Stephanie Doyle - One True Love?

One. Two. Three.

Nothing.

Damn. She must be holding the dramatic pause too long. He counted again.

One. Two. Three.

Still nothing. Something must be wrong.

“I’VE GOT to go to the can,” Brendan announced before Corinne could storm out of his office. Darn it, she had taken too long to wipe her tears in an attempt to save her eyeliner. She watched while he strolled out of the office and when she glanced down at her hand she could see the traces of brown eyeliner on her finger.

“Darn it,” she shouted. “That wasn’t in the script.” She didn’t even get to do the sultry look back. How was he supposed to spend the next two weeks pining for her, if he didn’t have the sultry look back to remind him of all that he was missing? Well, she could only hope that the perfect suit, the ultimatum and the teary declaration of love would be enough to sway him to the right side of her particular force. What choice did she have?

This was the man she had fallen in love with. And since she’d been a girl she’d always believed there was only one true love for everyone on this planet. Once a person found that true love she had to grab him and hold on to him, because if the relationship failed, the couple was doomed to walk the earth in tragic loneliness forever. Or at least until eighty, when most people forgot about love and concentrated on soft food.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

That was odd; Brendan’s office door was open. Who would be knocking? And why did it sound as though it was coming from behind her? Corinne whipped around and realized that the knocking was coming from the filing-room door.

“Ugh!” she growled as she threw open the door, utterly humiliated that she had an uninvited audience. That particular scene was supposed to have been a private show. “Matthew! What are you doing in there?”

He glanced down at the folder in his hand. “Uh, working.”

“You bastard! You heard every word, didn’t you!”

Since Matthew wasn’t a great liar, he shrugged his shoulders and told her, “Yeah.”

“Ugh! You don’t even have the common courtesy to lie about it!”

“What’s to lie about? You broke up with Golden Boy. I’m happy for you. You should have done it a long time ago.”

“What do you know about it?” she hissed. “And if you heard the whole thing, then you will answer this question…”

“No, I wasn’t out with Brendan and Marjorie from human resources last night. I’m Ole Relic, remember?” It was a nickname the others in their small company had dubbed him. Certainly, not the most flattering of names but Matthew had to agree it was rather accurate. He usually went to bed before ten on weeknights. He often did extra accounting work on the weekends. And on those rare occasions when Rinny could coax him out for happy hour, he only ever had one beer. Heineken. He liked the imported stuff. In summary, he was a C.P.A. who habitually carried extra tissues in his pocket. The very opposite of excitement and perhaps a little older than his thirty-three years would indicate.

“That rat!”

“Exactly,” he agreed.

“That scoundrel!”

“Absolutely.”

“That poor pathetic lonely man.”

“What?”

Rinny reached out to touch his arm. She was a toucher. It was one of the things he loved about her. “Don’t you see? He hides behind the lies because he doesn’t think he has a choice. Deep down, he is this insecure boy who needs the presence of multiple women in his life to make him feel like a man. Virile. Get it?”

All Matthew got was that the guy she had just described sounded like a putz with a small…putz. “So where did he go?”

“He went to the, uh…the gentlemen’s room.”

Poor Rinny, probably not the way she planned it. “Did you even get to do the sultry look back?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, mildly offended.

“Come on, Rinny, it’s me. When you used to visit me in the hospital you always flashed me the sultry look back right before you said good-bye. That look would follow me into my dreams. It’s a classic.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied convincingly.

Matthew just shrugged his shoulders. In an effort to change the topic, he asked, “So, where are you going on your vacation?”

This topic made her slightly more chipper, and she put aside her pique. “Two fabulous weeks on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Sun. Sand. And single,” she finished on a slightly more depressing note. Visions of honeymoon couples frolicking about on the beach danced in her head. “I’m sure it will be mag.”

“Yeah. Mag,” he repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

Poor Matthew, Corinne thought. She didn’t know how it was possible, but he was even more lost than she was at this moment. Seeing his tie askew, she absently reached a hand up to the knot to tweak it straight. As she did, she studied the tie and the plain white shirt he wore with it. “It certainly isn’t this tie. Really, Matthew, you’ve got to do something with your wardrobe.”

He looked down at the tie she was arranging. “It’s my favorite.”

That made her snort. “And you need a haircut,” she said, running her hand along his neck to corral the few stray hairs that lingered. His rich brown hair, a color he obviously didn’t enhance, had always made her jealous. When he started to squirm, she pulled her hand away and thought that Brendan’s hair was always perfectly groomed. He had a standing appointment with a stylist once a week.

Her name was Sherry. Sherry, who also happened to dance at a strip club for extra money on the weekends.

Corinne couldn’t prevent the frown that she felt forming on her lips. She hated to frown. It always showed off the faint wrinkles at her mouth.

A tiny knock sounded behind them and they both turned to the open door.

“Is the coast clear?”

Corinne’s assistant and good friend Darla poked her head into the office. The plump woman with the warm smile and bright eyes looked at Corinne expectantly.

“It’s clear,” Corinne told her.

“Well?”

“It didn’t exactly go according to script.”

“She didn’t get to do the sultry look back,” Matthew told Darla.

“Oh no. But that’s, like, your heavy hitter. It’s right up there with the playful pout.”

“I do not have a playful pout. Or a sultry look back. You’re both making this up.”

They exchanged a glance that was all too easy to interpret, but Corinne didn’t have the energy to fight them. “I just don’t understand. Where did I go wrong?”

“Cheer up,” Matthew said, bucking her on the shoulder. “And stop thinking about Brendan. You never know. You might meet some fabulous man and have a wild vacation affair.”

She lifted her left eyebrow into a perfect arc over her eye. “Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew. I am a one-woman man. One-man woman. Oh, you know what I mean.”

Although, the idea did have a little merit. If she could send back pictures of her and some handsome stranger to her buddies in the office to view, and say Darla happened to accidentally drop one or two on Brendan’s desk, well then that might be just the thing to push him over the edge. And if that didn’t work, she could always literally push him over an edge!

“Uh-oh. I know that look,” Darla warned, studying her friend’s suddenly diabolical expression. “And it usually means involving me in one of your plots.”

“Scripts,” Corinne corrected. “And it does. I’m thinking about a whole new approach. What about jealousy?”

“You’re always jealous,” Darla reminded her. “You know, because Brendan’s always messing around with other women behind your back?”

Corinne scowled at her alleged friend. “Not me. Him. What if I set out to make Brendan jealous? Of course, given my deep and abiding love for him, it would be almost impossible for me to flirt with another man…”