Chapter Text
Waiting for the elevator doors to slide open on the top floor of Bexley & Gamin, Josh's heart beats a little faster, like it always does when he's about to see her. He shifts his gym bag higher on his shoulder and takes a deep breath, schooling his face.
He's had six months of practice at this—no, make that twenty-plus years of practice. He's been putting on this mask since he was in grade school. He is impervious.
Stepping out of the elevator, his eyes zero in on her immediately, and he watches her as he makes his way through several layers of glass. So much glass. Sometimes he feels like they are animals in a lab, two different species thrown together, to be poked, prodded, and studied. But there are no mad scientists running this experiment—only the two of them, confined in such close quarters for such long periods of time that they can't help but poke and prod each other. Hoping for what result, he can't say, but the results sure as hell won't be published in any reputable journal.
Her glossy mass of dark hair had been down this morning, but it's pulled back loosely now, some stray curls falling toward her face. She's wearing a blue dress printed with little green birds that buttons up the front. In the summer, she had worn that dress with strappy sandals. Today, a cream cardigan, leggings that look like they're made out of some kind of thick sweater material, and heeled boots.
A large unopened package sits in her lap, and she leans over it, staring so intently, it's as if she expects it to do something. She's so deeply engrossed that she doesn't notice his arrival in the doorway, and he takes advantage of the moment to just look at her.
Lips so red, eyes so blue, hair so dark. Lucy so … something.
“How's that X-ray vision working out for you, Lucinda?”
Her face jerks upward, and her eyes widen like she's been caught. She shoves the box under her desk and swings back to her keyboard, as if she had been working this whole time. His interest level sharpens considerably.
“Really well, Joshua,” she snaps, red lips pursing. “I'll be able to read the secret diary locked in your desk in no time.”
“Oh, no,” he drawls in mock horror. “Then you'll find out all my secret thoughts about you.”
He looks away self-consciously, as if she might actually be able to read his secret thoughts (pathetic), hangs up his coat, puts his gym bag down, and sits at his desk, trying to look at the box without obviously looking at the box as he situates his inconveniently long limbs. Since their desks are also glass, the box is sitting in plain view. There's no place to hide anything in this office, a fact he's been acutely aware of himself at times, and he feels a touch of sympathy for her even as he attempts to snoop. But she would do the same to him.
In addition to being much larger than the mysterious tiny packages she receives periodically, it lacks the retail look of an internet shopping binge. It appears to have been carefully hand-wrapped in brown paper, the rows of stamps are holiday themed, and the address is handwritten—a woman's handwriting. He can't make out the return address from this distance, but he'd bet money it came from the land of strawberries.
“So, what's going on at the strawberry farm these days? Getting ready for Christmas?”
Lucy's typing furiously now and doesn't even pause when she shoots a lightning quick warning glare at him.
“Humor me. I'm a simple city boy trying to relate to the common folk.”
“My family is not common.”
“You're right, I apologize. I've seen the website. They look quite uncommon.”
She huffs dismissively at him, and he presses his lips together, suppressing something. (Always suppressing something.)
He's been picturing Lucy at the farm at Christmastime since the first snowflakes fell in November. Christmas Day is a Friday, and she's not taking any time off, so she's probably leaving right after work on Christmas Eve. There's a 6:45 flight, nonstop, three hours and twenty-one minutes long. Both parents will show up to pick her up at the airport, bursting with genetically matched enthusiasm. They'll be driving a pickup, one they probably also use for farm work.
“I'm picturing it,” he says to her now, leaning back in his chair, his hands folded on his chest, gazing toward the ceiling. “Snow-covered fields. Burl Ives on the record player. A pile of presents under the tree. A roaring fire … little Lucy curled up with a book. A big family dinner, way too much food for three people. Strawberry pie for dessert. Am I close?”
It's an embarrassingly vivid picture, but the thing about their dynamic is that it gives him cover to say or ask just about anything he wants. She never thinks he's sincere. It's plausible deniability.
“Shortcake?”
Lucy's gone unusually quiet, and when he looks more directly at her, he sees that her eyes have gone shiny, her jaw is clenched, and her chin is quivering just slightly. Josh flinches, dropping his mock-thoughtful pose to sit up. He straightens in his chair and considers her. “Are you okay?”
“Don't call me that. And I'm fine.”
She's clearly not.
