Requited Love 1

(Author's Note: if you wish to skip straight to the sex, move down to chapter VI, below)

I

"Yes sir, I understand and will make sure to forward your comments directly to our CEO. Yes, he does read this feed-" Pause. "No sir, I am not patronizing you. As you know, you are one of our 'Preferred Platinum' members, which means that as soon as I finish taking your comments, they go straight to a file that only the CEO can access." A slightly shorter pause. "Yes sir, thank you for your time, have a wonderful Fri-" But Jimmy couldn't finish politely wishing the angry, entitled man a good Friday evening before the irate asshole with his almost unintelligible Bangalore accent hung up on Jimmy. The grumpy asshole's disconnection was the only mercy Jimmy had known that evening. Following his four years of active duty in the US Army, he had worked for two years in a customer service job at a call center serving one of the Western World's most well-heeled credit card companies.

Taking his ear piece and microphone off his head, he slammed it on the table next to his Call Master IV, logged-off his computer and put his forehead in his hands and closed his eyes as he waited. His headache had started that morning, and only gotten worse as the day wore on through four master's classes, lousy late afternoon rush-hour traffic, and then six hours of work. As he willed the painful throb just behind his left eye to go away or simply kill him in a massive aneurism, he felt the air stir against his left shoulder, suggesting someone had walked back to his almost deserted corner of the cube farm. While he felt the air move, almost refreshingly in the gentleness with which it blew along the short hair of his scalp, he also noticed a faint scent of cucumbers and lilac. Deducing that it was a fragrance most likely worn by a woman, he stifled his urge to swear audibly at the painful throb in his head, asking God to just kill him now.

"Hey, Jimmy?" A woman's voice tentatively asked.

Realizing he'd not yet find any solace through death, he raised his head and opened and then trained his eyes upon his visitor. He ignored the shock of sudden pain his headache delivered as he both opened his eyes and moved, accepting with utter defeat the reality that likely for the rest of the night, he would feel like hell.

"Hey, Grace." He greeted the blond, caucasian woman who now stood next to him. "What's up?" He asked, his voice quiet and subdued as he leaned gingerly back in his chair.

Grace's facial expression changed from bright to concerned, with both her bright pink lips and the corners of her brown eyes working together to express her reaction. "It's past quitting time; already 8:45. Tough call?" She asked, knitting her fingers with their half-inch long, either light-red or dark-pink (coral?) colored nails together in front of her stomach.

"Yeah, one of the 'Indian Princes' calling to share with us his fine 1930's British diction and his nouveau riche sense of entitlement. Oh, and he may have mentioned something about wanting a lower APR."

"Oh, that's too bad... Great way to ruin a Friday night, huh?" Grace asked, her smile returning to bright, stretching her cheeks, the angle of the movement making her faint acne scars from years ago visible through the pale cover-up she always wore. Perhaps it was the accumulated sweat and oil from six hours under fluorescent lights and cloyingly warm, "pumpkin-spice" atmosphere of the call center that had made the scars visible through her makeup. Regardless, he knew at that moment that he was impressed at how faded her acne scars seemed (laser surgery perhaps?), and that distraction from his headache offered a momentary respite from the sharp pain throbbing behind his eyes and temples.

Grace didn't seem to mind his fascination with her face, and was content to shift her weight from one foot to the other as she drank in his attention. But something shifted in Jimmy's blue eyes and he closed his left eye tightly and knitted both his brows, putting his right hand to his forehead and massaging his temples with his thumb and index finger.

"Yeah, well, maybe he just misses the old call center the company used to use, the one in Mumbai. Maybe he had a friend there with whom he liked to compare his Bangalore to their Mumbai accents as they both spoke what passes for English in South Asia." Jimmy offered, tersely rubbing his temples as Grace studied him. She had always found Jimmy attractive, at least as much for his still very discernible military bearing and 23 year-old, "All-American boy" good looks, as for his toned and athletic physique and quick mind. The fact that he had the face and voice of a young Casper Van Dien also made him standout to Grace as devastatingly handsome...

She looked at his screen and noticed his logoff was complete. "Your computer's off now, and it's just you, me and Dave left, and Dave told me to come over and tell you to leave." Grace shifted her weight again, but this time in a way that possibly indicated Grace was nervous. Jimmy hated non-verbal communication, but he remembered that their manager, Dave, never liked staying later than their shift was supposed to end, especially on a Friday, and principally before a three day weekend, as they were now upon. "He said you had a difficult call, he was auditing you, but said you did well."

