As I settle into Cliff’s car at the end of the day, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll be doing this again tomorrow, after Caitlin turns him on me and tells him every horrible thing, real or invented—it makes no difference sometimes.
Cliff shoulder checks me as he turns onto the main road. “You all right there?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah,” I say, voice shaky.
I bite the inside of my lip. Now is not the time to act sketchy. He’s the fucking HR guy with a unique set of skills to detect if someone is up to no good. He might have taken a course on detecting facial expressions of people who broke into emails. Or maybe he’ll determine that I sabotaged Caitlin’s grid just by spotting my twitching fingers.
I need to be chill.
Besides, this might be my last chance to convince Cliff I am normal, and worthy of this job, and incapable of any of the awful things Caitlin will undoubtably accuse me of tomorrow.
But once I get myself into a doom spiral, there’s no easy way out. It’s going to be an Evening of Angst, and I will need booze to survive.
I lean my cheek against the window. After tomorrow, if Caitlin’s testimony doesn’t get me fired immediately, at the very best Cliff will have to stop this carpooling agreement and I’ll be back on the bus. A shame, because this was a pretty nice arrangement, however short-lived. I take a deep breath and soak in the tree-lined streets and small businesses: little cafés and restaurants, boutiques, and a bookstore.
I can sense that Cliff’s eyes are still on me, so I think of something to say. “Oh, that’s a cool-looking store.” I point to a building that’s painted bright purple with rainbow accents and an ice-cream-cone-shaped door. It’s like a beam of sunshine between the other redbrick storefronts.
“Yeah, Angels,” Cliff says as we stop at the intersection beside the building.
A couple of beats of silence tick by, and then Cliff suddenly slaps the steering wheel with his palm. I look at him abruptly.
“Wait.” Cliff raises a brow suspiciously, and my heart stops. What the hell? Have I said the exact combo of words for him to know I’m a liar who read his private emails? “You aren’t shitting me, are you?”
“What do you mean?” I croak, every cell in my body tense.
“You’ve never been to Angels? Never had one of their shakes?”
Relief floods through me. I almost melt into a puddle in his cushy car seat, but I try to pass it off as a shrug. “I don’t drink things unless they’ll alter my mood.”
“This will alter any mood. If you’re telling me you’ve never tried one, that’s unacceptable.”
I shake my head. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“The fucking pillar of this city. The best milkshakes in history. You, Jolene Smith, have never been?”
Honestly, I’ve never been to most places. But that’s not normal, so I mutter, “I didn’t grow up here. I’m sure they lure most of their customers young.”
“Technically, I grew up in the neighborhood just behind there, but the first time I went was as an adult. I never would’ve gone as a child.”
His shoulders tense, and it’s the way he says “never” that feels like something more lives behind it. The neighborhood he grew up in is the one my bus drives through: lots of run-down duplexes for former military housing—paint chipped, siding missing. Something swells inside me.
“It’s been way too long since I’ve had a milkshake from Angels,” he says wistfully. “We should fix this immediately. What are you doing this evening and can you do ice cream instead?”
I try to picture myself walking into a place like that—bright and sugar scented, music playing in the background, lots of people crowding around tables. I try to picture myself sitting at one of those tables with another human, then with Cliff specifically. “I don’t, uh, I don’t do . . . things,” I blurt out, my words turning into confusing garble against my will.
He lowers his chin, bashful. “Oh, sure, no worries.” And I instantly regret my words. It’s the softness in his voice that grates me, like he thinks he’s the one who overstepped.
Great. That could’ve been my only opportunity to neutralize the meeting tomorrow.
So I plaster on a fake smile and dial up the charm. “That was a joke. If you, a grown-ass man, would like a milkshake, then I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
Except I can’t charm for shit.
Still, he chuckles, and there’s a softness in his gaze that lightens something inside me. “Wonderfully put.”
“But I’m paying.”
Cliff parks and we make our way inside. The place is a retro wonder, with metal-rimmed tables, a real jukebox, and a checkered floor. As we walk up to the counter to order, Cliff pulls a well-stamped Frequent Shaker card out of his wallet with his head held high.