This is the downside of the games they play. She never thinks he is sincere.
Lucy turns away from him to pull herself together with a quick makeup fix in the reflective surface of a filing cabinet.
Slowly, Josh opens his planner and puts a tiny “x” next to December 21, even though it doesn't quite encompass the way he wants to reach out to her, and pushes down the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He stares at the date and wonders why her parents would be sending her a care package a few days before Christmas if they're going to see her imminently.
And then it hits him. The timeline, the barely checked emotions, the box.
They're not going to see her. Lucy isn't going to the strawberry farm for Christmas.
Huh.
*****
Josh's head hurts from the chipper strains of “Run, Run Rudolph.” He's holding a plastic cup of fizzy, fruity, nonalcoholic punch that he's not drinking, just to have something to do with his hands. He's mentally calculating the cost of lost productivity as his colleagues make inane chitchat about their holiday plans.
He's watching her from underneath a cloak of annoyed boredom.
Lucy's wearing a gray sweater with colorful felt Christmas stockings sewn onto the front, and he idly wonders if it would qualify as an “ugly Christmas sweater” in the trendy way. It looks soft.
Her skirt is red, a bit shorter than knee-length, and has enough material that it flares out from her body as she moves, turning to greet this person, then that person, a friendly smile, as trademark as her red lipstick, for everyone but him. She is effervescent, and he mentally catalogs the marks he will make in his planner when they return to their office upstairs.
All her conversations are enthusiastic but brief. She's popular enough, but she doesn't seem to have any particular friends on staff, which puzzles him, considering how she is. Are they all blind, or stupid? He looks around, and yes, probably, both.
He wonders if she had been close to anyone who hadn't survived the merger. It would make a grim kind of sense.
Josh forces himself to look away and wanders over to the food table, where an assortment of homemade cookies is laid out. Lucy made at least half of them—he had seen her with an overflowing box of Pyrex this morning—and had organized the sign-up sheet for the rest. He bypasses the cookies for the crudités, reaching for a carrot just to have something to do.
Paul McCartney starts in with the most irritating earworm of the season, and he wonders if Lucy is behind the music too.
“I guess it wouldn't be Christmas without the Grinch.”
Speaking of hell’s littlest devil, she is suddenly next to him, a small flurry of activity as she sets out more cookies, filling in gaps he hadn't noticed.
“I took one carrot, Lucinda. Hardly qualifies as stealing a holiday.”
“Your heart's an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders. Garlic in your soul. Something something about seasick crocodiles. If the unwashed socks fit … ”
He clasps his hand to his chest in mock distress. “Way harsh, Lucinda.”
She considers him, tilting her head to the side, her sky blue eyes focusing on him in a way that makes his breath catch. “You're right. That was unfair of me, when you are clearly more analogous to Ebenezer Scrooge.”
He breaks the eye contact, thinking of the productivity calculation he had made just minutes ago, the laid-off friends he had imagined for her, and bites back a grimace.
“If I remember correctly, Scrooge got out of these sorts of invitations.”
“So, what are you doing here?”
You're here.
“Oh, you know. Simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” He flicks his eyes toward the impromptu speaker arrangement. “Is this your doing?”
Her eyes flare in satisfaction—the bright look she gets when she thinks she has succeeded at goading him in some way, and he feels himself brighten at having caught her at it. “Of course.”
“You weaponized a playlist against me,” he accuses, narrowing his eyes at her. It's such an absurdly adorable way to wage battle.
“You overestimate your own importance.”
“Do I?”
She rolls her eyes theatrically, like a petulant teenager.
“Tsk, tsk, Lucinda,” he murmurs. “The elves are watching.”
“The elves know I've been good this year. Unlike some people.”
“Of course, you wouldn't have to worry, with your connections. You're probably related to someone in wrapping.”
She puts a hand on her hip and pulls herself up straighter, as if that will make her taller. It kills him. “Jokes about my height. That's low-hanging fruit, don't you think?”
“I have trouble reaching the low-hanging fruit, personally. Speaking of your relatives, how are the Huttons these days? Looking forward to seeing their progeny?”
He probably shouldn't provoke her on the subject, but it's been two days since he found out she isn't going to her parents' farm, and he can't help himself. The cozy fantasy he had pictured for her has fallen apart, and he's been trying to reimagine—Lucy in the city. Who would she spend Christmas with here? Friends? A boyfriend? He’s always pictured her as single, but he doesn't know that for sure, and the thought is more than a little unsettling.
