Brad Parks - The Girl Next Door

Her hands, meanwhile, were planted on my ass, which she was using as a handle to draw me even closer to her.

I had no idea what was happening, nor did I care to stop and examine it. Our mouths just felt too good together. She started letting out these little moans and I heard myself doing the same. My hand had reached her firm, small breast, which I could easily feel through the thin fabric of her dress. Tina had been grinding our lower bodies into each other, with the expected results, then separated just enough to begin fumbling with my belt buckle.

Then suddenly she wasn’t.

“Oh my God, this can’t happen,” she said, turning herself perpendicular to me and taking perhaps two steps away.

“Sure it can,” I said, moving toward her and putting both arms around her shoulders. “Neither of us should be driving anyway. Let’s just get a hotel room and enjoy this.”

“No, I … That can’t happen,” she said, breaking out of my grasp.

“Why the hell not? We seem to do this all the time. Maybe that ought to tell us something.”

She looked down at herself to make sure her dress was properly adjusted, then started walking purposefully-if drunkenly-back toward the NJPAC. The show had obviously been over for a while, but there were still a few police officers around directing what traffic still lingered in the area. I let her stalk away for a moment, then caught up to her as she crossed Broad Street.

“Hotel,” I said.

“We can’t. I’m your editor.”

“Great. I’ll find a new one.”

“That’s not the point,” she said, walking faster.

“Then what is the point? We’ve been doing this dance for a while now. You keep telling me you want to have a baby with me. I keep telling you I don’t just want to be a sperm donor daddy. Let’s compromise: we’ll have the baby and do all the other stuff that goes with it, too.”

“You’re just drunk and horny. You don’t mean that-”

“I do, too,” I cut in.

“And even if you did, I don’t want that. I’ve told you that. I’m not the girl you or anyone else is falling in love with.”

“And why not? I have feelings for you, and I know you have feelings for me. Why don’t we give them a chance?”

She was making bad time in her high heels, and finally, in one remarkably fluid motion, she took them off and transferred them to her left hand. She broke into a fast jog. It was all I could do to catch up with her and gently grab hold of her arm.

“Tina,” I demanded. “Why not?”

She wheeled around and, for a moment, I thought I was going to get eight inches worth of high heel embedded in my face. Instead, I heard:

“The first guy I fell in love with was a total jerk. The second guy I fell in love with was even more of a jerk. And then, just to confirm it wasn’t a fluke, the third guy I fell in love with turned out to be a jerk, too. After a while, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m toxic. Maybe I just turn them into jerks.”

“Now you’re the one who’s sounding drunk. Let’s get a hotel room and-”

“I’m toxic. Don’t you get that? You’re a great guy, Carter. I want to have a baby with you more than anything, and I hope it’s a boy who turns out to be just like you. But I don’t want to fall in love with you, and I don’t want you falling in love with me. I don’t want to turn you into just another jerk.”

With that, she ran to an idling taxi, leaving me standing on a sidewalk just outside NJPAC, a small cadre of bored cops looking at me like I was prize idiot for letting a beautiful woman get away.

I remained there for a little. Then I flagged down my own cab, giving the driver my address in Bloomfield. I arrived home to find Deadline in his usual spot (the exact, geometric middle of my bed) and shoved him aside so I could begin the predictable tossing and turning.

Strangely, though, it wasn’t the thought in the front of my mind that kept me awake. It was the one wedged off to the side. Of all things, I kept playing over my conversation with Jeanne Nygard:

She was having problems at work … Nancy had reason to fear for her life … It wasn’t an accident.

Could someone really have wanted to kill a waitress/delivery girl? Somewhere in the midst of my fitfulness, I resolved to indulge my curiosity by looking into it for a day, maybe two, if only so I could put it to rest.

* * *

The next morning, I saw that Jeanne Nygard had been thinking about me, too. When I retrieved my phone from the pants I had been wearing the night before, it told me I missed a call from her 510 area code number. She didn’t leave a message, so I decided-in keeping with my hard-to-get tactic-I wouldn’t call her back.

Instead, I shook off a minor hangover, quickly ran through my shave-shower-breakfast routine, and caught a bus into downtown Newark. In addition to retrieving my car, I had to go into the newsroom and make an appearance in Tina’s office. I was entered in an event at the Awkward Olympics: the About-last-night-athalon.

Tina was obviously gearing up for the competition as well because I was still on the bus when I received an e-mail from Thompson, Tina. The subject: “Good Morning.” The body: “Come see me when you get in.-TT.”

I considered dawdling but then decided to get it over with. As soon as I arrived at the nest, I forced myself toward her office.

“Hey,” I said, tapping on the glass but not wanting to enter without being asked.

“Come on in,” she said.

I complied. Figuring we had parted ways around midnight, and it was now ten A.M., it had given us both ten hours to sober up and start feeling abashed about the evening’s events. Tina was wearing a subdued light blue blouse, a chagrined expression, and puffy dark smudges under her eyes. Plus, the woman who never drank coffee-she told me caffeine wasn’t good for developing fetuses and she didn’t want any coffee in her system when she conceived-had an extra large Dunkin’ Donuts cup in front of her.

“I’m sorry I just ran off without thinking of how you were going to get home,” she said. “That was awful of me. I-”

“It’s okay, Tina. I took a cab, too.”

“Still,” she said. “I was halfway back to Hoboken by the time I realized what I did. I almost told the cab to turn around, but then I thought you’d probably rather walk than see more of me.”

“It’s okay, really.”

Tina smiled weakly, then took a long pull on her coffee. I glanced at the side wall of her office, which contained a dry erase board filled with story ideas we would probably never get around to doing. Then I stared at the small stack of newspapers behind her. Tina, meanwhile, was straightening paper clips on her desk.

“So you, uh, made it home okay?” I said, just to say something. Obviously, she did make it home okay, because otherwise she wouldn’t be sitting in her office, making pointless small talk while an eight-hundred-pound gorilla was doing jumping jacks in the corner.

“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“Yeah.”

I coughed gently into my hand and stretched out my legs. Tina twisted to her right until two of her vertebrae made a popping sound, then twisted back to her left. The gorilla switched from jumping jacks to mountain climbers. I guess he was working on his core strength.

“See?” Tina said, finally breaking the silence. “This is why we can’t sleep together.”

“I meant what I said last night,” I blurted. “I think we should give our relationship a chance.”

“We’re not having that conversation right now.”

“Tina, that kiss-”

“We’re definitely not having that conversation right now.”

“Okay, when are we having that conversation?”