At the register, Cliff cheats his way into paying by insisting it’s because he’s a member. I roll my eyes and go to grab a booth while we wait. It all feels so normal—I’m being so normal. But then I take a breath, and the scent of fake cherry mixed with deep fryer hits my nostrils in such a specific way that it bowls me over.
And just like that, I’m back in middle school. Ellie’s holding a mint chocolate chip cone and telling me we have a whole weekend ahead where we don’t have to see anyone from school, and we can watch Buffy and stay in our own little bubble with Mario Kart.
It’s so strange, being caught in a memory like this: I want so badly to go back there and stay, but also to run away. Because I know what happens to those girls. My skin tightens with unease, and I’m sure I’m the worst person to ever sit in this booth.
“Hey,” Cliff says as he slides into the booth across from me. I blink, and I’m back in the present, hands clenched around the edge of the table like I’m trying to shatter it. “I know it’s a weird vibe, but I swear, the ice cream is worth it.”
I shake my head quickly. “I think I’m just thirsty.”
He stands to get me a cup of water, and I use the opportunity to stare at my hands and will myself to hold things together. This is getting old. I should be able to do this. I can be a person.
Cliff comes back with my water and I take a grateful sip. “So,” I begin, “you grew up here? Are your parents still in town?” I can ask friendly, nonthreatening questions.
He shifts, though, like I’ve asked something hard. “I mean, maybe. I don’t really know much about them.”
“Oh,” I say, unsure what to do with this information.
Cliff shrugs, an attempt to brush away the tension, but it’s not convincing. “My grandma raised me. She actually worked at the gas station right over there.” He gestures out the window toward the Fas Gas across the street. “I’d get free hot dogs when they were on the spinners too long to sell, so it wasn’t too shabby, as long as you don’t care about meat temperature danger zones.”
I try to imagine a child-sized Cliff with messy golden-honey hair and skinned knees, sitting across the street with his grandma eating expired hot dogs. My chest swells, pressing against a space that’s typically hollow.
“What?” Cliff kicks the edge of his foot against mine.
I force a smile. “Just picturing child HR Cliff telling people at the playground they need to display positive communication cues and drawing org charts in chalk.”
“Wow, that’s exactly accurate. How were you able to do that?”
“Just a hunch.” I take another sip of water. “Did you go to college here?”
He nods, and I wait for him to elaborate, but he just taps idly at the table with his pointer finger.
“So have you ever lived anywhere else?” I try again.
“Yes. Vancouver.” It’s not rude, exactly, but he still doesn’t offer more, and I get the sense I’m prying where he doesn’t want me.
And this is starting to feel like a bad date, even though neither of us wants it to be. It feels like I won’t know what to say ever again. How can anyone be comfortable with another person when their brains are also always working? I rack my mind for something safe. “So, tell me more about Warhammer stuff.”
His eyelids droop. “Jolene, you can stop the fake Warhammer routine. I know you zone out when I talk about it.” Then his expression turns cheeky. “This morning, I slipped in that we should plot to murder someone, and you nodded aggressively.”
“That’s not fair.” I put my palm to my chest. “I was listening, but I didn’t want to make you feel weird for having a murder plan, since you’re new and all.” Our eyes lock, and I can see the silent laughter in his. I internally breathe a sigh of relieve that we are on safe ground again. “Anyway, now we’re talking. Who of the people at work would you kill?”
He coughs, eyes going wide. “What the hell?”
“I know, I know, you’re new—hardly know us. But just go with your gut. Might be fun to compare answers after a while working there.”
“I just—” He swallows hard. “I don’t want to kill anyone?”
I point a finger at him. “Okay, but say it was for a billion dollars. And you don’t have to do the killing. You just pick the person who needs to go.”
He leans closer, flattening his hands on the table to look right at me. His bar soap scent wraps around me like a hug.
“I don’t care that much about money,” he says. “I have what I need.”
I can’t help the disappointed sigh I let out. “Oh. You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“People who are full of shit.”
