A Previous Engagement (13 page)

“Because,” said Rachel pointedly. I pressed my ear to the stall door, simultaneously ashamed and enthralled. “Girls don’t make friends with guys like Christian. Unless there’s something wrong with them. He’s hot. H-O-T. And if he’s really all these things that you describe, and
not
afraid of commitment, then there’s something else at play here.”

“They’ve been friends forever.” Savannah actually defended us.

“But there must’ve been something there at some point. Maybe they did it in the back seat of his car after prom or something. Or on spring break in college. They’ve done it, Savannah, and it didn’t work out. Or else, your perfect man is a leper.”

I wanted to leap from this stall and beat Rachel to a bloody pulp for making Savannah paranoid. She needed to
stay
with Christian, not to run away screaming like all the other girls intimidated by our relationship. Friends. We were just friends.

Savannah laughed. “Come on, Rachel. There’s nothing there. I’m pretty sure about that.” She laughed again, confidence ringing in every note. What, exactly, made her so sure? Shouldn’t she have at least a little bit of doubt? A nagging concern? An annoying inkling? Another euphemism for a suspicion?

“Okay, maybe Tess is a lesbo. I heard her sister is…Do you think that’s hereditary?” After a pause, during which I heard Savannah’s jewelry jingle a shaking of her head, Rachel continued. “Then how do you know they don’t have a history?”

“You really want to know?” She exhaled deeply. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but… okay. I asked him myself, all right? He said no. Actually he said ‘There’s not a chance in hell that’s ever going to happen. Not now.’ Just like that.”

I listened, horrified, as Savannah changed the subject to handbags. The two girls used the stalls themselves, washed their hands, and left together while Rachel told this weekend’s “in the sack” story. Long after the giggles faded down the hallway, I realized I was still pressed against the door, resting my head there for support, one hand over my heart

I should’ve been relieved that Savannah wasn’t going to buy into any bullshit claims that Christian and I “had a thing,” or were ever a truly serious item. She saw us the way we’d always portrayed ourselves: friends who love each other very much and have a special bond, but nothing more. Nothing kinky, no friends-with-benefits scenario. Just friends, like Kendra and I were friends, like Christian and Grant were friends. In that portrayal, I was either a lesbian or completely repulsive, according to other people. Good to know.

If Savannah was finally the one girl unaffected by us, I really should have exhaled a big
sigh of relief and gone about the rest of my day. Instead, I was crying. Alone, in a bathroom stall, sitting on a dirty toilet seat in my nice pants. At work.

CHAPTER NINE

I have to admit that it took a little while to peel my butt off the bathroom floor and go about my business. From there, it took another couple of days to get my shit together. Pardon my French. I guess Savannah’s conversation struck a nerve, or something, but I had too many people counting on me to let a few words of gossip fry my chicken. So back to work I went, without stopping to reflect on whether I was happy about that or not.

Of course, going about my business was no small task, considering that Savannah dating Christian turned both my work life and my personal life upside-down. Most days, I was unaffected, but as the deadline for our publication came nearer and nearer, I kinda wanted to throttle her.

The trick was to learn how to keep
Savannah from Work
and
Savannah, Christian’s Girlfriend
separated in my head. A difficult task since she seemed to want to talk about work while hanging out with my friends and, conversely, talk about Christian when we were at work. I stayed quiet until she’d squashed my last ounce of patience. Then one day, in the middle of a lengthy discussion between Savannah and our intern Claudine about what celebrity most resembled Christian, I finally had enough.

“It’s like, if you took Brad Pitt—like, the hair and like, his general—I don’t know…” Savannah trailed off, mindlessly highlighting numbers on a spreadsheet.

“His maleness?” Claudine jumped in. I rolled my eyes, pretending not to hear them and, you know, actually do my work. “Swagger?”

“Swagger…hmmm, maybe. Tess, what do you think? Brad Pitt’s hair and swagger, Robert Downey, Jr.’s eyes?”

