I always love the days when we go over tests. I almost always got nearly one-hundred percent of the answers right, so I was never interested in hearing Ms. Eliot explain the solutions I already knew. Marissa didn’t seem to care either. I don’t remember when it started, but one day she pushed her notebook towards me with a blank hangman puzzle, and then all of a sudden, we were addicted.
I loved those rainy afternoons, sitting next to Marissa as close as our chairs would allow without it meaning something—close enough that I could feel her warmth and smell her perfume. I loved the thrill of getting a new puzzle, of whispering letters back and forth, the safety of our quiet, perfect, invisible friendship.
It was always the highlight of my day.
Martin from the accounting department is the literal worst. I mean, he’s a nice guy, but by god is he boring. Every time he speaks it comes out like an adult from a Charlie Brown cartoon. And the fact that all he talks about is accounting doesn’t help much either. We’re sitting at a meeting, it’s early, and Martin has been rambling on for about forty-five minutes about spreadsheets or something. Believe it or not, Marissa decided to sit down next to me today and smiled at me when I came in. I guess she’s forgiven me for being a bit rude to her the other day…and I guess the fact that I helped her with her injured hand helped too.
Doesn’t mean I’m ready to forgive her though…right?
I can barely keep my eyes open, and eventually I find them wandering down to Marissa’s legs. Christ, she has great legs—she always had. She still smelled a little bit the same from here…there were familiar notes of almond and vanilla drifting off her skin, but the artificial fruitiness of her youth was gone, replaced with a more adult musk, something a bit more spicy and musky. I was about to drift off again when I noticed Marissa slide her legal pad over to me.
She didn’t. Hangman? Was she crazy? Did she think I was really going to cozy up to some twisted high school nostalgia bit of hers?
I stared at the legal pad, my heart lurching at the seven blank spaces laid out in a neat row on the paper.
“Anyway,” Martin rambled on. “This row of cells displays our data on return investment for the…”
Okay, you know, I was bored enough.
“A” I whispered towards Marissa, and she smiled, drawing a tiny head.
“I”
She filled in the second space.
“O”, I whispered, and Marissa smirked as she filled in the third and fifth letters.
“M,” I said, and frowned playfully at Marissa as she drew a torso on the stick man.
“K,” I added, and watched her draw on an arm. I was running out of guesses.
“B,” I said, and smiled as Marissa filled in the first letter, and then I realized what the word was.
Biology?, I scribbled with pencil on the legal pad, and Marissa nodded.
Seriously. Biology. What kind of game was Marissa playing here? Why was she so intent on me reminiscing with her about the doomed romance we lived through as teenagers? What on earth was the point?
I mean, she didn’t really want to try this again, did she? Why, because I work out now? Because I’m rich? Is she serious?
The meeting came to an end a few minutes later, and after a friendly, yet awkward, goodbye with Marissa, I returned to my office. My phone started beeping and I saw it was my mother calling.
“Kirk! Baby! How are you?”
“Hey Ma,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I’m fine, how are you?”
“Good, good,” she said hurriedly, and I could practically see her leaning over the kitchen table, surrounded by the many lists of calls she had to make and things she had to do to prep for the holiday season. “I just wanted to confirm that you’re coming to the Christmas potluck on Saturday.”
“Of course,” I said warmly. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“And your girlfriend is coming too, right? You know I’ve been dying to meet her ever since you mentioned her at Thanksgiving.”
I froze. Shit.
“Oh, yeah, uh, she’ll be there Ma,” I stuttered. “I’ll see you Saturday. Love you.”
“Love you too, honey!” My mother hung up, and a panicked realization spread through my chest.
Okay, so, I might have made up a girlfriend a few weeks ago at Thanksgiving to appease my parents and their constant nagging and perpetual crisis about the fact that I’m always single. It just sort of…slipped out, and I figured in six months I’d say we broke up and it’d be the end of it, and I’d be left alone for a while. But now here I was, only a couple of days from the famous annual Atkins family Christmas potluck, and I was supposed to show up with a girlfriend that, big surprise, I did not have. There was no way I was going to find a girlfriend in two days, much less one who was cool with meeting my entire extended family on the first date.
I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head. Where on earth was I going to find a girl willing to put up with this? I thought about asking Sabryna, but there was no way someone as sensible as her would put up with a crazy plot like this. Just imagining the look on her face after proposing such a thing was terrifying.
I thought about Marissa during the meeting, and the way she watched me each time I guessed a letter, eager to witness my reaction, to win my approval. She had always been someone who needed everyone to like her, and I guessed that the fact that I hadn’t warmed up to her right away was starting to bother her. I know our relationship was in kind of a fragile place for me to be asking something so strange of her straight off the bat, but this was Marissa. She thrived off of this stuff, she loved these crazy kinds of plans that could end in complete disaster…and besides, I was desperate. I was starting to get annoyed at the constant badgering about my love life that always occurred during family gatherings, the pitiful looks and the way people kept pulling pictures of their granddaughters out of their wallets. I couldn’t take any more embarrassment, and getting caught in a lie, a really pathetic lie, would be even worse. And okay, maybe there was another reason too. Something that occurred to me today as I sat next to her at that meeting…
…I was finally remembering how much I’ve missed her all these years.