The Muse (8 page)

I dug deep, pausing before I launched into my confession. “I’ve never been kissed.”

He dropped his plate on the coffee table, sat back and exhaled like I’d just told him I grew up as a member of an alien species who had flown in from a planet far beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. His hands flew up to his face, cupping his mouth. “I need a moment to marinate this.”

After he marinated, Larry arrived at a half-baked idea to christen me into the land of the kissing. “Kiss me.”

“Over my dead ass.”

“Okay, then.” He shrugged.

I punched his arm. “Yes, okay then.”

We both agreed kissing each other would cause permanent irreparable damage to our friendship, because from that point on neither one of us would be able to look each other in the eye with a straight face again. Larry’s lips had never landed on a woman’s. As he shoveled his last piece of cheesecake into his mouth he confessed that the thought of kissing a woman caused his stomach to hurl.

I couldn’t have been more relieved that I’d saved him from performing such a sacrifice.

# #

The next day at work, I logged into Twitter and read through my timeline of the twenty people I followed. Eva had tweeted five times in the past ten minutes, mainly replying back to people who mentioned her in a tweet. Even her tweets dripped of her sweet and sultry personality. Her words, colorful and fun, danced across Twitter like poetry. Eleven hundred and twenty-five people followed her. I joined that rank. She followed back five hundred eighty people. She had a lot to sift through to get to my tweets.

I clicked onto my mention tab and read through two mentions thanking me for following them. My eyes scrolled past these and onto my third mention, a mention from my dear Eva Handel. My heart bucked.

“So, don’t you know when a girl is just playing with you? I was hoping for a few volleys with you (wink). Do I get at least one?”

She winked at me.

Eva Handel winked at me. Well, okay, she winked at CarefreeJanie.

I lost my breath. I tapped my chest, making sure I was still breathing, still seeing the wink, still Jane Knoll, the girl who knew nothing about how to play with a girl as lovely as Eva.

I knew nothing about volleying banter. Girls like me never learned to banter. We learned to hide. We learned to walk around the world to avoid the sting of people not wanting to banter with us. I needed to learn, and learn fast.

So, I did what every resourceful twenty-nine-year-old girl who had never been kissed would probably do in my situation. I took to the Internet and pleaded with any of the powers that existed to guide me to my answer. I searched for articles on how to flirt, how to play coy, how to attract using words, and I came up with endless results. The only problem, not one of them told me what to say. They recommended silly things like cueing in on the eye contact, tilting my head, and swaying my hips forward. What a bunch of useless crap. What about instructions for those of us who preferred a keyboard over red lipstick and a sultry smile?

I dove in deeper to research mode, and meanwhile, precious time ticked away. Comedians couldn’t walk away just before dishing their best punch lines and return minutes later to tell it. Timing primed everything brilliant. Respond too soon, look like a desperate fool. Respond too late, risk her forgetting why she played with me in the first place.

I called Larry. “What would you say?”

He sighed. “It’s not supposed to be this hard. This kind of stuff should just flow naturally. You’re not drafting the Declaration of Independence here or a set of wedding vows. You’re simply telling her you’re either into her or not.”

“You’ve got nothing. That’s why you’re saying that.”

“I’ve got nothing. I do all my flirting in person.”

I hung up and stared at her tweet again. I stared at my fan-waving alter ego. “What would you do, huh?” I imagined her winking back, egging Eva on with a simple tug of mystique. She didn’t need words. Her fun sprang from within. CarefreeJanie was a playful lady who waved that fan of hers and created magic dust. She played with the air, commanding it to swirl in just the right circles, to pass through clouds without a hitch, to dance provocatively in the spaces where the visible merged silently with the invisible and created a field of sexy, uninhibited bliss.

CarefreeJanie didn’t fret over incidentals like which word choice would better suit her lips. No, she decidedly curled her lips up into a sweet, sexy smile and typed back something meaningful, something stirring, and something that would rattle Eva Handel’s world. I typed back a wink to match hers and examined it for flaws and compared it to her previous tweet about playing, volleying and winking.

My wink looked friendly, but not flirty, and certainly not engaging enough to spur Eva into continuing on with this dance. I needed a cliff hanger, a ‘please enter’ symbol, a ‘come here and let me banter with you some more’ lead. I added a question mark and had to admit, it looked like the cutest thing in the world at that moment.

I sent off my winking question mark with an air of confidence.

I sat for several lingering minutes with my eyes closed, enjoying the sweet thrill of the dance swaying in me, the magical ride, the pulsating spread of something wild and wonderful, something lustful and animalistic.

Oh that wink.

My head twirled and I floated, up and away from this dreadful cubicle with its remnants of Katie, away from the miserable anguish over my failed love life, and far from guilt-riddled grime built up from years of fretting over stupid things I did way back when I was a young idiot of a kid.

In that moment, I was free. I floated up to where lucky people hung out, to that place I often looked to with envy, to that place I had always longed to visit. I finally arrived at it and it shined even sunnier than I expected. The colors were brighter. The air was lighter, cleaner, and fresher. I loved this paradise. I wanted to live in this paradise. I wanted more. God, please, let me have more. I just needed a tweet or two a day to pressurize this air and keep me flying up where eagles dipped their wings in the air and soared on the mild breezes of Mother Nature’s art.