The way she'd reacted on Monday, she hadn't looked like she was anticipating a holiday with a special someone.
But when he pictures her alone, he doesn't like that idea much either.
“They're fine, and no,” she admits, her voice clipped and businesslike. “I have a lot of work to do, covering for Helene while she's in France, so I decided not to go this year.”
“Working over a holiday,” he says. “Now who's the Scrooge?”
“Not just working.”
“Oh, you have other plans?”
“Of course I have plans. Plans that don't concern you.”
“Oh, I'm very concerned.”
“Well, that doesn't concern me .”
She looks away in annoyance but doesn't stalk off like he expects her to, and they watch the party in silence as the song switches over to “Last Christmas.” Lucy has picked up a sugar cookie and is nibbling around the edges, eating it slowly as if she is using it to pass the time—a prop like his untouched cup of punch.
“Are you taking off next week?” she asks finally.
“No, I'll be here.”
“Wonderful. I'll have company.” She doesn't sound at all happy about it, and he guesses that she had been hoping for a respite from their constant animosity.
“Hey, all I want for Christmas is for you not to be here either,” he quips.
“Finally, we agree on something,” she says, but a catch in her voice betrays that this isn’t really about her proximity to him at all. Of course she’d rather be with her family. And as much as he would dread the colorless monotony of a week spent sitting across from her empty desk, he finds himself wanting that for her too.
He’s still frowning down at her when she looks away uncomfortably. “Speaking of work ...”
Josh looks around, and she's right, the party is winding down, and they can finally get back to it. Only he's not as impatient as he had been a few minutes before.
As they take the elevator back upstairs in silence, locked in a halfhearted staring game, something occurs to him, and he glances at his watch, giving Lucy the win. He had been almost clocking her conversations all through the party, and he's pretty sure their own had been the longest.
*****
It's Christmas Eve, and the building is practically empty. Helene is in France, Richard has taken the opportunity to be even more absent than usual, and most of the rest of the staff, including, notably, the entire HR department, have already taken off for their various holiday plans. Up here on the executive floor, it's just him, Lucy, and an all-day game of All I Want.
Their newest game starts first thing in the morning, almost as soon as she gets off the elevator, after he watches her take off her coat to reveal a yellow sweater over a black dress with white polka dots.
“Merry Christmas, Joshua,” she says stiffly, apparently giving in to the pressure of the season to be marginally festive, even among mortal enemies.
“Ho … ho … ho,” he responds in kind, and then spontaneously throws himself into the role. “I've heard you've been a very good girl this year, Lucinda. And what do you want for Christmas?”
“All I want for Christmas is for your two front teeth to fall out of your head,” she responds after a moment's considered thought.
And it is on.
Like almost all of their games, its main goal is interrogation, as he attempts to goad her into revealing details about herself. Predictably, it devolves into just another way to needle each other, and they volley back and forth intermittently for the rest of the day:
“For you to stop calling me Shortcake.” (Yeah right. She loves it.)
“For you, just once, to wear pants.” (Is she deliberately torturing him with those dresses? Some days he can hardly concentrate.)
“For you to go to hell.” (Not her most original work, but fair.)
“For you to take that pencil out of your hair. It's a writing utensil, used for writing.”
When he mentions the pencil, she reaches up and touches it, inadvertently knocking it loose, freeing all those wild curls to fall around her shoulders, and her eyes widen in annoyance. Quickly, she spins toward one of the many shiny surfaces she uses as a mirror and winds it all back up on top of her head, petulantly shoving the pencil back in at an angle. A few stray curls fall toward her face.
It's one of the most alluring scenes he has ever seen, and he struggles for the next half an hour to focus on the year-end expense review in front of him, all the while itching to pull that pencil out again.
*****
Midafternoon, Lucy sighs almost imperceptibly, rubs the corners of her eyes, and stretches her arms up toward the ceiling, which pushes her breasts out. Josh averts his eyes. “All I want for Christmas is a couple of extra days off,” she announces.
Josh sits back, adjusting to the change in tone from their earlier game, and considers this, how she should be spending Christmas at home with her parents, where she obviously wants to be. How she probably would need to take enough time off to justify the expense of the flight. And how she should be doing that—she could be.
