Slightly Settled (21 page)

“You, too.”

Suddenly I feel underdressed in my jeans and long-sleeved
T-shirt and socks. Granted, I’m just sitting on the couch, and she probably hasn’t changed since work. But I didn’t look anywhere near that put-together at work today, either.

Dianne is wearing a navy-and-green plaid wool suit that sounds ugly but looks great, and she has on sheer navy hose and navy pumps that match perfectly. Her gold jewelry is real. I know this because Jack told me; he said she picks it out and Mike buys it for her. I also happen to know that his credit cards are almost maxed out and he’s always broke because he spends every penny of his salary on Dianne.

“So I guess you got over that breakup, huh, Tracey?” she asks.

“Um, yeah.”

“That’s great.” She smiles. “I mean, just a few weeks ago you were heartbroken, and now look. You have Jack.”

“Yeah.” I can’t look at him. I don’t want to see his reaction to the fact that I “have” him. A lot of guys don’t want to be “had.” Doesn’t Dianne know that?

“What are you two doing for Christmas?” Dianne asks, all friendly.

Who two?

She’s looking at me.

We two?
As in, me and Jack?

She can’t be serious. Does she actually assume we’re spending the holidays together?

“I’m going upstate to visit my parents,” I tell her.

Jack remains silent, other than crunching some Chinese noodles.

“Is Jack going with you?” Dianne wants to know.

I look at Mike. He’s busy hanging up his coat.

I look at Jack.

He smiles pleasantly, crunching some more noodles.

“No,” I tell Dianne. “He, uh…”

What the hell am I supposed to say? I don’t even know what he’s doing for Christmas. Should I ask him to come home with me?

My parents would freak out. They think Christmas is for family.
Only
family. The year before Sara and Joey got engaged, they didn’t even want him to bring her to my grandmother’s for our Christmas Eve fish dinner. I can’t show up with some guy from New York I’ve been dating for two weeks.

Jack saves me by saying, “I’m going skiing with my family in Colorado over Christmas, Dianne. I could have sworn I told you that.”

“Did you? I guess I forgot.” She yawns. “Well, good night, everyone. Come on, Mike.”

He trails after her obediently.

“I told you,” Jack says, as soon as they leave the room. “She’s a—”

“Shh!”

He shrugs and grabs another handful of noodles.

Only when I hear the door close down the hall do I say, still in a whisper, “She’s not that bad.”

“She’s a bitch on wheels.”

“I didn’t think she seemed bitchy. She was making conversation.”

“She was being nosy. Why does she care what you’re doing for Christmas? Every time I bring somebody home, she puts them through the third degree.”

Okay, I know I’m not the first girl he’s had in his apart
ment, but I don’t really appreciate feeling like one in a constant parade.

Jack sees my expression and adds hastily, “Not that I bring people home much. Not lately, anyway.”

“Because of Dianne?”

“No. Because it’s been a while since I met somebody I wanted to spend much time with,” he says, putting his arm around me.

He pulls me close and kisses me.

Then he says, “So you told me you went through a breakup, but you didn’t mention that you were really heartbroken.”

“Aren’t breakups always heartbreaking?” I ask.

“Not necessarily.” He shrugs. “My last few weren’t.”

“Were you the dumper, or the dumpee?”

“The dumper.”

“Right. Only the dumpee gets their heart broken.”

“I take it you were the dumpee.”

I make a face. “Yeah. Can we talk about something else?”

“How about if we don’t talk at all?” he asks, and leans over to kiss me again.

The next morning, I get up extra early to take a shower while Jack packs for his business trip. I fully intend to be out of here before Mike and Dianne get up.

I packed a bag before I came last night, so this time, I have my own toothbrush, underwear and two towels I brought along just in case.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door as I’m combing through my wet hair.

“Yeah?” I ask in a hushed tone, assuming it’s Jack.

It’s not. It’s Dianne, and she sounds aggravated.

“Can you hurry up in there? I have an early meeting, and I’ve been waiting for ten minutes.”

“Oh! I’m really sorry. I’ll be right out.”

“Thanks.”

I listen for her footsteps to retreat back down the hall, but they don’t.

Which means she’s standing there, waiting for me to come out.

Which means she wants me out now.

I had planned to get dressed first, to avoid a replay of last week’s disaster. But I don’t want to piss her off even further by making her wait, so I hurriedly grab my stuff, wrap one of my towels securely around my body and the other around my hair, and open the door.

Sure enough, Dianne is standing there, practically tapping her foot.

“Good morning,” I say sweetly.

“Good morning,” she says tartly.

“It’s all yours.”

“Thanks.”

I tread cautiously down the hall toward Jack’s room.

“Oh, and Tracey,” she calls after me.

“Yeah?”

“Not to be a pain or anything, but you should really only use one towel when you take a shower here. In case you haven’t noticed, these guys are short on towels and they don’t do laundry very often.”

I open my mouth to tell her they’re my own towels, but the bathroom door has already closed behind her with a click.

Bitch, I think.

Jack is taking a car service to JFK, so I’ll have to ride to midtown myself today—unless I want to hang out and wait for Mike and Dianne.

Which I don’t.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Jack tells me. “I’ll call you as soon as I land. If I get in on time, we can get dinner before the show.”

Right. The show.

Tell him.

“Sounds perfect.” That’s what I tell him.