A sharp bark of laughter escapes him. “No, it’s true. If I were to kill someone, it wouldn’t be for money.”
“Okay, be boring,” I declare, leaning back into the booth seat. “But I think we need to normalize being comfortable roasting people. Everyone is way worse than they pretend to be. We should start discussing it openly—it might be a good way to connect people.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think I can add that idea to any team-bonding flyers.”
“Coward.”
His stare lingers. I let it.
“Fine.” He sighs. “I’ll give you an answer, but only if we never speak of it again.”
“Deal,” I agree, not even bothering to hide my delight.
He pulls a pen from his shirt pocket and grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table. “I will write my opening choice below. But then you must destroy it.”
“I never noticed you carry a pen.”
“A gift from my grandma that’s surprisingly useful.”
I wait patiently as he scribbles something onto the napkin and then pushes it toward me like we’re making an illegitimate deal. I flip the napkin, look at him, look back down, and shake my head in wordless disappointment.
He splays his hands defensively. “What? Robin Winters is a legitimate choice.”
I stare evenly. “There are so many better options. He’s so unnoticeable. How can he be your choice?”
“Come on. He’s perfect. He’s already sent three reply-alls to the office-wide emails that are just ‘Thanks.’ You don’t need to acknowledge every email. He stares me down when I walk by. And worst of all, he sits on the can and reads a newspaper for a whole hour with his pants down, and the stall door is open a bit like it’s his personal bathroom. He just sits there, and we all have to see it.”
My jaw goes slack. “Brilliant.”
Cliff winces. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“I loved everything about what just happened.” I reach across the table, then suddenly catch myself—was I going to touch his hand? That would be very weird. I turn the motion into grabbing the napkin to look at the name again. “I think that we can be friends after all.”
“This is a terrible way to start a friendship,” Cliff moans.
“Order sixty-four,” the cashier calls.
He instantly brightens. “Okay, no more murder talk in front of the innocent milkshakes.”
He shifts out of the booth, leaving me to wonder how the hell my plan to convince Cliff I’m normal led us there. But he was smiling, and I can feel the corners of my own lips pushing up too.
He returns holding two glasses of Tiger-Tastic ice-cream shakes. Large scoops of creamy orange ice cream peek from the tops of the cool metal cups, with whipped cream surrounding all the orange in fluffy bursts.
He waits and watches as I take my first sip. And shit, I have to look at the ceiling, because this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
“What the hell is this? It’s amazing.”
He claps his hand against the table. “It’s good, right?”
“It’s the sweet nectar that has just renewed my every hope and dream. I feel like I just got my billion-dollar colleague-offing payout.”
He gives me the most mischievous grin, and oh, I like this side of him. “See, you just had to trust me.”
And my core freezes—not just from the shake. Trust needs to be two ways for it to work. I take another sip, and when I look up, Cliff’s staring at me with a curl in his lips. “What?”
“I realized what it is about you. I almost never know what you’re going to say—a surprisingly rare trait.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.” I lower my chin.
“It is.” His stare deepens and his elbows slip a millimeter closer to me on the table. “Makes life so much more interesting. I’d love for you to accompany me to the DMV or something normally unbearable just to Jolene it up.”
This makes me laugh for real. “Cliff, I’m the least exciting person I know, but thanks, mate.” I bite my straw.
He taps his fingers on the table. “I can’t see how that’s true.”
“See it,” I huff.
And I realize that he’s been looking straight into my eyes through this whole conversation, and normally that would make me feel uncomfortable, but I forgot to be insecure. Maybe things are easier with him because I know what the point of this friendship is. Maybe it’s easy because I know it will be over soon anyway.
My stomach churns at all the things I’m hiding from him. It would be different if he wasn’t so genuine, so open with me.
“So,” I say, to drown out my thoughts, “tell me, why are you so against leaving stall doors open in bathrooms?”
He shakes his head. “Please, I want to be able to eat.”
We do eat, and I continue badgering him about his choice, and as the evening progresses and our conversation flows, I forget to worry about Caitlin, the grid, the meeting, any of it.
I forget to worry about what’s going on in his head.
Or mine.