“According to the employee handbook ...”
“Stop. I know how many days I'm entitled to.”
“So why not take them?”
She gestures vaguely at her desk as if it's self-explanatory. “Helene needs me here to cover for her.”
He knows how much work Helene offloads onto Lucy and the fact that she's suffering for it infuriates him.
“So, if you took the time off, Queen Helene might have to take fewer spa days. Her manicure might be less perfect. The French would have to endure without her presence.”
For a moment, Lucy looks desperately unhappy, and he kicks himself, realizing that he's still stating the obvious. She's smart, and she has certainly had all these same arguments with herself already, and instead of being helpful, he's just making her feel bad.
“Anyway,” he says. “Who am I to talk, I guess.”
She snorts, sounding more like herself. “Seriously.”
“Hey, now. Remember, the elves are watching.”
“I already know what's going to be under my tree, because it arrived on Monday.”
“Really. My care package arrived on Tuesday.” It was filled with his mother's good intentions and soap, per usual.
“Someone sent you a package?” He might find the disbelief in her voice insulting, if he allowed himself to care at all what she thought.
“I have a mother.”
“Really.” She tilts her head, the space between her brow puckering as she seems to think on this, and he takes a sip from his coffee mug. “Was it a Rosemary's Baby-type situation?”
And almost spits it out. She is so funny sometimes that he has trouble remembering why he can't let himself laugh.
“You know what,” Lucy says ominously, with the timbre and inflection of an elderly neighbor, “tell your mother I'd like a word with her sometime. Yes, I'd like to have a word about her son's manners.”
“I'll be sure to mention it next time we talk,” he agrees, without an ounce of sincerity.
It will almost certainly be tomorrow. His mother’s not exactly happy that he's skipping Christmas again this year, and he doesn't want to think about that. Maybe he should actually have her call Lucy—it would be the perfect diversion tactic, and would serve Lucy right for suggesting it.
“If you have the kind of mother who sends care packages, why aren't you picking it up in person?”
“There's just no place I'd rather be than here.” This deflection is delivered with a calculated dose of sarcasm, but it's a little too close to the truth, sitting across from Lucy and her unruly hair half-tamed by a pencil that matches the shade of her sweater, as she accuses him of being the literal spawn of the devil.
“Yeah, right,” she mutters as she returns her attention to her screen.
Josh studies her for a moment, and then makes another notation next to the date in his planner. He looks lingeringly at the next square, the Friday when he would normally be back here, sitting across from her. The space looms large and empty.
Fucking Christmas.
*****
“A truce,” Lucy says. “It's Christmas Eve, and I want a truce.”
Josh glances at the clock and realizes how late it is. The world outside the window is dark, and the building has gone as quiet as a tomb. The three-day weekend stretches out in front of him, impossibly long, but it would be absurd to linger any later.
“A Christmas Eve truce. Like the Germans and the British in World War I.”
“I was thinking of Snoopy and the Red Baron.”
He covers his face with his hands so she doesn't see him smile, then wipes if off, physically pulling his facial muscles downward. “Okay. Deal.”
“What? You're agreeing?”
“For the rest of the workday. Or rather, for the next three minutes in the elevator, until we reach the parking garage.”
“Ugh, you're right, it's late.” She looks around, not making any move to go yet, and he wonders about the empty apartment she's avoiding, if it's anything like the empty apartment he'll be avoiding by hitting the gym.
He's been obsessing about that apartment, trying to picture her in it. It's probably tiny and cute and colorful, filled with dollhouse-sized furniture and smelling of strawberries and baked goods.
Will she be alone there tomorrow? He can't stop thinking of the possibility, of her being some odd number of blocks away from him, across the city, or around the corner, on a weekday when she would normally be here, sitting across from him.
After a moment she snaps out of it, shuts down her computer, gathers up her belongings, and slides out of her heels and into her snow boots. They both put on their coats and make their way to the elevator.
“You know what I noticed today,” he says mildly, as they wait for it to arrive.
“Do I want to know?”
“Of course you do.” He looks sideways at her so he can watch her face. “Almost every single thing you say you want for Christmas has to do with me.”
Her mouth falls open, and the elevator arrives.
“You're already violating the truce,” she accuses him.
He presses the button for basement parking and registers with some annoyance that she hits the one for ground level, cutting his limited time left with her even shorter.
