Ororo listened to her heels thud against the mottled gray tile as she headed to Selene’s office. Her heart was still racing from her morning cup of joe, and she was glad she hadn’t eaten anything yet.
She hated impromptu meetings more than anything. She’d checked her calendar furtively before she headed out of her office. It wasn’t time for her annual review.
She knocked on the door and waited patiently outside the door. She heard Selene hanging up from a conversation, ending on a note of forced laughter before she called out, “Come on in, Tory.” Ororo dutifully came inside, gently closing the door behind her.
“Have a seat.”
“What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk to you for a minute, if you don’t mind.” How could she mind? “I’ve been thinking a bit about the efforts you’ve been putting into the accounts lately, and you’re doing a good job. Don’t get me wrong.”
What was there to get wrong? Ororo went into panic mode, sitting up straight as a board in her seat.
“Oh, thank you. Thanks. No problem.”
“I have a proposition for you. More of a request.” Selene was typing, her fingers flying rapid-fire over the keys as she spoke. She hit enter and finally faced Ororo fully, beaming. “I want to send you out of the state.”
“Wait. What?”
“Actually, I want to take you with me,” Selene said, chuckling at the alarmed expression on Ororo’s face. “Don’t worry, Tory. I think you’ll like what I have planned.” Ororo laughed hollowly, but didn’t feel any more sure.
“What kind of plan?”
“You know that Amelia Voght is leaving the company. She wants to be a stay at home mom once she has her baby. They just had her office shower last week.”
“That’s nice. That’s a big decision to make,” Ororo agreed.
“It wouldn’t be that hard for me. I plan to keep working if I ever have a baby,” Selene shrugged.
Goodie for you. “So the Boston office is losing another account manager.”
“And her underwriter. Sally Blevins just put in her notice two days ago. Didn’t you get the email?”
“I’m still sorting through a big stack of it now.”
“You should take some time to clean out your inbox,” Selene accused.
Some of us don’t have an admin or an email-happy manager asking for every little thing five times a day by note instead of picking up the phone. “When is she leaving?”
“Three weeks. They just posted her job opening online.”
“That isn’t much time to find someone. Who’s handling her accounts?”
“That’s where you come in.”
Shit.
“Sally and Amanda have always worked our eastern market. They know our states’ regulatory guidelines and our customers’ needs. I’ve been wanting a change of scenery. I don’t plan to work for this branch forever, even though I do want to be with OFW for the long term.”
“Okay.”
“So what I had in mind was to bring the idea of you and I moving to the Boston site on the table to Cassandra Nova this morning.”
Ororo reeled. Was she kidding?
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I think it’s pretty feasible.” Of course she did…
“Permanently?”
“Actually, just for six months.”
“Why that amount of time?”
“It usually takes that long to finish up all of our big renewals. After 1/1, we end up with all of the June and July rush. It would be nice to put the offer on the table. Didn’t you like working in Boston when we went to the luncheon?”
“It was all right. I never imagined living there.”
“Oh, Tory, are you kidding? Boston’s just another big city like New York. You’re used to hustle and bustle.”
“It’s a different kind of hustle and bustle.”
“There’s just as many nice restaurants and good shopping. Public transportation. Shows. History. Think about it.”
“Well, I-“
“I’m talking to Cassandra shortly. I’d like it if you could conference in with us.”
“I still haven’t decided yet. I need to think about it.” Selene’s smile faltered.
“Don’t take too much time making up your mind. Tory, this is a good opportunity. I wanted to offer it to you first before Human Resources starts shopping around for an external applicant. You can do this. You’re one of the best underwriters we have in the eastern market.” Flattery would get her nowhere; Ororo knew when someone was trying to sell her snake oil.
But at the same time, it tempted her. Boston…
She considered the pros. Scott worked at that site, so she’d have at least one friend. It wasn’t horribly far from New York, less than one day by train.
“I have some engagements here in the city coming up. One of my best friends is getting married, I’m going to be her bridesmaid.”
“When?”
“April.”
“Oh, that’s not too far off. It should still be fine. I’m having Amelia’s admin line up all the cases that Sally’s handling for her that still need wrapping up. You’re going to inherit a third of them anyway.”
Somebody shoot me now…
“So there won’t be any interruption in work once Sally leaves. This won’t be a problem.” Selene’s smile was sunny again.
“This is just so sudden,” Ororo said hollowly.
“Think of it as an adventure. You might come to love Boston.”
“I love it here.” And she did.
“Keep an open mind. There will be some familiar faces. You remember Scott Summers, and Madelyne Pryor?” Ororo forced a smile onto her face at the redhead’s name. “Oh, and what about that broker? The one at the training who showed up late? Jim, something…”
“Jim…?” Ororo held up her hands, shrugging.