I looked up from my proof copy of
Prime of Your Life
and raised my eyebrows at her. I did not want to ream her out in front of the other staff members, so I just quietly shook my head at her.

“Christian’s eyes are blue,” I said, putting an effective punctuation mark on the topic. The conversation shifted back to more pressing, work-related issues and I waited until all the interns went to lunch before I spoke up.

“There has to be a line here, Savannah.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, head hung low. “I’m just so crazy about him, Tess.”

My stomach rolled. “That’s fine. And…I’m happy for you both. But here, in these walls, we’re working and Christian doesn’t exist unless he walks through that door—” I pointed to the exit with one long straight arm and made contact with a solid, male body.

“Ouch, Tessie!” Christian rubbed his left shoulder, where I’d poked him with my sharp, neglected fingernail. What woman has time to file when she’s big and important? “Ready for lunch, baby?”

Super. Having Christian on the premises—and
not
visiting me—only made the problem worse. I let her go to lunch early to spare myself further exposure to the happy duo. Of course, it didn’t stop there; it permeated every aspect of my life. Savannah was now included in nearly everything we did together, making us a five-some once more. Savannah & Christian, which sounded like a new brand of high-end cosmetics if you asked me, had become an inseparable entity. Kendra wanted to call them “Savistian” and Grant preferred “Christannah.” Anyway, whatever-you-want-to-call-them had already made appearances at an impromptu movie night at my house, a playground trip with Riley, and a small anniversary dinner for Kendra and Grant. Savannah had started quietly moving in on our events and traditions, very stealthily too. I almost didn’t realize she was there sometimes, until I’d say something to Christian and she’d laugh louder than everyone else. Suffocating in the sheer perfectness of it all, I needed to learn how to adjust.

“She’s nice,” Kendra analyzed over the Cheer-Up Cheesecake she brought me one Tuesday. She did these things for Christian and me when she thought we could use a boost. She always seemed to know when to pull out that baking pan. “I really like her teeth.”

“What?”

“She has really white, straight teeth. It’s impressive,” she scooped a forkful of cheesecake into her mouth, then kept talking around it. “Must’ve cost her parents a fortune.”

“Perfect dental work aside,” I swallowed my own mouthful. “What do you think of her? You know, now that you’ve had a chance to get to know her. It’s hard for me to judge because I already knew her before they started dating.”

“Well, at least she’s not Marcy.”

“Her eyebrows aren’t
that
perfect.”

“No one’s are. Nor should they be,” Kendra proclaimed, another forkful aimed at her mouth.

Also unlike Marcy, Savannah actually seemed to enjoy spending time with us. She wasn’t threatened by me either, which was an overwhelming plus even if it did irk me, and she absolutely adored little Riley. Any day now, I was going to get bumped as Christian’s official babysitting partner. Let Christian and Savannah play house all they want. I’ve got too much work on my plate to be worried about these things right now. Besides, no matter how many times Riley asked Savannah to play “gucks” with him, she couldn’t replace me as his godmother—at least I still had that going for me.

We finished our slices of cheesecake in a handful of bites and I kicked back the end of my coffee. When our plates were scraped clean and loaded into the dishwasher, Kendra gave me a hug. “Feel better now?”

“Yeah, I do,” I lied, smiling from ear to ear.

“No you don’t,” she shook her head, wrapping up the leftovers to store in my fridge. “But thank you for pretending. What’s gotten in to you lately, anyway? Is work as bad as Savannah says?”

Savannah had been regaling them all with tales about Marty and the office that I normally would have told. I should have been irritated that she took over my territory, but I was actually glad to be spared reliving my workday for an audience. As she talked, I tuned out, watching Christian’s every response to her and the way Grant squeezed Kendra’s hand in wordless affection.

