I sigh, feeling bad. I’m upset with myself for being so upset with Dennis, when I know, I’ve been upsetting him, too.
“Long weekend, honey? Or not long enough?” asks Isabella, scooting her chair over to my desk.
She’s eating a bit of muffin she’s picked out from the cafeteria and is now holding between her perfectly manicured fingernails.
I look at her, and before I can come up with some other answer — one that doesn’t have anything at all to do with my boyfriend or the awkward video chat we had this morning — she reads me like an open book.
“Boyfriend do something?”
When I try to give her a look like “no way, you must be out of your mind,” she adds, “You’ve been looking at that photo like a crystal ball or tarot card, or something. And whenever someone looks at a photo like that of someone we love, it can’t be good.”
“I wouldn’t say he did something,” I say.
“It’s what he didn’t do,” she says, “isn’t it?”
When I give her a look of surprise, she gives me one back. One that says, “really?”
She takes another bite of her muffin and says, “Look, you and I both know it’s not the things that people do that make us look that way. It’s what they don’t do that does, Melissa.”
She picks at her muffin, picking out her next little morsel.
As she pops it in between her shiny, red lips, she says, “so what didn’t he do?”
“He was a little late to our video chat this morning, and I was worried he had forgotten or found better things to do,” I say, surprised and mortified at how jealous and irritable I sound.
I sound like a woman who just got broken up with, not made to wait for a video chat for ten minutes longer than I expected. I sound like a perfect queen and not the good kind.
“Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I’m the one being too sensitive and hormonal about it.” I sigh.
“But he didn’t seem that interested. He seemed more excited at the prospect of getting off the video chat than he seemed about being on it,” I added, realizing that that’s the thing that’s been disturbing me the most. Dennis looked so happy when I said I needed to cut it short.
Isabella shakes her head, and I enjoy watching her dark, tight curls of hair bounce as she does.
“That’s not good. That’s not what you want in a boyfriend whose ass is late to your phone call — your digital date,” she says, saying what I felt like saying to Dennis but didn’t have the courage.
He really did hurt my feelings by being late, and then looked so disinterested. He just lectured and yelled at me.
“He even got after me for not coming to visit him,” I say, getting more and more frightened with how forthcoming I’m being.
Isabella and I talk about a lot of things, but I haven’t talked to her about my boyfriend too much. I don’t talk too much with anyone about him as it is. I don’t think just anyone deserves to know about my love life, even Isabella.
“Why doesn’t he come to visit you?”
I smile.
“I asked him the same thing.”
“And?”
Just then, the phone rings on her desk.
She holds up her finger, scoots over, and does her spiel.
While she’s on the phone, I hear her say, “Mr. Smith? No, he’s not available right now. I see that he’s in a meeting with HR. No, I think he’s busy taking part in an interview process or something.”
She pauses.
Hearing the words “interview” and “HR,” my thoughts turn to the legal assistant, Tommy. I suspect he is currently in that interview with Ashton.
“Listen. The best I can do,” says Isabella over my thoughts, “is to patch you to his office, and you can leave a message.”
She pauses again.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know when he’s going to be available.”
Another pause.
“Sir, do you want to leave a message with him or not?”
My mind wanders back to Tommy and his interview. I start to wonder how it went for him or how it’s going for him since it seems his potential boss is still in the conference room with him, Ashton, and HR.
I think about his clothes, how disheveled and sweaty he looked, but how determined he looked as well. My heart warms, remembering how grateful he seemed for my time and attention.
Dennis never let me help him get ready for work. He never let me help him straighten out any of his clothes or help him get styled.
I frown, remembering what an asshole he could be. How, once, he slapped my hand away. He would get so upset over the smallest of changes to his hair, the way a piece of clothing sat on him, or a piece of jewelry was oriented.