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“So sorry I’m late! Traffic was so bad!” an unfamiliar girl shouts as she jogs toward our table. I’m not expecting her to actually stop beside me, figuring she’s heading to one of the other spots near our table, but no. She’s here for us. She doesn’t work on our floor, and I’ve never even seen her in the building. It’s not a big enough space to have missed someone this loud and bubbly. But if she doesn’t work with us, what’s she doing here?
“Hey!” she says, waiving directly at me in her sparkly pink cocktail dress.
These people are fucking weird. I wave back despite the obvious difference in levels of politeness between her and I. “Hello.” If this situation wasn’t uncomfortable enough, the new girl takes a seat right across from me and stares at me like she’s trying to memorize my face so she knows how to describe me for a police sketch or something. I’m living out the opening scenes of a horror film, but it gets even weirder when Kyle scoots away from the table.
“Hey, you guys go ahead and order, we’re going to go check out this record place across the street,” Kyle says. Kyle is like the corporate version of a frat boy. He’d probably do a keg stand in his Polo if he thought it would get him ‘chicks’. It’s very obvious he’s ditching me with the new girl, and I can’t tell if it’s a set up or if he just doesn’t like her and wants to put distance between them now that she’s here.
Kyle is a favorite of many in the office- but not mine- so when he gets up, everyone else at the table leaves, except me and the new girl that’s still eye-fucking me across the table. What is her issue?
I prop my head on my fingers and stare back at her, checking her out to see how well she fits in with the crowd of annoying coworkers I got stuck with. The pay is good enough to put up with them for forty hours a week without any complaints, but no more than that. I came out tonight just because I haven’t met anyone in town yet and I convinced myself to be less of a loner, even at the price of my sanity.
“I’m Brittany,” she says in a soft, gentle voice. Her long eyelashes fan over her cheeks when she blinks, and there are deep dimples beside her mouth as she reaches her hand across the table for me to shake. Pretty and polite.
“Is this a set-up?” I ask, allowing an annoyed expression to hide my curiosity. My eyes continue scanning her face while I wait for her answer, and her excitement drains quickly.
Groaning, Brittany drops her hand back into her lap and shakes her head in disappointment. “They didn’t tell you. Shit, of course they didn’t.” She seems to hold a silent meeting between herself and her hands in her lap, staring down and shaking her head while she mouths words that I can’t hear. She’s frowning when she looks back up at me. “You don’t have to stay.”
I don’t need her permission to leave, but I also drove through the traffic and I’m going to have a drink. Where the hell did that hostess run off to anyway? I could really use the whiskey to numb my nerves to what’s happening around me.
What is it about me that led my coworkers to believe I was open to this? I need to make sure I figure it out so I can course-correct. Was I not outwardly mean often enough?
“They do this to me all the time,” Brittany explains with a sigh. “Set me up on dates and don’t tell the guy, I mean. It’s really annoying. I should probably stop agreeing to go.”
She should.
“I’m not sure why I even agreed this time. I should’ve asked if they told you, since you’re new in town. Don’t let them give you a hard time. They always like to spring me on people because I’m ‘too much’,” she rambles on, using her fingers to make air quotes around the words.
I’m starting to see why.
A waitress saves me as my mind starts to wander to escape routes, placing a glass of whiskey in front of me. “Do you want your usual, Britt?”
“Sure do,” she answers, then turns to me. “Are you staying or leaving?”
Now I’m curious about what her ‘usual’ is. This is an upscale restaurant, the kind most people can’t afford to visit more than a few times a year if they’re lucky, but the girl across from me is such a frequent flier here that she has a ‘usual’, and the waitress knows her by a friendly nickname.
For the first time since I got to this beige city, I’m curious what will happen next. Leaning back in my seat I answer, “Staying.”