Being with two couples all the time got my brain thinking strange things as I sat in my solo-occupancy armchair and watched them interact. At the end of the day, I guess a job can’t give you a hug or ask how your day was. It certainly didn’t cuddle with you when you watched a movie or take care of you when you were ill. Jobs were great when you were at work, but left much to be desired once you stepped out of the office.

“It’s all right,” I grimaced. “It’ll get better soon. Once this publication is off and running, my workload will lessen and I’ll have an actual staff to run it. For now, most of the work rests snuggly on my shoulders. But what about you? You’ve been a little weird yourself.”

It hadn’t been lost on me that Kendra was acting a bit odd. Excusing herself to the bathroom at her dinner a month ago, falling asleep on every couch she saw, and passing on any and all alcoholic beverages, even at Birch’s after hours.

“Oh, you know, just lots of stuff going on.”

“Like a baby growing inside of you? That kind of stuff?”

For a moment, she looked at me, stunned. Then she shrugged. “Let’s just say I have no comment on the topic.” I couldn’t blame her for being so discreet about it, given that she’d suffered two miscarriages before Riley. Waiting three months to make the announcement was a practical choice, except where I was involved.

I tried to play it cool, even though I wanted to jump up and down cheering. “Well,” I said as calmly as possible under the circumstances. “When you’re ready, lay it on me. Until then, I’ll be secretly rooting for you both.”

We hugged, she left beaming, and I smiled back at her. I straightened the cushions on the couch, ran the vacuum over the immaculate carpet, cleaned out the fridge, and ran the empty Tupperware through the dishwasher. I scrubbed the counters down and microwaved my Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatballs dinner for one. It wasn’t gourmet, but it was good enough. Honestly, I was just happy it didn’t catch on fire. I fell into my nightly routine easily, my thoughts drifting away from Christian’s new romance or Kendra’s new baby on the way. No, that night, my thoughts stayed strictly on myself and the life choices I’d made.

Back before life at Prime, I’d boasted my own fair share of dates. Technically, I counted Rich Cusack as my first “real” boyfriend, during my junior year of high school. He was a senior with a reputation for roaming hands, one he quickly lived up to at the end of our first date. After a brief three dates with Rich, I moved on to date other types of guys, nerds and jocks alike. I was never really sure what I expected from a guy, or from a relationship. Although some of my relationships were more passionate than others, they were all marked by their brevity. Once I decided a guy wasn’t right for me, I ended it and kept the drama to a minimum.

As I started to advance into the more complicated levels of my business courses and discovered my love for marketing, I started dating less and less. I replaced my fervor for finding the right companion with a passion for consumer behavior, focus groups, and marketing analytics. The closer I got to my career, the farther I got from my personal life.

I’d never really thought about it from this perspective before. In the thick of things, I couldn’t see the subtle progressions. Nearly ten years out of school, I wondered if everyone thought I’d just given up on my love life and changed directions to avoid it. Working at Prime was never about avoiding what I didn’t want, it was about going after what I thought I did.

Sinking into my leather couch, with nothing left recorded on my DVR, I flipped through the channels to see what was on. Baby shows, wedding shows, home-buying shows, and a
Who’s the Boss
marathon. Also, an infomercial for the Bow Flex. It was like the television gods—or high-powered marketing execs—were trying to send me a message: have babies, get married, buy a house, and exercise. And oh yeah, the quality of your life would be vastly improved with a daily dose of Tony Danza.

A few more clicks of the remote and I located an old episode of
The Bachelor
. The season’s bachelor—some tall, dark and handsome guy with a dimple—doled out roses to his remaining prospective girlfriends. He called a name, handed her a rose, and kissed her cheek. These girls lined up to get picked to
maybe
be with this guy for the long-term. They’d reached a point in their lives where a single rose was enough to fuel the fires for a few days, keep their hope of love and happily-ever-after alive.

It made me really, really sad for them. But it also made me feel really, really lonely… because even that half-wilted rose was much more than I had.