Me:You sure that was me?
Chelsea:Yup! The camera caught you during the ‘bum-bum-bum’ in Sweet Caroline.
Me:You were watching the game! You like baseball?
Chelsea:Beer, tight pants, and crowdsourced karaoke… What’s not to love?
I laugh and press my phone to my chest, leaning back in my chair. "James, she is perfect.”
“Yes, sir. For the fifth time, I'm very happy for you. Can we please sign off on the budget projection reports so the accounting department can stop riding my ass?”
“Why do you do this to me, James? You know I get in trouble with Carole when I make ass-riding jokes.”
James leans back in his seat and drinks his coffee, a dramatically far-off look in his eye. “Yeah, it almost makes me nostalgic for the days when we worked out of your basement. Almost—but that was the summer those kids in my neighborhood thought I was a vampire.”
“Oh yeah!” I laugh. “Didn’t one of them try to stake you?”
“Yeah, turns out it’s really hard to pierce skin with a stake. Bruises like hell, though. And since I’m not keen onthatkind of hard wood, I’ve come to appreciate our above-ground workplace. Even if it comes with Carole. As for why I do it to you, in the immortal words of Michael Jackson, I’m bad.”
He stands and slaps a hand on the budget projections. “Sign these, then you can do whatever you want. It’s five o’clock, so I’m getting the fuck out of here.” James moonwalks backward out of the room and shoots me double finger guns.
“You know you’re lucky I hired you in the basement days. No one else gets away with moonwalking that badly around the office,” I call after him, but the door shuts on his laughter, and I’m left alone.
Well, not quite alone. I pick my phone up and push the budget reports aside. I type out a response but hesitate, my finger hovering over the screen. I want to hear her voice. I want to make her laugh that throaty chuckle again.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, tapping the call button. It rings twice, my blood pressure rising each time. But then there’s a soft click, and Chelsea’s unintentionally sultry voice pours through the speaker.
“Well, hello. I thought we were doing the texting thing.”
“I had to hear your voice,” I reply.
She laughs like I’m joking. “Well, I’m making dinner, so I guess you’ll get to hear that too.”
“Wait, don’t tell me. Ramen?”
“Oh, close. Spaghetti.”
“Whoa now, hold on. You told me you can’t cook.”
“Boiling noodles and putting jarred sauce on it hardly counts as cooking.”
“You should let me take you to dinner, then,” I counter. I’m not much of a cook, but I sure as hell know where to eat in Sonoma.
“Mmm… is that our date?”
“No, I’d consider that a bonus activity, but if you like baseball, why don’t you come to the next game with me?” Yeah, I want to take her to dinner, but if we go to a restaurant, that’ll be like an hour. A baseball game could last all day if things go right, and a whole day alone with Chelsea sounds fucking perfect. “The company rented a skybox for the whole season, and we’ve barely used it.”
“So… it wouldn’t cost you anything, right?”
“Not a penny. In fact, if you say no, we’re actually wasting money. We get 25 tickets per game, and no one is using them. My assistant keeps hounding me about it, so really, you’d be doing me a favor.” The fact that she’s worried about me spending money on her is adorable. I almost want to laugh, but it wasn’t that long ago that I was having to choose between keeping the lights or water on, so the frugality sings to my soul.
“Well… in that case, I think that sounds like a lot of fun.” She sounds relieved. “And it’s a day game, right?”
“It is. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were banking on the fact that baseball is a famously platonic activity.”
“Is it?” Chelsea asks coyly.
“Absolutely, but you haven’t seen me eat popcorn.”