Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

Four


            Three weeks ago

            I have my pitch meeting in one hour, a little mountain of gigabytes of files to review, and I’m pretty sure that my interns are currently eighteen floors above, trying to decide whether I abandoned them to join a cult or have been abducted by an urban Sasquatch. But I cannot help staring at Corporate Thor’s mouth as he tells me, matter-of-factly:

            “Money laundering front.”

            “No way!”

            He shrugs. We are sitting right next to each other on a bench in a pocket park that, as it turns out, is just behind my building. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, I’ve spotted at least three butterflies, and yet I remain vaguely intimidated by his size. And his cheekbones. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

            I bite my lip, trying to think it through. “Couldn’t Faye just be, you know . . . a really bad baker?”

            “She certainly is. Her coffee is also questionable.”

            “It is very reminiscent of brake fluid,” I concede.

            “I always thought of plasma coolant. Point is, she was here ten years ago, when I started working in that building, and she’ll be here long after you and I are gone. Despite that.” He points at the croissant I’m still clutching. Honestly, I should just bite the bullet and choke it down. My hand sweat is not going to make it any tastier. “There is no valid entrepreneurial reason for her to still be in business.”

            I nod thoughtfully. He might have a point. “Aside from money laundering operations and ties to organized crime?”

            “Precisely.” Okay, his grammar might be perfect, but I’m starting to pick up a vague foreign accent. I want to ask a million and ten questions about it—a wish in direct competition with my desire to not come across as a weirdo. A lofty goal, as I am, in fact, a weirdo.

            “I see your theory. But. Hear me out.” I blow my bangs out of my eyes. Erik’s expression doesn’t move a nanometer, but I know he’s listening. There is something about him, like his attention is something physically tangible, like he’s good at seeing and hearing and knowing. “So, remember how I talked about my . . . problem?”

            “The magical-thinking one? Where you believe that your professional success relates to the items you ate for breakfast?”

            I cannot believe I admitted to it. God, he already knows I’m a weirdo. Though, to his credit, he seems to be taking it in stride. “Okay, listen, I know it sounds like I’m foolishly clutching the atavistic remnants of ancient times.”

            “Sounds?” His eyebrow lifts.

            I might be flushing. “I like to think of it as . . . more of a way to bind myself and celebrate the traditions of my previous successes, you know? And less as establishing an empirical causal connection between the color of my underwear and future events.”

            “I see.” The corner of his mouth twitches upward. Just barely, though—still not a smile. Maybe he’s not capable. Maybe he has a debilitating medical condition. Smilopathy: now with its very own ICD-10 code. “So, what’s the lucky color?”

            “What?”

            “Of underwear.”

            “Oh. Um . . . lavender.”

            He seems briefly stumped. “Purple?”

            “Kind of, yeah.” I forgot that most men can’t name more than five colors. “A little lighter. Between purple and pink. Pastel-like.”

            He nods slowly, like he’s trying to picture it. “Cute,” he says, and his tone is as simple and straightforward as it’s been in the last few minutes. There is absolutely no creepy lasciviousness, as though he’s complimenting a flower or a puppy. My heart skips a beat nonetheless.

            Would he . . . ? If he saw me wearing my . . . would he still think that . . . ?

            Oh my God. What is wrong with me? This poor man just gave me his croissant.

            “Anyway,” I hasten to add, “maybe there’re a lot of people buying good luck croissants, because I’m not alone in my . . . magical thinking—nice way to put it, by the way. For example, my friend Hannah works at NASA, and she says that the engineers there have had whole complex routines involving Planters peanuts and mission launches for the past, like, fifty years. And I’m an engineer. Basically, I’m professionally required to—”