After several long minutes of nothing, the fear slowly started to poke its pointy prick into my bubble, lowering me back to where I just sort of flounced mid-air, waiting for the inevitable bubble to burst and for Eva to not understand my questioning wink.

Then, the tiny slit of pastels and warm liquid converged on the horizon of my prayer. My screen moved, and in danced another tweet. “Aw, thank you, doll. How did you know I adore winks?”

Doll. That rolled so easily off of my tongue when I whispered it. A carnival lit up inside and sent some serious flutters pirouetting through me. Walking that tightrope and balancing on its delicate edges, toes pointed, insteps arched, arms extended and joining with the warm air, I welcomed in the thrill. As naturally as I would put one foot in front of the other to balance over a ravine, I typed back, “You adore winks, but not Old Bay seasoning?”

In the time it took to part my lips to take in a breath, she responded. “Winks trump Old Bay.”

“Do they trump purple and orange?”

“I have to go with winks.”

She was flirting with me. I couldn’t stop the spread of my smile. “Is there anything about Maryland you do like?”

“Well, you’re kind of fun,” she wrote.

My inner thighs twitched. I could’ve indulged in this warmth for months and not tire of it. It fueled me on, causing me to banter like I grew a set of flirty wings that twirled me around like a princess. “I can trump that.”

“Please try.”

I pulsated. “Well, you’re kind of cute.” I sent it off in a blink, flirting like a pro from behind the protective zone of my computer.

“DM,” she wrote back.

DM? What was DM? We had been volleying the ball perfectly, and I went and snapped it too hard and shot it out of bounds. I called out to Doreen. “What does DM on Twitter mean?”

“Direct message,” she said.

Of course! A smile leapt on my face. I clicked to my messages and one sat waiting for me from her. “You are making me blush,” she wrote.

I caused Eva Handel to blush. I wanted to jump around in circles. My fingers danced wildly across the keyboard, into a daring set of flips in the greatest contemporary routine ever fashioned by someone like me. “You must look even more beautiful when you’re blushing.”
Where was I getting all of this? Ah, how I love you, CarefreeJanie!

“You certainly intrigue me CarefreeJanie.”

My body pulsed. I swallowed, and not without great effort. Overloaded, my system shut down. I could only send a wink back in return and then cave into myself to steady the rush. I melted into a pile of liquid and it took everything I had to solidify again when Sanjeev knocked on my cubicle wall asking if I had completed an article he’d asked me to proofread.

My eyes blurred over my files. “It’s here somewhere.” I flipped over folders, binders, and even knocked down my hazelnut coffee in search for my mind. “I’ll find it and get it to you right away.” I couldn’t catch my breath.

He bent down to help me pick up the mess I created. At this point, Katie walked up to us, stopped for a moment to offer me a fake pout, and then kept on walking. Sanjeev stood up with a pile of wet files. “I’ll get some paper towels.” He dropped the soggy papers down on my desk and hurried off to the kitchen. Meanwhile, I spun back around to find another message from her.

“I’ve got to run off to a meeting. This has been fun. Don’t be a stranger, okay? (wink)”

I exhaled and dropped back in my seat, not caring about the coffee that dripped onto my cream pants.

Chapter Five

At Martin Sporting Goods, the chief executive officer had decided on his second day on the job to institute something fun. Not a fan of private offices, he set up shop in a double cubicle and turned his office into a collaboration room where all staff could go in at their free will and get creative. He removed all stuffy office furniture and replaced it with funky table tops without chairs, a coffee bar that came complete with flavored creamers and artificial sweeteners, and a fridge stocked with fruit drinks, sodas and sparkling waters.

On his third day, he called us all into the collaboration room and told us we all needed to show up the next day with our two favorite CD collections, complete with CD covers that we were willing to forfeit over to him for our creative benefit. So, the next day, I handed him a Bruce Springsteen CD and a John Denver CD knowing full well Katie hated both of them. I knew this because every time Doreen played one of them on her iTunes, Katie would pop up in her cubicle and ask her to turn it down.

That morning, I walked into the collaboration room to get some coffee and, just as I tipped the coffee pot to my cup, in walked Katie. As if the universe mirrored my sentiment against her presence, John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” played out over the speakers.

She stopped short of opening the fridge and scanned my shirt. “Orange? Really? That’s an interesting choice. It so suits your magnetic, bold, and social personality.” She arched an eye and flaunted a smile as she opened the fridge and pulled out the vanilla flavored creamer. “Oh wait. This has nothing to do with originality, does it? You’re just following the Orioles crowd.”

I continued pouring the coffee and should’ve just ignored her, but the sarcastic side of my personality pushed my magnetic, bold, and social one aside. “Maybe I just like orange. It’s fun.”

“It’s one of my least favorite colors.”

“Not surprising.” I placed the coffee pot back on the burner.

“Ah, good jab.” She reached for the coffee pot.

I stole the creamer from the counter. “I emailed you some ad copy. Before you go changing the headline on me, I should tell you that Sanjeev already approved it.”