With Love, from Cold World, page 13
He carried a ladder from the utility closet into the Snow Globe, crushing its legs down into the snow to try to stabilize it before climbing up and carefully setting the snow machine on top. He didn’t love the way the extension cord was stretched across to the back wall, but it would have to do for now until he saw if this could be rigged up more permanently.
Holding his breath, he clicked the on switch.
Nothing. Not even a reluctant churn to suggest the machine had turned on and was trying to work.
He clicked the switch back to the off position, counting to five in his head before flicking it back on. As though that would make any difference. The machine still didn’t even make a sound.
“Fuck!” He clenched his fists, but he stopped just short of shaking the ladder in frustration. Breaking the machine further wouldn’t do anything, even if it was already busted to begin with.
He just wanted something to go right for once.
“What are you doing?”
Lauren’s voice from behind him almost made him fall off the ladder. He squared his shoulders and steadied himself before he climbed down and faced her.
“Nothing,” he said. “Any word from Daniel?”
“It’s only been fifteen minutes.”
“Oh. Right.” He ran his hand through his hair, and she tracked the motion. There was an odd, tense beat where she just stood there, hugging her arms around herself against the cold. She’d put on her usual cardigan over the red dress, a drab shroud over the vibrant color, and he found himself wishing she’d take it off. Not just because he wanted to see her bare shoulders again—although he had to admit that was part of it—but because he liked the idea that she might not always have to be buttoned up and hidden away around him.
Of course, that was ridiculous. She was cold. She’d put on her sweater. They were barely friends, not much more than colleagues. There was no reason to read anything more into it than that.
“So why are you here?” he asked. It came out harsher than he’d intended, but then, he couldn’t help but flash back to her words earlier that day. She’d told him to stop, and that was what he’d vowed to do. No more mentioning working together, either as a joke or in seriousness, no more pestering her for information, no more teasing her, no more trying to spend time with her outside of work.
Being trapped inside Cold World with her was really going to complicate matters.
“You’re trying to get it to snow.”
Not an answer to his question, but clearly as close as he was going to get. He gestured futilely toward the ladder. “I thought I’d found a way to rig something up, but if the machine wasn’t a dud before, it definitely is now that I’ve tinkered with it. It wouldn’t even turn on.”
Her gaze followed the extension cord stretched across the space. He expected a lecture on safety, but eventually she just said, “Maybe it’s the outlet.”
“Ha,” he said, giving the word a sarcastic bite. “Yeah. I found the one outlet in Cold World that doesn’t actually have any electricity running through it.”
“The wiring is old,” she said. “An electrician is supposed to come out in January. Dolores is worried some of it won’t pass next year’s inspection.”
“Well, the more likely explanation is that I’m just a fuckup. That’s what you think anyway, right?”
This type of reaction wasn’t like him. He tried to let things roll off his back, tried to take life as one big joke. There was no point in getting worked up about what people thought of you, or petty bullshit drama. It was what allowed him to have an easy relationship with everyone he knew—his coworkers, his housemates. Everyone but his parents, and that wasn’t something he gave much thought to. Letting those thoughts intrude was a surefire way to get him out of whatever flow state he tried to achieve with his life.
“Have you eaten?” he asked suddenly. A stupid question, probably, given that she’d been expecting to eat dinner with Daniel and Dolores and their family. But he didn’t want to give her time to respond to his last comment, didn’t want to risk getting into an actual conversation about all the ways he’d let people down.
She paused, and for a minute he didn’t think she’d let him off the hook that easily. She still seemed unsettled, small in her giant cardigan, framed by the slushy snow beneath her feet and the blue door to the Snow Globe at her back. But eventually she shrugged and said, “I was going to grab something from the vending machines.”
“Nah,” he said. “We can do better than that. Follow me.”
* * *
• • •
Since cold world was housed in a converted warehouse, there weren’t any windows except for the glass doors that provided the main entrance. It would’ve almost been easy to forget that they were there so late at night, except that it was eerie to walk around the dimly lit space, the only sound the hum of the air conditioning and the dull thud of their own footsteps. Asa led Lauren to the hot chocolate stand near the entrance of Wonderland Walk, ducking under the counter to see what was available in the mini refrigerators stored below.
“We can’t eat that stuff,” Lauren said. “It’s inventory.”
“I’m not completely lawless,” Asa said, rummaging through the wrapped sandwiches until he found two of the best one—a basic ham and cheese that was nonetheless way better than the caprese, which tasted like vomit even when warmed up. “I’m planning to pay for them.”
“The register’s already been cashed out.”
Asa pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it before opening a new note to type in. “Two sandwiches, seven ninety-eight apiece. Do you want me to pop yours in the microwave?”
“Closer to eight fifty after sales tax,” Lauren said, eyeing the sandwich he’d placed on the counter with a dubious expression. “For ham and cheese? That’s an expensive sandwich.”
