said, turning my chair now fully in her direction.
“Well, I recently had my first one-night stand with a guy who ghosted me. Sexually speaking. Of course I won’t be sharing who I was with, but I probably need help breaking down the events of that night. A little girl talk should do the trick.”
I made a mental note to see a doctor because it was as if I could feel my blood pressure spiking to all new highs almost instantly.
“You’re going to tell Claire,Silly Drunk Claire, about our night together?”
She smiled benignly. “E.G., I told you not to worry. I’m not going to say who I was with. I just want to get a little perspective.”
“Perspective about what?” I barked.
“All of it. You know, what it means when a guy bangs and bails. Does that say something about me? Or him?”
I pushed out of my chair and cleared my desk before I was crowding her back into the corner of my office. Only once I had her pinned, I had no idea what I was going to say.
“You don’t tell Claire anything about that night,” I ordered her.
“Hmmm,” she hummed, not intimidated by me at all. “I don’t think you get to tell me what I can or cannot say. It’s not like you had me sign an NDA before we did the deed.”
I laughed without any humor behind it. “See, and here I thought you’d handled the whole thing like a level-headed adult. When really, this whole time you’ve been secretly angry with me.”
“Whoa, I’m not the one who hasyoupinned in a corner, my friend.”
She was right. I gritted my teeth and took a step back.
Then she approached me, getting a little too close, a little too much into my personal space. I could smell her. I could see the individual strands of her hair, all of varying shades of blonde, brown and honey. I could see the freckle just beneath her ear that had fascinated me while she’d slept next to me and I watched her.
“Repeat after me, E.G. ‘You’re not the problem, Anna. I am.’”
Her eyes were dark, and yes, as blasé as she appeared to be about everything, there was an anger there. Hurt too. She wasn’t unaffected by what happened between us. She had just done a better job at keeping it to herself.
Which was its own humiliation.
“Say it,” she snapped.
“You’re not the problem, Flowers. I am,” I repeated.