“James, I think. Didn’t he go by something else?”
“You mean…Logan?” Ororo cleared her throat.
“That’s it. Yes. Sharp dresser. Kind of rude, though…he was brusque with me one day when he was looking for your office.”
“He’s…kind of blunt,” Ororo supplied.
“There’s a good word for him,” Selene agreed. “But again, another familiar face. And don’t forget Donald.”
“Donald?” Ororo felt clueless.
“Pierce.” It dawned on her. Selene’s smile was smug.
Then suddenly, it clicked.
Selene wanted to move closer to her man. And she wanted to drag her right-hand man…er, underwriter, with her. What a crock of shit!
“I figure we can look at making a move by mid-April.” It was March first. That gave Ororo appallingly little time to end her lease on her apartment, or to sublet it instead. At least she could go to Monet’s wedding with no difficulty, but it was going to be sheer chaos trying to plan it all.
“I don’t even know where I would stay.”
“I’ve got six different apartment listings lined up for us to check out,” Selene informed her cheerfully. “Isn’t this going to be fun?”
*
Green beer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Is my tongue blue?” Scott asked him, turning and opening his mouth wide. He stuck out his tongue and waggled it back and forth. Logan snorted.
“Beautiful,” he muttered.
“Mission accomplished. Now we can stop.” Logan helped himself to a handful of beer nuts to help scrape away the bitter aftertaste of the blue dye.
“Lightweight. Yer gettin’ old, Summers.”
“Suck my fat ones.” Scott finished the last of the greenish Bud Light in his mug and wiped his mouth. Logan was annoyed that he’d let the bartender desecrate a perfectly good pitcher of Molson that way.
No one dared pinch him because he hadn’t bothered wearing green. Scott’s only concession to the holiday was keeping on his wisteria dress shirt from work that he wore beneath a black sweater vest. He politely obliged two women coming off the dance floor to let them kiss him, presuming that he was Irish. It was a handy enough excuse. Several women looked at Logan with interest, but he hardly even glanced out at the dance floor. It backfired; they continued to watch him all night, whispering furtively over green melon ball shots that were the night’s special.
“There’s Sally,” Scott remarked, nodding and waving over to an inebriated blonde on the dance floor. She was murdering the eighties standard “Relax” at the top of her lungs and dancing in that sweaty, wanton fashion that carried some women away after too many mixed cocktails. Sally Blevins was nice enough at work, usually buttoned up and untouchable, the kind of girl who didn’t let people get that close. They were losing a decent underwriter. And, Logan snarked, the only one in the eastern market who didn’t have a needle stuck so far up her butt that she’d need a tractor to pull it out.
Dimly he wondered how Her Highness Queen Uppity Britches ended up spending her Valentine’s, and now St. Pat’s. She probably wasn’t drinking green beer tonight.
She wasn’t really a beer girl, in his estimation. But it didn’t help to think about that, not when it brought unwelcome memories of lime pulp bursting on his tongue, mingling with salty, deep kisses and the tang of tequila.
It had been one night. It drove him nuts. The fates hated him. One incredible encounter with the most amazing woman out of his darkest fantasies whom he never thought he’d see again, and then what happened? The universe spit her back out at him completely unrecognizable in librarian glasses and sensible shoes. Then again, maybe not that sensible. Still…
“I’m gonna go over and say hi,” Scott shouted over the din. Logan shrugged.
“Give my regards. I’m just about done.” Scott wove his way through the crowd. Logan chuckled over Sally’s sloppy hug. Poor guy was downwind of fumes that were about ninety proof as she grinned and shouted up at him. Logan saw her mouth the words I’m SO drunk two or three times before she introduced him to her two friends. Scott just continued to smile and laugh at her jokes; she was oblivious to the fact that she was the punchline.
She practically had him in a headlock, hanging on him.
“This is my lasshht night OUT,” she slurred. “I’m gonna get sssssshitfayshed before I hafta start packing. I HATE moving, didja know that?” She punctuated it with a dangerous sounding burp. Scott winced.
“I bet. Can’t blame you.”
“I don’ pity whoever takes my playsh…place,” she admitted. “Poor baby’s gonna get all the hard cases. Clients SUCK.”
“It’s a living,” Scott shrugged. She laughed. There was a lot of vodka breath involved.
“I hate the rat race,” she shouted at him. Her friends nodded in drunken agreement. They were both striking, a tomboyish blonde with a spiky blonde haircut and a slender girl with strawberry red hair and tempting curves. “I’m tired of it. This isn’t what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
“What’d you want to be when you grew up?”
“A fairy princhessh,” she admitted. She goosed him. He twisted out of the way, making her chase him and drag him back out to the middle of the floor with her friends. She began to dance up against him, making him feel relatively helpless. Her friends, Tabitha and Terry, weren’t much help.