“Not a violation. Just an observation.”
“Here's another observation for you. Everything you want has to do with me.”
If only she knew.
“That's interesting. Because all I really want for Christmas, Lucinda, is … you.” Under my tree, in my bed, snuggled against my side in front of a warm fire on the strawberry farm. God, he's pathetic, and he's going to regret this. After a beat, he continues smoothly, as if that hadn't been the end of a sentence, as if his heart hadn't started beating overtime, “—to believe one thing I ever say to you. Just one thing.”
She lets out her breath in a whoosh like she's been holding it for the past ten seconds. “Ha. And what one thing should I believe?”
“That's the question, I suppose.” Josh shrugs, and the elevator door opens on the ground floor, ending the shortest elevator ride ever, and dammit, he's not ready to say goodbye to her.
“I'll keep that in mind.” She moves to exit, and on impulse he throws a hand up to keep the door from closing, and reaches out with the other to catch her by her upper arm.
Lucy pulls up short, turning back toward him with giant question marks and exclamation points beaming out of her eyes, and he swallows.
“I have a bus to catch,” she says, pulling away.
“It's Christmas Eve. The buses stopped running an hour ago.” It could be true.
Her mouth falls open, and she looks toward the dark, snowy scene beyond the glass doors, dismayed.
“I'll take a cab,” she says, with less conviction, as they both notice the lack of traffic. Everyone in the world, quite possibly including cab drivers, appears to be already home with their families.
“Don't. I'll drive you.” Staring down her hesitation, he quickly adds, “Come on, the Christmas Eve truce is still in effect.”
She frowns, her body rigid with reluctance, but finally she nods once, and he remembers to let go of her as she steps back into the elevator. His fingers involuntarily flex as they drop to his side, and she reaches a hand up to touch the place on her arm where his hand had been. He realizes that for all the months he has been sharing space with her, it's the first real physical contact they've ever had, and he's going to relive it, the shape of her slender arm, the imagined feel of her skin through several layers of fabric, all night long … possibly forever.
On the way to his car, he practices projecting outward calm, while adrenaline surges inside him. It's not like he's been visited by three wise-ass ghosts who have inspired him to reach out and change his weekend or his life—it's just a short car ride.
He settles himself down by thinking about the specific chemical reactions that are causing this feeling, breaking them down to their most clinical terms. His adrenal glands spit out epinephrine, triggering the sympathetic nervous system: heightened senses, alert reflexes, dilated pupils. Enlarged air passages and increased heart rate facilitate the flow of oxygen. His blood vessels are redirecting resources from his stomach and intestines to his large muscle groups.
One point of contact set off a fight-or-flight response. Sounds about right.
She starts giving him directions, and he diverts his attention to that, and to watching the road. The snow is falling thickly now, and he's glad she hadn't insisted on going out into this alone.
“Car in the shop again?” he asks.
“No. It's just slow to start in the cold, and I was in too much of a hurry to sweet talk it. I'll figure it out in the morning.”
“On Christmas morning?”
“You have something better planned?”
“For you?”
“For you. Not you, a general you.” He squints at this nonsense, wondering if she's flustered. “It was rhetorical.”
“Right.”
After a few minutes, she turns on the radio and flips around until she finds a Christmas song. It sounds like it's sung by those cartoon chipmunks he always hated as a kid.
“Relatives of yours?” he asks.
“Truce!”
He waves at the car stereo, still emitting some high-pitched squeaks that are definitely not music.
“This is your idea of peacetime behavior?”
Before she can respond, they drive past a city bus, and she sees it.
Shit.
“So the city buses aren't running tonight?” Her voice drips with sarcasm, sweet and sour, just like her.
“Oh, like you'd rather be on a bus tonight, sandwiched between drunken mall Santas.”
“You kidnapped me!” she sputters.
“If I kidnapped you, I'd be taking you to my apartment,” he points out reasonably.
“At least I'd get something out of this, then.”
She wants to see his apartment? Josh mentally bookmarks that question to return to later.
“I didn’t kidnap you. I offered you a ride home.”
She literally harrumphs at that. “Harrumph,” she says, and it's accompanied by an epic eye roll. Even watching the road, he can tell it's an eye roll for the ages. Bravo.
“Under false pretense. This is impossible. I don’t know why I ever thought … you are impossible,” she grumbles. “Here, this is my building. Let me out here.”