“Cold World knows if you’re desperate enough to need real food at a place like this, you’re going to pay a hefty premium.” He set two bottled waters next to the sandwiches on the counter, and made a show of typing the totals for both into his phone. “And here’s us, the most desperate of all.”
There was a small seating area just inside the entrance to Wonderland Walk, with a few white-painted wrought iron tables and chairs, barely big enough to fit two people each. On a normal, semibusy day, it was impossible to get seating there, since families would push tables together and hang out for a while. But now, with no one around, Asa pulled out a chair to one of the tables, gesturing for Lauren to take a seat.
She hesitated a minute before accepting the proffered chair. “Thank you—” she started, then did a double take when he took a seat at the next table over. “Wait, aren’t you going to—”
“You made it very clear earlier today that you wanted me to stop coming around,” he said, unwrapping his sandwich from its plastic. “Unless you’re willing to set off the alarm and summon Dolores, I can’t control our current predicament. But I figured your direction to stop did not include me sitting across a dollhouse tea table from you.”
Besides which, sitting at the same table would make this feel an awful lot like a date. He’d offered to pay for the food. She was all dressed up, a detail he was too conscious of, even as he reminded himself of the person she’d actually dressed up for in the first place. Daniel. Who might be arriving at any minute to rescue Lauren from this situation, if she had anything to do with it.
She frowned down at her own sandwich but made no move to open it yet. “These tables are ridiculously small,” she said. “Maybe Cold World needs a bigger eating area.”
Asa had his mouth full by that point but tilted his head in what he hoped was the universal expression of Yeah, probably, but where would we find the room?
They ate in silence for a few minutes, until eventually Lauren took a big gulp of her water, screwing the cap back on with such deliberate determination that Asa knew she was gearing up to say something else. He found himself tensing, waiting for whatever it might be.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, still looking at her bottled water instead of at him. “I shouldn’t have said all of that stuff about you needing to mind your own business and . . . everything else. The truth is that I was frustrated. You said you had an idea for your proposal, and Daniel had just finished telling me his idea, which was—” She shook her head, but he couldn’t tell if the gesture meant that Daniel’s idea was bad, or just that she wasn’t going to reveal it. He hoped the former.
“Honestly I have zero idea what I’m going to propose to Dolores,” Lauren said, lifting her gaze to his. “Not a clue. I thought something might occur to me while I was running the report for Daniel, but I’m still drawing a complete blank. Then I thought maybe I’d get inspiration from talking to Dolores tonight, but . . .”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence. Obviously, that ship had sailed.
“If anything, I’m more stumped than I was before,” she said. “I was looking back through past years’ financials, before I even started at Cold World, hoping I could spot some trends that would tell me the right direction to go in. But the only trend I saw was that our profits are down. Like, way down.”
This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Just from looking around, Asa could see evidence that things weren’t quite as they used to be. Minor signs of wear and tear that weren’t rushed to be fixed, understaffing during their off season, employee perks that had been gradually phased out. Nothing huge. And the business was old—Dolores had been running it a long time, and things had stagnated. It was presumably the reason she’d come up with her request for proposals to give the place a makeover.
But the way Lauren said those words—way down—made it sound more serious. He couldn’t tell if that was due to her propensity to worry, or if the situation really looked that dire.
He was working up the nerve to ask when his phone rang. “Hey, Kiki,” he said into the phone.
“Where are you? You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m still here. I’m actually—”
When he glanced over at Lauren, she was shaking her head emphatically, her eyes wide and stricken. It wasn’t hard to read her body language, and he pivoted quickly to avoid telling Kiki she was there. “It’s going to take longer than I thought,” he said. “Don’t bother waiting for me. And don’t tell John, but I saw a spoiler online so I already know the elimination and it’s—”
“La la la,” Kiki sang childishly into the phone. “I’m not listening.”
He grinned. “I was going to say it’s totally unexpected. You won’t see it coming.”
“Well, now I will! Because you told me not to expect it! That’s basically the same thing as a full-out spoiler.”
“Oh, then you won’t mind if I—”
She hung up on him. That didn’t bother him—he knew he’d deserved it. He typed a quick message into the group chat just to confirm that no one should wait up for him because he didn’t know how late he’d be. When he glanced back up, Lauren was watching him.
“Don’t want anyone to know you’re here with me, huh?” he asked.
She tugged the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand, fiddling with a loose piece of yarn around the frayed edge. “Kiki helped me get ready for tonight. I just didn’t want her knowing it didn’t work out.”
Of course. Now Asa remembered the reference Kiki had made to Lauren borrowing and returning her dress, and she must’ve loaned it out again to Lauren for this date with Daniel. The idea of Lauren at his house, doing her makeup and fixing her hair, giddy with excitement about spending time with Daniel, assessing herself in the mirror and wondering what he would think . . .
Under the table, Asa curled his hands into fists, then released them. “What is it about Daniel, anyway?”