“They’re makin’ a Scott sandwich,” Logan muttered. Lucky bastard…
But he wasn’t jealous. If anything, he was glad it wasn’t him. Logan wanted to head home and be alone with his thoughts for a while. Even among the huge crowd, he felt lonely. Empty.
Logan tipped the pretty bartender. She reached for his hand briefly. “Eh?”
“Here,” she chirped, peeling a sticker off a long paper roll and pasting it into the back of his hand. A green four-leaf clover winked up at him, ordering all who approached him to kiss him, he was Irish. “Me first!” she cried, leaning over the bar and plastering a smacker on his cheek. He grinned back and pried himself loose. She didn’t look sorry.
He caught Scott’s eye, debating on whether to rescue him. Scott made up his own mind, making his excuses and gently peeling away six different hands as they tried to pull him back. They pouted; Sally’s intent was clear. One more for the road. She cupped Scott’s face in her palms and gave him a sloppy kiss as her friends looked on and cheered.
“Talk about nothin’ ta lose. Sheesh.”
“They shoved their numbers in my pocket. I think. Or they stole my wallet,” he said with a sigh. They gathered their coats from the attendant and emerged into the cold night.
“Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this shit.”
“It’s tradition.”
“I’m gettin’ old. Too old ta be out among the rabble.”
“You’re not that old. You’re still ‘rabble,’” Scott justified.
“Thought when I got married, all this just went away.”
“Make some adult friends.”
“Why, got a 900 number fer me ta dial, Slim?”
“Not that kind. Just someone nice to hang out with on the weekends.”
“Yer about it.” Scott and his younger brother Alex were his two oldest friends. Many of his “grownup” acquaintances were one half of a couple, all people he knew while Jean was still alive. Many of those couples evaporated into the ether once their condolences were given. Logan was at a loose end. Logan didn’t know who he was anymore, once he wasn’t one half of “Logan and Jean.”
“How did that date go, by the way?”
“What date?”
“Valentine’s.”
“Oh. Heh. It went fine. Fine.”
“No drama? No second date?” Scott fished.
“No. And no.”
“Man…why not? Maddie seemed nice.”
“Ain’t sayin’ she ain’t. She’s great. She’s just not-“ Logan stopped himself.
“No. She isn’t,” Scott agreed. Logan assumed his friend thought he was talking about Jean.
He wouldn’t tell him he was wrong, this time.
*
Four weeks later, Ororo stood checking her makeup in front of the wide mirror in the church conference room. Several feet away, Anna Marie and Jubilee helped with last minute preparations, removing Monet’s white satin pumps from the box, fastening on tricky clasps to necklaces and bracelets, fluffing the veil and finding her lipstick.
“I shouldn’t have eaten those eggs for breakfast. Why didn’t someone stop me?”
“If we’d have pulled that plate away from ya, sugah, Lord knows how many fingers we would’ve come away with,” Anna pointed out. Their bridal brunch helped settle Monet’s nerves for a while, but once everyone climbed back into their respective cars and headed for the church, it became crunch time.
“I feel so fat,” she complained bitterly as Ororo came around to zip her into the gown and do up the row of tiny buttons.
“Shut up,” Ororo told her. Her smile was warm yet envious. “You’re carrying small. And we can hardly tell.”
“Liar.” She reached out and tweaked one of Ororo’s spiral curls. “You look so nice. I need to have that done to my hair one of these days.”
“Go for it. This will be the best hair you’ll have in your life, your consolation prize for nine months of having to pee every five minutes. Enjoy it now.”
“Ah can’t wait til it’s mah turn,” Anna murmured.
“Babies?” Monet asked.
“Not yet. This part.” Anna Marie fished out a handful of bobby pins from Monet’s makeup kit and beckoned to her to sit down. “Ah wanna find mah Mr. Right.”
“Good luck,” Ali muttered. “Just don’t do the Internet dating thing. Profile pictures liiiiiiie like a rug, let me tell ya.” Ali was still fresh off of her breakup with Arthur, a local triathlete she met at a club following one of her performances. The newspapers billed him as “Longshot” when he won his heat following an ankle injury. She’d found him in bed with a dark-haired stunt woman, discovering the hard way that she was double-jointed. The vision still dominated her nightmares…
“How about that one guy who’s been coming to your shows?” Anna asked.
“Cain? Aw, he’s just a big teddy bear,” Ali said dismissively. “Bless his heart. He always shows up first and takes the same table down front.”
“That’s devotion,” Jubilee pointed out.
“I don’t think he’s my type,” Ali shrugged.
“You never know,” Ororo pointed out. “You don’t always have to have a type.”