He pulls forward until he finds an actual parking spot and carefully parallel parks into it, ignoring the conniption fit she is having in the passenger seat as she tries to figure out how to release his power locks.
So this is where she lives. He mentally maps the route he'll take home and estimates that she is fourteen city blocks away. They're not neighbors, but it's an easy run, a long walk, a short drive from his place. So close, and still so frustratingly far. Impossible, just as she said.
I don’t know why I ever thought …
What? What did she think?
Lucy figures out the lock as the car lines up with the curb and jumps out. She's out so fast, he spontaneously flips the ignition off and jumps out after her.
“Lucinda!” he calls out, with no idea what he’s going to say beyond that.
She spins around and flings her hands out in an exaggerated gesture of exasperation, and her key ring flies out of her hand into a pile of snow someone has shoveled to the side.
Relieved to have something to do, a reason for being on the sidewalk in front of her building at this particular moment in time, Josh reaches down and fishes around in the wet slush until his fingers close on cold metal.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Retrieving your keys. You might say thank you.”
“I wouldn't have dropped them if you hadn't been stalking me.”
“I gave you a ride home.”
“An unnecessary ride. And I'm home now, so you can leave. Now give me my keys.”
“No.”
“NO?”
His ungloved hand is icy cold now, and she won't even say thank you, so he doesn't feel too concerned with taking orders from her at the moment, even though she has a point. There's no reason for him to be here, and definitely not to still be here.
Lucy makes a dive toward his hand, and he shoves the keys high in the air. The keys are now more than seven feet off the ground, and she's hopping underneath like a very irate bunny. His wall of mounting frustration cracks, and he comes closer to laughing out loud than he has ever done in her presence.
She pauses, assessing the situation, and for a moment, he thinks she's about to try climbing him, and he momentarily wishes she would. Wouldn't that be a Christmas wish come true.
“Joshua!” She stamps her feet in the snow, her fists at her sides.
“Lucinda.” He’s gotten himself under control, so her name comes out calmly, like they’re sitting across from each other in the office rather than engaging in some sort of weird power struggle on the sidewalk.
“Come on, Joshua. It’s friggin’ cold out here.”
“So let’s go upstairs.” It’s a perfectly logical suggestion, isn’t it? She’s cold, and he’s … dammit, he doesn’t know what he is.
Lucy sputters dismissively. “Yeah, right.”
“Let me see your apartment, and you can have your keys back.” His voice is calm, rational. His overwhelming need to see the space she spends their time apart in is definitely not.
“I'm not going to invite you in! Are you insane?”
“You don't have to invite me. I saved you the trouble and invited myself. An uninvited guest.”
“You don't play fair.”
He shrugs. “Pot. Kettle.”
Kettle would actually be a pretty good descriptor for her right now. There's practically steam coming out of her ears. He could tip her over and make tea.
He half smiles at the thought, the bubbling over of an expression he's been holding in for too long. She sees it, her face lighting up in recognition of it, and he kicks himself. But then—
“Fine!” she says. “Have it your way. I can't believe you.”
Josh sympathizes, because he can't believe himself right now. Or that this insane behavior is working.
Lucy reaches for the keys again, but with a stern shake of his head, he gestures for her to lead the way. Shoulders hunched forward, she grumbles and sputters as she walks ahead of him into the building.
“You're going to pay for this.”
“Probably,” he agrees.
After a brief, tense elevator ride, they're at her door. She reaches for her key ring again, but he pushes forward and slides it into the lock. With a click, it pushes open, and before she can scramble ahead of him, he steps inside, fumbling for a light switch.
He can't believe he's here. He can't believe he tricked her into accepting a ride home, held her keys hostage, and forced her to let him inside. Who is he?
But he's here.
A pair of table lamps spring to life, illuminating white walls, a saggy brown couch, and a whole lot of clutter. He can see clothes on the floor near what's probably her bedroom door and a bin of unfolded laundry near his feet. Piles of paper are strewn on every surface. An abandoned teacup sits next to the couch, red lipstick on the rim. There's a cabinet on the far wall that he'd like to inspect further if he didn't already feel like such an intruder. And books. So many books.
Aside from a dress on the floor he remembers her wearing earlier in the week, and the books, which seem in character, it's hardly the colorful, retro abode he had pictured for her.
