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“I can’t wait.” He removes his coat and hangs it on my rack. Then he brushes his hand down his checkered shirt, smoothing wrinkles, before finally pulling out a chair and sitting at my table.
I dish out the chicken cauliflower casserole on each of our plates before jumping into my narrative. “I told you about the promotion at work, but what I found out yesterday is that my boss is insane. He decided to run it like a competition, and we got paired up with a partner.”
His brows lift. He knows how much I loathe working with people I don’t know. In school, both of us managed to get stuck in groups where we did all the work and the others took credit, so he understands how much I hate having to depend on someone else. “How is that going?”
I shake my head. “Today was the first day, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it until we finish. Her name is Katie and she’s…something. Our day started with us getting stuck in an elevator.”
Tommy’s brow lifts higher. “You’re kidding me, right?”
I shake my head. “I wish I was. She’s making decisions with a magic eight ball, and it said we had to take the elevator, but we got stuck.”
“For how long?” Tommy asks before taking a bite.
“For how long what? How long were we in the elevator or how long is she making decisions with an eight ball?”
Tommy shrugs. “Both.”
“I don’t know how long we were in the elevator. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Long enough for her to pull out a sketch pad and let me draw. And she’s using the eight ball until Valentine’s Day, but you’re missing the point. We took the elevator because her toy said we had to. Then, it decided we had to go to The Painted Plate.” I stand and grab both the plate and the photo from the counter and set the plate on the table for him.
He picks it up and examines it. “Okay, the eight ball is a little weird, but this is cool, Derek, and probably something you would never have done on your own.”
He’s not wrong, but that is entirely not the point. “Then, she made us go into a costume shop.” I place the picture down with a flourish, convinced that he will see the issue now.
“I can’t believe she got you in costume.”
“I didn’t want to of course, but arguing with her is like scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush.”
Tommy rubs his chin as he studies the picture. “You haven’t been in a costume since high school. I didn’t think you ever would again.”
“It’s not like that,” I say, cutting him off. This is no time to go wandering down memory lane, especially when it’s paved with sadness and loss. “This was a one-time thing, and it was only because of work.”
“Uh huh, well you know if you did, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. It seemed to make you happy.”
“No, that part of my past will remain in the past.”
He lets the subject die then, but it hangs in the air, a reminder of the time in my life when I had strayed from the scheduled and predictable and disaster ensued.
“So, are you upset that she got you in costume or that she’s making decisions with an eight ball?”
I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t know. Both? It’s not rational. We went to lunch afterwards, and she used the toy to order her food. Only she almost didn’t get to eat because it wouldn’t give her the right answers. Then she gave her number to the waiter because the ball said she should. Who does that?”
Tommy shrugs. “I don’t know. It sounds kind of fun and people give out their phone numbers all the time.” He pauses and tilts his head at me. “Are you sure you’re not angry that she gave her number to someone other than you?”
I’m glad that we’ve finished eating or I might have spat my food out at him. “What? That is completely ridiculous. We are like heavy metal and classical, abstract and realism, fiction and nonfiction.” I could continue naming opposites, but I feel like he’s getting my point. “We would never work together.”
“Me thinks thou doth protest too much,” he says, quoting the culturally butchered line from Hamlet. I glare at him, and he holds up his hands. “Okay, you’re opposites. I get it, but heavy metal and classical are both forms of music.”
I snort. One is definitely not music to me.
“Realism and abstract are both art, and fiction and non-fiction both genres of books,” he continues, “and there are people who like aspects of both. You don’t have to be completely alike to work. Opposites attract, you know?”
“Opposites, yes, but not polar opposites. We would drive each other crazy. The only thing we’ve found that we agree on so far is beating the other team because Mark is so smarmy.”
Tommy’s lips lift into a mischievous grin. “So, there is something you agree on. It only takes a spark to get a fire going. Isn’t that what that old song says?”
I shoot him another glare. That song was a gospel song not a romantic ballad, but it does get me thinking. Could the spark between Katie and I turn into something more? And if it did, would the fire warm us or burn us? Somehow, I have the feeling we would both get burned.
CHAPTER7