He hadn’t meant to ask the question. It had just popped out. For one thing, he adamantly didn’t care to hear her extol his virtues. For another, he already had a fair idea of what they were—Daniel was conventionally handsome and had all the outward markers of success. He was a businessman. He’d probably never had a single job that restricted when he could use the bathroom, for christ’s sake, whereas Asa had spent the last ten years counting out his federally mandated fifteen-minute breaks.
She’d finished her sandwich, the cling wrap folded into a neat square on the table in front of her. “He’s close with his mom, for one thing,” she said. “And I love Dolores.”
Daniel worked for his mom—that didn’t necessarily mean he was close with her. Asa got the impression that Daniel’s main connection in life was to himself. But maybe he was being unnecessarily harsh, given that if one of Lauren’s key attributes in a potential partner was close with family, that would eliminate Asa from the running.
Not that he wanted to be in the running.
“That’s it?” Asa prompted. “He has a good relationship with his mother?”
She shot him a glare. “No,” she said. “He also happens to be extremely . . .”
She appeared to be struggling to come up with the word, so he tried to help her out. “Boring? Arrogant? Dismissive? Rude?”
“You don’t even know him!”
“And you do?”
She opened her mouth but shut it again, and he couldn’t hide his satisfied smirk.
“He also happens to be extremely sexy!” she burst out. “I’m not oblivious, okay? I know a guy like that would never look at someone like me. I know we’re not going to get married and have kids and live in a big house with a mother-in-law apartment for Dolores. But he’s an attractive guy who was finally paying me some attention, so sue me if I wanted to just see where it could go.”
Her eyes were bright, and he had the uncomfortable feeling she was close to tears. When he’d started down this line of questioning, he hadn’t thought she’d take it as an attack. He’d thought it was clear that his issues were with Daniel, and nothing to do with her. But then, maybe that was the problem—he hadn’t really thought this through at all.
“Lauren—” he said.
She stood up, pushing her chair back, and gathered the remnants of her dinner. “Thanks for the sandwich,” she said. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
She chucked her folded cling wrap and crumpled napkin into the nearest garbage can and headed in the direction of the front office.
If he’d needed a reminder that what they were doing was not a date, he guessed he’d gotten it.
Chapter
Eleven
Normally spreadsheets were Lauren’s happy place. She loved formatting the columns to right-align all the numbers, loved dragging the cursor down to copy a formula to each cell, loved sorting the data in different permutations and seeing how it looked. She wouldn’t have necessarily chosen to be at work at eleven o’clock at night playing with Excel, but it was far from the worst time she could come up with.
Now, she wasn’t even finding comfort in work routines. She was tired, and saying all the wrong things, and forced to confront what had to be obvious to everyone else. It was definitely obvious to Asa.
Daniel wasn’t coming. Tonight hadn’t been a date—it had barely been a dinner between colleagues. He’d wanted her to bring him some paperwork like she was his secretary, and then she would’ve sat awkwardly around a table with a bunch of strangers who were eager to catch up with each other, not her.
Ugh. And she’d called Daniel sexy in front of Asa. She felt like she could burst into flames of embarrassment.
She wondered how she was going to sleep tonight. Maybe if she folded her arms on her desk and laid her head down on top of them . . .
She was trying it out when a soft knock came at the door, and she jerked up straight so fast she sent her chair rolling backward.
“You look like me in high school,” Asa said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Always sleeping in class.”
He set a lidded paper cup on her desk. “Truce hot chocolate,” he said. “I didn’t know if you drank caffeine this late, or I would’ve made you your usual black battery acid.”
She reached for the cup. It was warm under her fingertips, and that alone was surprisingly comforting. She took a tentative sip, trying not to grimace. She didn’t normally like hot chocolate, but it was such a surprisingly sweet gesture, she didn’t want to ruin the moment.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sorry I overreacted. Again.”
“Not an overreaction,” he said, leaning against her desk. “You feel how you feel. And I was pushing your buttons on purpose. It’s one of my least attractive qualities, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
“Well.” Lauren felt a little disarmed by the fact that he’d so easily capitulated. By now, she expected the teasing, the jokes, the way he got under her skin. She was more surprised when he backed off, or apologized, or seemed to actually notice and care about the effect his teasing might have on her. She waved to her computer monitor, the list next to her keyboard. “I’m overly rigid and don’t like not being in control. Some of my least attractive qualities, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
“Quite a pair, aren’t we?” He smiled at her, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. But then he slid her list closer to him, and she thought she must’ve imagined that brief sadness that had passed over his face.
“What’s with the numbering, by the way?” he asked, running his finger down the margin of the page. “They’re not in order.”
She grabbed for the notepad, but he’d already lifted it to hold it in his lap, and she wasn’t going there. It was bad enough that his thigh was less than a foot away from where she usually placed her hands on the home keys. He was wearing jeans, the denim soft and worn, and she felt like she could feel the heat emanating from him sitting this close. She tried to look up at him but felt vulnerable from that angle; she couldn’t stare straight ahead or she’d risk looking right at his crotch. Eventually she settled for watching her own hands, knotting and unknotting in her lap.