After scanning the room, his eyes are quickly drawn back to Lucy, who is by far the most lively part of this frankly depressing tableau. Her blue eyes are ablaze, her red lips an angry slit, her curls fallen loose and seeming to stand out even more than usual, and she is clutching her phone like a weapon.
“Expecting a call?” His voice comes out thin, like his wavering bravado.
“An enormous man followed me home and forced his way into my apartment. But he should know, I have the police on speed dial, and the precinct is a block away.”
Josh swallows and takes a step backward. She is vibrating, practically shaking, and he is suddenly very self-conscious of their size differential, and shit.
He shouldn't be here. It hits him all at once, in the gut, and he feels queasy. They always push each other, beyond the boundaries of comfort, until one or the other invokes HR, but he's taken it several steps too far tonight—into downright creepiness.
The realization forces him to drop his guard for a moment. He lets all the insincerity, irony, and sarcasm fall away, all his protective layers of pretense, and does something they never do.
He apologizes. “I'm sorry. I pushed it too far. I shouldn't have taken your keys.”
“Or?”
“Invited myself up.”
“Or?”
“Given you a ride?” he offers, annoyance starting to creep back in before he catches himself. “Fine. Look, I didn't know about the buses. It was a guess.”
She relaxes slightly, loosens her grip on the phone and folds her arms across her chest, a gesture that makes her look even smaller and more vulnerable, and Josh has the powerful urge to step toward her. Instead, he creeps back further into the doorway and hovers there, feeling more and more like a storybook villain—a large awkward creature, ungainly and inhuman, unable to move forward except by permission.
“But why? Why would you do all that? Why are you here?”
I'm lonely. I'm dead inside and you make me feel alive. I don't want to be apart from you. All these thoughts, the ones he doesn't usually let through, slide into his head simultaneously, crowding everything else out, so he shrugs irritably. They stare at each other, at an impasse.
“Well?” she says impatiently, gesturing around her apartment. “What's the damage? Tell me. I want to know what I'm in for now that you've seen it.”
He takes another look, taking it all in, a distraction from himself. “It’s … I don’t know, it’s not what I expected.”
“What does that mean?”
“It looks like a depressed person lives here.” He doesn't mean it the way it sounds. It's the truth, and he's confused by it.
When she flinches, he feels like he should have said something else. “I've been busy.”
“I know.”
And he does know. He's seen the cookies and the decorations for the office party, the spreadsheets and reports she prepares for Helene, and the way she smiles while she gives up her evening to martyr herself for various deadbeats downstairs. Of course she doesn't have anything left over once all the parasites have drained her.
“You think I'm pathetic.”
“I don't.”
She makes a harrumphing sound, and he turns away from the cluttered room to look at her fully.
“Shortcake,” he says quietly, his heart in his throat, tasting a hint of a regret he might feel about this whole scene on Monday. “Believe one thing I say. I don't think you’re pathetic.”
She bites her bottom lip and furrows her brow, looking toward his feet, before popping back up, defiant.
“Well, don't be surprised if I someday barge my way into your place to gawk at all your piles.” She spits the words out like a threat that should make him shake in his boots.
But the image of her showing up at his apartment, of her looking around to try to understand something about him, is a fantasy he hasn't even allowed himself to have, and he makes a choked sound that is almost a laugh (he's slipping) and swallows. “That seems only fair.”
On impulse, he finds a piece of junk mail within arm's reach and pulls a pen out of his jacket, as she tilts her head at him curiously. He raises his eyebrows at her, then turns to use the doorjamb as a writing surface. He scrawls something on it, his heart thumping in his chest.
There. A good faith gesture to make up for this ridiculous invasion.
She takes the slip of paper he hands her and studies it in confusion. “An address?”
He nods.
“Your address? This is where you live?”
He repeats the gesture, one slow but certain bob of his head.
Lucy stares at the paper, mulling it over, clearly skeptical, but her features start to brighten. He watches her mouth twist to the side, mentally filling in the smile he thinks she's hiding. When she meets his eyes again, she's practically glowing with the power he has offered her—his address, a way to find him, as if she'd want that—and he turns toward the door again because he can't hold back his own smile.
“You can't be serious,” she scoffs. “You'd lure me there and not let me in.”
He swings his eyes back to hers, a challenge. “You don't know unless you try.”