“Was Vic your type?”
“No. But don’t use that as an example. I should have known better.”
“No one ever ‘knows better,’ kiddo,” Jubilee reminded her.
“Has he called lately?” Monica asked, hands already on her hips. She looked poised for a lecture, which Ororo planned to avoid.
“Nope.”
“Good.”
“I thought you’d have to leave the state to get away from that guy,” Ali scoffed. She turned away before she saw the color drain out of Ororo’s face. Ororo then busied herself with opening the box of corsages and handing them out.
The meeting with Cassandra had gone well. Too well.
They romanced her with the title “Senior Underwriter, Eastern Region” and upgraded her benefits package to the Classic plan with no change in premium. They gave her a cost of living increase, even if there was no real difference in expenses between the two states, but it looked good on paper. Or, at any rate, better than the word “bribe.”
She was due to move to Cambridge in two weeks. Anna Marie had mercy on her and sublet Ororo’s apartment for the remaining three months of her lease and even said she might renew to help her keep it, in case things went sour. The past three days had been hell, juggling wedding preparations with hair appointments, getting moving boxes, packing, taking things she didn’t need to Goodwill, and changing over her utilities and phone.
Her father was more in favor of the move than she was. “Go where the money’s at,” he said bluntly. Ororo felt the wrongness of it all in every bone of her body, but she was resigned. New York was comfortable. Her job was comfortable. Her “still single because I need another man like a hole in my head” status was comfortable.
But inside, she felt restless, and even a little lonely.
The minister interrupted her reverie. “Are we ready?” Monet looked nervous. Anna Marie handed her the bouquet while Ororo held her hand.
“Yes,” she said.
The church was beautiful; springtime sunlight poured inside through the stained glass windows. Arrangements of purple and white agapanthus, gladiolas and irises topped the altar and tables of the pulpit. Jubilee and Ali both had blisters from tying to many ribbons into pew bows, but it was worth it. Monet’s younger twin sisters sang a duet during the service that moved the guests to tears. Monet and Everett read handwritten vows. Following their kiss, they jumped a broom festooned with plum ribbon and silk flowers, a souvenir Monet planned to hang over her fireplace mantle of their home.
The majority of the pictures were taken in the front lobby of the church due to the still chilly weather. The clouds above began to thicken and darken, expediting the guests’ return to their cars.
“Let’s beat feet!” Anna Marie cried as she shooed their fellow bridesmaids into the parking lot. They made it just in time; once they turned onto the freeway minutes later, the first droplets of another April shower splattered onto the windshield.
The reception was raucous, happy and loud. The DJ dusted off all the old standards once Monet and Everett finished their first dance. Monet led the first pass of the electric slide, cha-cha slide, chicken dance and Macarena before she begged off to go to the bathroom. It was a frequent nuisance. Ororo knew how she felt.
The more time Ororo spent watching her friends enjoying the festivities and letting them drag her out of her seat to dance, the more trepidation filled her heart at the thought of leaving them behind.
Please, let it all be worth it. Please, Lord.
*
Logan hurried into the front lobby, chewing on half a bagel and unbuttoning his trench coat. Yukio looked up from her typing and grinned at him.
“Late again. You’re getting predictable, Logan-sama.”
“And yer workin’ so hard ya don’t even have the time ta notice things like that, huh?” She stuck out her tongue.
“Even our new team members beat you to the office today.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“The two transplants from the New York hub,” she reminded him.
“They came today?”
“Yup. So there’s another account manager’s ass you have to kiss. Pucker up.”
“Long as I don’t hafta wear knee pads.”
“Ew.”
He caught the elevator moments before it closed, excusing himself and nudging his way to the back. He wrapped the rest of his breakfast into a napkin and planned to toss it. In the shuffle of people coming in and out on the next floor, he spilled a river of coffee down his coat. “Shit!” The woman next to him struggling with a huge file box mouthed an apology at him just before he got out. He cursed under his breath as he headed down the hall to the right.
Slim was always prepared for the contingencies. He’d had a stain stick or something on hand, Logan just knew it. At least it didn’t spill on his shirt or blazer.
He reached Scott’s door and automatically swept inside without knocking, out of long habit. “Hey, Summers, ya got anything ta get a stain out, one of those fabric-“ His words were cut off by a familiar blue-eyed glare.
“Do you mind? I’m on the phone.” Ororo sat back in Scott’s leather swivel chair and folded her arms across her chest.
Logan’s coffee fell from startled fingers. The to-go cup bounced off the hard track carpeting, splashing up onto his pants leg. “SHIT!” he hissed.
His worst-case scenario in the elevator came to pass; he had messed up his suit.
Ororo sighed without pity. “And you told me I needed a coffee IV.”
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