After all, I invited him first.

And I really want to take him.

The thing with Buckley was…well, it was just an experiment. Not that I’m not attracted to him, and not that I want to hurt him….

Crap.

I don’t want to hurt him.

But I don’t want to hurt Jack, either.

And most of all, I don’t want to hurt me.

As I stand there shivering in the icy morning air, watching Jack wave out the back window of a black Town Car as it pulls away, I realize that I’ve got a big decision to make in the next twenty-four hours.

No matter which way I go, a great guy is going to get hurt.

Thank God I have my weekly appointment with Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum after work. I know she won’t tell me what I should do, but maybe it’ll help to talk to somebody—even if she doesn’t talk back, damn her.

“Good morning, Tracey,” Merry says, sticking her head into my cube an hour later. “Did you bring your dish to pass?”

“Dish to pass?” I look up from my fat-free muffin, which is dry and flavorless—unless you count the chemical after-taste—as fat-free muffins always seem to be.

“For the potluck.”

Welcome to Kansas, Dorothy.

“What potluck, Merry?”

“The Secret Snowflake luncheon at noon,” Merry says. “Did you forget?”

“That’s today? I thought it was tomorrow.”

“We had to change it because the Creatives needed the tenth-floor conference room and there was nothing else available. But the caterer wanted to charge extra to make it a day earlier so we decided to make it a potluck instead. I wrote it all in the e-mail.”

“I didn’t get it.”

“So you didn’t bring something to pass?” She looks around my office like she expects to see a covered dish peering out from under a stack of folders.

“I don’t usually bring casseroles to work just for the hell of it, Merry.”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be a casserole. I’m not bringing a casserole.”

“What are you bringing?”

“I made a goose and a
bûche de Noël.
”

Part of me would love to know where the hell one finds a goose in postmillennial Manhattan and what the hell a
bûche de Noël
even
is
, but another part of me just wants Merry to get the fuck out of my cube.

That’s the part that snarls, “Well, I can’t make it to the potluck today.”

The nicer part of me adds, “Sorry.”

“But…it’s mandatory.”

“No, it isn’t, Merry.”

“Yes, it is, Tracey.”

“Let me guess. There’s a list of Secret Snowflake bylaws, but somebody forgot to e-mail that to me, too?”

“You really don’t have to get all snippy.”

Yes, I really do.

Because I’m not in the mood for any of this. I’ve got two tickets to Radio City tomorrow night and two dates, and if that isn’t more important than a potluck luncheon, I don’t know what is.

I glare at Merry, hoping she’ll get the hint and leave.

She doesn’t.

I glare harder and send her a telepathic message.

Just back out of the cube slowly and nobody gets hurt, see?

She doesn’t get that, either.

“Tracey, you really have to come to the luncheon,” she says. “It’s—”

“If you say mandatory one more time,” I say, wagging my finger in her face like a wise-ass street punk, missing only a bandanna, a switchblade and a vocabulary dotted with Yo’s, “I’m going to…”

What
am
I going to do?

I’d like to smush my fat-free muffin into her face, at the very least. But I’ve never been in a girl fight in my life, and I can’t start now.

For one thing, it’s a safe bet that beating up a co-worker is grounds for termination.

For another, it would probably get back to Jack, and something tells me wise-ass street punks aren’t his type.

“Hey, Chief, what’s going on?”

I look up to see Mike looming in the doorway behind Merry.

It’s hard to believe that I once thought the
Chief
thing was cute. Now I think if I hear that one more time, I’ll have to smush my fat-free muffin in Mike’s face, too.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, looking from me to Merry.

“Mike, please tell her that there’s no such thing as a mandatory Secret Snowflake luncheon,” I say.

Mike blinks. “The Secret Snowflake luncheon isn’t mandatory?”

“It is,” Merry says.

“Yeah, just like the Secret Snowflake thing was mandatory.”

“It
is
,” she repeats.

“Then why am I the only one in my whole department who was suckered into doing it?”

“I did it, too,” Mike says.

Oh.

Well, clearly, Merry and her committee prey on new employees who don’t know any better.

“I thought it was mandatory, too,” Mike says.

“It is,” Merry says for the third time. This time, she adds, “In a way.”

Mike and I exchange a glance.

“I can’t go to the luncheon today,” I inform Merry again.

“Then I guess you’ll never find out who your Secret Snowflake is,” she says primly, folding her arms.

She doesn’t say
So There,
but she might as well.

I don’t roll my eyes, either, but I might as well.

“It’s probably better that way,” I tell her, “because if I found out who my Snowflake is, I’d probably just want to
ask her why the hell she spent all that money on me. I’d tell her how shitty it made me feel, getting gifts that cost at least ten times what I was spending on my own Snowflake every—”

That’s when I catch the expression on Mike’s face.

And in that terrible instant, my Secret Snowflake’s identity becomes crystal-clear.

The day started off badly, and it goes rapidly downhill after the Secret Snowflake hullabaloo.

Merry beat a hasty retreat out of my office, and I wished Mike would follow her, but he didn’t.

Instead he stayed to apologize—repeatedly—for showering me with extravagant gifts.

He told me that it was all Dianne’s idea. Apparently, she felt sorry for me because I didn’t have a boyfriend this Christmas.

She was the one who suggested that Mike pass along some of the gifts he gets from magazines and television stations.