If he were to straight up invite her over for a holiday meal, he's pretty sure she'd choose stewing in her own filthy apartment. But he can only guess at her own reasons for playing their games, and hope that she just might be as desperately curious about him as he is about her. If only for the ammunition.
At least I’d get something out of this, then, she had said.
She squints at him, and for some reason, the way her eyelids are covering all but a sliver of her eyes makes them even more alluring. Like a woman's robe when you know she's hiding something interesting underneath. (Although maybe he really shouldn't be having such stray thoughts while standing in her living room.)
“When?”
“When?” he echoes dumbly, before bringing himself back to the matter of hand. “Oh. Any time.”
She's still squinting at him disbelievingly.
“Any time? You don't mean that.”
Does he mean that? He's lost track, and he isn't sure exactly what game they're playing at now. The open-endedness of any time is troubling, but trying to nail down something more specific—like a date—is downright dangerous. Is he inviting her to his apartment? Is that what they're doing?
He feels a little nauseous. Let her come to him if she's going to. “Try me.”
“Okay,” she says smugly, like she's got him. “Tomorrow then.”
Tomorrow is literally December 25, and for a moment he's dumbfounded. Is she inviting herself over for Christmas? Or is she calling his bluff, trying to get him to back down? Well, two can play at that.
Josh spreads his hands in front of him, projecting all the innocence of a choir boy in a nativity pageant. “I have no plans. I can't go to work. My gym is closed. Some might say it’s a perfect day to accept some friendly revenge.”
Lucy folds her arms across her chest and studies him through those alluringly narrowed eyes. He stares back. A classic Lucy-and-Josh staredown. And then something else passes over her face, something knowing and self-satisfied, and his stomach drops.
“You want me to come over.”
“I … what?”
“That's why you're here, in my apartment. You're alone for Christmas. You're the one who's lonely and pathetic, so desperate for company that you're reduced to this … this, whatever this is you're doing tonight.”
It's an extremely well-aimed sucker punch, and Josh punches back unthinkingly. “Maybe I was taking pity on you after seeing your sad hellhole of an apartment.”
He regrets it as soon as he says it, but his shot was pure bluster, and Lucy only raises her eyebrows and shakes her head, casually dismissing the idea.
Embarrassed, he reaches forward to take the scrap of paper back but she snatches her hand away and clutches it against her chest.
“It would serve you right if I took you up on it,” she says petulantly. “Maybe I will.”
“Maybe you will … what, show up for Christmas dinner?”
“Maybe. You invited me. Didn't you?”
Somewhere in the back of his head, in a walled-off corner of his mind, it occurs to him that this is the moment. He could call her bluff, just not in the way she's expecting. He could come clean—tell her he does want her there, he wants her. A less rational corner suggests that he could step forward, sweep her into his arms, and show her how much that's true.
But he's barely admitted as much to himself, and, ridiculous raging desires aside, his self-preserving reflexes are deeply ingrained, and so he hedges.
“If you have nothing better to do,” he says noncommittally, subtly insinuating that showing up would be an admission of that.
“I'm not saying I will,” she says hotly.
“Fine. I'm not saying I want you to.”
“But it would only be fair.”
Fair. That's their thing. The word annoys him, and he's not sure why. But as absurd as it is, if he has any reason to think he might actually see her tomorrow, it's that.
“You showed me yours, now I show you mine?” he says.
Her eyes drop down, gratifyingly, and her cheeks pop with color.
“HR,” she breathes.
“At least you're not threatening to call the police anymore,” he murmurs.
Lucy lifts her eyes to his, and they stare at each other for a long beat. Her eyes are the most remarkable color, he registers for the millionth time, and it's so hard to look away from them. He wants to stay in this space and banter and squabble with her forever, pushing each other's buttons until he has her pressed against the wall, at his mercy—or even better, vice versa.
His insides feel warm, liquid, and the tension seems palpable. He can't be the only one who feels it.
“It's late,” she says, throwing a bucket of cold water on the moment.
“Yeah. Well, this has been fun, but I better go. I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome.”
“Very funny, you giant psycho,” she says, with less heat and conviction than the words might merit.
Maybe he has been enmeshed in this dynamic for too long, because it sounds almost like an endearment.
“Good night, Shortcake.” An unauthorized bit of warmth steals into his voice, and she blinks at him before sticking her tongue out.
He takes that as his cue to go, and she closes the door quickly behind him.