Just You. Jane Lark
my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket, I walked out.
When I reached Starbucks, a block away from the office, Portia was in the line.
I walked up and joined her.
“Hey.”
She looked at me and turned red again. “Hey.” She looked away, like she was looking at something else. Anything else––as long as she didn’t have to look at me.
“You eating?”
She shook her head, her chin and her nose tilting up, like I was a bad smell, or something else disgusting.
The girl was not a great eater. She was always on the latest celeb diet. But she wasn’t overweight.
Whatever, I decided to buy her a ginger muffin. I knew she liked ginger. For the last three weeks, the smell of her seasonal ginger latte had hung around the office when I’d walked into the office in the morning.
The guy looked over to take my order. She must have given hers already. “Black coffee, two ginger muffins, and one of those pepperoni things, heated.”
The guy nodded at me and headed off to put it all on, to cut the line.
We moved along, not speaking.
When we got to the cash register, she reached for her purse …
“I’ll get it.” It was the manly thing to do, but when I took my wallet out, her fingers rested over my hand.
“No, it’s okay, you don’t have to.”
“It’s okay. I want to.” My answer was probably sharper than it should’ve been, but I was starting to get a little pissed. I may have a millionth of the money her family did, but I could afford to buy her a coffee.
I really didn’t think I was so bad. Maybe I was thick skinned––but I did have some pride.
She picked up her drink and left the rest for me to carry on a tray. She moved right to the back, probably to avoid anyone in the office seeing us together through the window.
Such a glowing assessment of my performance New Year’s Eve. She obviously hadn’t had as much fun as I had, although she’d seemed to be enjoying it at the time.
I slipped into the chair opposite her and lifted one of the muffins off the tray. “For you, eat it or don’t eat it, whatever.”
Her blue eyes, that were mid-gray in reality but reflected blue, glanced down at the plate and then up at me. She bit her lip then opened her mouth as if she was going to speak, her expression hardening. She shut it again, turning pink, saying nothing, and then gripped her cup with both hands and looked down.
The girl looked meek. When had I ever seen Portia look meek before? Never. Her arrogance was cringing. Her blush no doubt expressed the shame this preppy, society girl felt over slumming it with me.
“Portia, you asked me here to talk?” My pitch rang with sarcasm and impatience.
“Justin…” she said to her coffee, in a voice that told me off for my being cutting. It sounded a little more like the Portia I was used to.
“What?”
She looked up again and stared at me, appearing anxious. That was another new look for Portia, as far as I was concerned.
“I… we… did…?” She bit her lip, and then she came right out with it suddenly, “Did we do it? The other night… I mean… Shit… Did we, you know? I was so drunk I don’t remember.”
So that was what all the blushes were about. I started laughing, I couldn’t help it. Really I should be insulted; she looked so terrified, like it would be a scene from a horror movie if we had done it. “No. We didn’t, Portia.” The air swept out of her lungs and her breath brushed my cheek before she looked down at her coffee again.
I leaned back in the chair, trying hard not to feel insulted… “We kissed, and I made you come, and you never returned the favor.”
That had her eyes and her color back up, along with her chin and her nose tilting. “Justin.” It wasn’t a shout, it was a hard whisper. “That would have been disgusting in a pool anyway.”
“Nice to know you got your priorities right, Portia…”
She screwed her face up at me––she even looked pretty when she screwed her face up.
“I take it you regret it?”
“I don’t remember it. Well, only in the form of a few patchy images. I can’t remember getting dressed, or getting home. How did I get home?”
I hadn’t realized she was that bad. “I helped you get dressed and you were unsteady on your feet but you weren’t out of it. We came back on the subway, and I walked you to your door.”
“You did?” Her gaze was boring into mine, like she was looking for a lie.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Thank you.” Those words were reluctantly said, and she looked away, but as she spoke she reached out and picked a piece off the muffin I’d bought her.
“You’re welcome.”
She glanced up again.
I picked up my muffin and took a bite, watching her as she watched me. So what now? Did I want this to be something, or was it just a hook up.
I didn’t say anything, nor did she.
Then eventually, after she’d nibbled a couple more pieces of her muffin, I said, “Do you regret it?”
One of the staff set down my toasted pastrami thing.
Portia took a breath as they walked away.
She did regret it.
“I––“
“Forget it, Portia. We hooked up at a party, it’s nothing big, it probably happened a ton of times all over New York. Two people had too much to drink, end of, no headline.”
Portia
End of. Justin was right. I was embarrassed, and I felt awkward as hell, ‘cause I couldn’t remember exactly what we’d done, but I believed we hadn’t gone the whole way. I hadn’t had any flashbacks of that, and as soon as he’d said he took me home, I saw an image of him next to me in a subway car.
“Sorry.” Embarrassment led me to say it.
He shrugged. “So anyway; what the frick went down with Jason?” There was a sudden glint in his brown eyes.
Wicked and funny. That was Justin.
He always joined in with the gossip but we never knew if he was making fun of us when he did. Crystal’s theory was that he was a douchebag and he was joining in with the hope of getting lucky. Well if that was true, his moves had worked on me. I was staying sober from now on. Resolution.
“What the hell you gonna do, Portia? You won’t have pretty boy to stare at every day… Shame. You’ve got no chance of pulling him loose from his girl now…”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
He lifted his dark eyebrows. “Yeah, right. Whatever. You aren’t fooling me. If he’d have offered, like I did…”
Crap, he had to go and bring that back up. My skin heated. I was tired of blushing. I’d spent yesterday with my head under the pillow, too embarrassed to even face myself. “Don’t talk about it.”
“Was I that bad?” He was joking but he wasn’t joking. I’d kicked his ego in the balls.
I