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“I…” I’m about to tell her about my experiences in other buildings, the office workers looking down on me. Once, somebody even threw their trash on the floor and told me to pick it up. “I’m okay.”
“Please, you’ll make me think I stink. Or is it the accent? Do you hate English people?” She tears off the plastic packaging and starts tucking into her pasta.
I laugh at her don’t-give-a-damn tone. “No. I just thought you might not want to eat with the cleaner.”
“You know, I wish I could say you were completely barmy for saying something like that. Do you know what barmy is?”
“Uh, crazy?” I ask.
“Bingo.” She grins, placing her fork down. “Honestly, there are people in this building who would judge me for eating with a cleaner. I think that’s grotesque and twisted in the most depraved way, but that’s how people are. They’re sick in the head.”
I nod, letting her rant.
“I have no such issues,” she goes one. “What’s your name?”
“Katy,” I say. “Yours?”
“Stacy. See, even that fits. Katy and Stacy.”
I smile, then take a bite of my sandwich.
“What were you dreaming about before I sat down?” she asks. “You looked like you were trying to puzzle something out. If I may be absurdly forward, I noticed you were staring rather longingly at something on your phone.”
“It’s…” Private, I’m about to say, but then I realize something. I have a chance to get a real, unbiased opinion here. Chances are I’ll never see this woman again in a building this size, with my erratic hours, and considering I’m a contractor and never in one place for long. “Relationship troubles,” I finish. “Well, not relationship, exactly, but—”
“Oh, do tell.” She’s ignoring her pasta now, looking at me eagerly, almost hungrily, like she’s going to devour whatever I tell her. “I have been in several absolutely catastrophic relationships. This qualifies me to give advice, wouldn’t you agree?”
I laugh, nodding. “Oh, sure, you’re the best person for the job,” I say with friendly sarcasm.
She grins. “So, what’s the issue? Is he married? Is he old?”
“Not old,” I say, my voice getting suddenly passionate, even if I didn’t plan for it. “But he’s older than me. I’m nineteen. He’s in his forties.”
She narrows her eyes, then narrows them some more. They’re almost closed with how hard she’s squinting at me. “Really?” she says.
I shift in my seat. “Uh, yeah, why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t think you’re lying. It’s just… I was religious once. I believed in a big grand plan, but not for years. Now, though…”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her.
She waves a hand. “Give me any details you’re comfortable sharing. I know this is odd. Two strangers in this hellish place, but something tells me you’ve been the odd one out your entire life, Katy, just like I have. A strange duck can spy a fellow traveler from a mile off. Am I wrong?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve been the weird one my whole life. You’ve hit the nail right on the head there.”
“So…” She waves her hand again. “The facts of the case.”
Obviously, I can’t give her the actual facts of me and Sam. Instead, I quickly give her a watered-down version. I tell her I met him through a friend of a friend, and we’ve mostly been texting. “But I know he’s the one for me.”
Stacy frowns. “How do you know that, dear?”
“I just… How do you know the sky is blue? You look up. It’s there. It’s a fact. That’s exactly how I feel about this.” I’m getting defensive without meaning to. I think it’s the gleam in her eyes. I can tell what she’s thinking. “I’m not just some immature, gullible moron.”
She places a hand on her chest, crumpling her work shirt slightly. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t need to,” I snap. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“Well…you hardly know this man. You’re young. Your body is full of teenage chemicals. I don’t think you know what you want.”
I almost snap again, but then somebody sits at the adjacent table, close to us. I make an effort to lower my voice. “You don’t know me. How can you say that?”
“At your age, can you really say you know yourself?”
I start packing away the Tupperware and wrapping I brought my sandwich in. I’m doing it way too aggressively, angrily scrunching the Saran wrap as if I want her to know how pissed her tone is making me.
“I’ve been through a lot,” I say. “By the age of fifteen, hell, I was more mature than everybody in my school.”
“Maybe you think tha—”
“No.” I look at her seriously. “I know it, and I know something else, too. I never should’ve told a stranger any of this. You’ll never understand. Maybe nobody will.” My voice gets louder. I can sense people looking in our direction. “And that’s fine. If the world wants to judge, if people think they know everything about us when they learn our ages, fine. I don’t care because I know I want him, and I know he wants me, too.”