"Well, I'm glad he feels that way." Jimmy said, finally standing up, very briefly stretching his stiff neck left and then right, trying to touch each shoulder and elicit an aesthetically pleasing but medically useless loud "crack." In this attempt at even superficial relief, he again failed. "Why are you still here? Difficult Prince?"

"No, I finished at 8:30, but had to straighten up my call notes." She offered, which didn't seem likely given how experienced and hard working Jimmy knew Grace to be. "Whatever..." He thought.

Gathering up his badge, car keys, empty soda can and mostly empty Excedrin bottle, he gestured politely for Grace to proceed and then followed her through the maze of now empty and darkened cubicles toward the punch clock.

"Oh, are you sick, Jimmy? Not hung over, I hope." Dave said, in his mocking but friendly way as Grace and Jimmy passed his team lead, "double-cube." Jimmy smiled genuinely and nodded at Dave as he walked on toward the clock.

"Yeah, just a lousy day. Thanks for auditing that last call, I'm sure he'll call back to complain about me, too."

Dave smiled knowingly as he put on his brown leather jacket and knit watch cap. "Yeah, that guy calls every few weeks, we get a notice when his number's in the call system and no matter who's the Lead on duty, we always audit the calls."

Grace veered off from their march to the time clock about 10 meters away from it and moved to her cube, where she began to gather her jacket and purse. Jimmy plodded on and quietly clocked out from work.

"Have a good weekend, Jimmy!" Dave called.

"You too, Dave. Say hi to Ryan." Jimmy called back, referring to Dave's husband, who like Jimmy was an Army veteran.

II

Jimmy walked down the building's locker-lined central hallway, South of the cube farm, moving towards the building's turnstiles. He paused briefly to pull his own jacket from his assigned locker ("just like high school!" he thought), before proceeding on and badging out of the turnstiles. He stopped momentarily in the "airlock," which they called the threshold between the exterior and interior doors, and thought about but decided not to put on his jacket, electing to shock his headache with the below freezing cold of a cloudless, late fall, Friday night. He'd just folded his jacket over his left arm when he heard from behind him the familiar 'whump' of air moving away from the opening interior door as it pushed out toward threshold. Instinctively, he stepped aside to ensure he was not blocking the egress of whomever was behind him.

"Jimmy, no jacket? You'll catch cold." Grace scolded him gently. She had on fluffy pink ear muffs over her bright (platinum?) blond hair which she wore pulled back into a smooth and shiny pony tail, as well as a puffy green goose-down jacket and pink, nylon mittens.

"It's okay, maybe my head will freeze and this damned headache will finally go away." Jimmy swore, but then remembered he was still at work and smiled wryly as he pushed open the exterior door and held it for Grace. She slowly walked past him, her eyes trailing him from the side as she passed him.

"You shouldn't joke about that."

Jimmy watched her walk in front of him, veering off to the right from his straight forward path to his car in the parking lot, and instead making toward the bus shelter. There was one more bus scheduled to arrive at 9:00, and it looked like she would have a very cold wait.

"Have a great weekend, Grace!" He called to her, waving but not looking at her. He began to feel upset now that he'd been grumpy while talking with her earlier. Though he hadn't snapped at her directly, he'd been blunt.

She turned and waived a mittened hand toward him. "You, too, Jimmy!" She called, as she sat down on what looked like an aluminum bench, and which was very likely to be quite cold.

"She's a nice girl," he thought as he walked, now hunch-shouldered toward his car, resisting his body's urge to shiver, telling himself he actually enjoyed the way the cold seeped into his scalp, painfully attacked his ears and finally began to dull the throb of his headache. "She isn't svelte or delicate in her build, but she's nice, and very feminine, and seems a lot more flirty and sweet than Jenny..." He thought, comparing Grace as he had compared other women he'd met to his current girlfriend, Jenny. Jenny was intelligent, educated, beautiful (in a waifish, delicate sort of way) and generally very reserved, but ultimately neither very affectionate nor inclined to romance, and Jimmy had come to consider her an Ingenue, more interested in social justice (and chasing it through a myriad of causes) than she was in the hard realities of life, which combat and serving in a deployed environment had taught him to appreciate above most else. Lately, he had particularly despaired for their relationship as either Jenny's shifting politics or simply her true personality revealing itself, caused him to constantly offend and anger her, often as not simply for the crime of being born a heterosexual white male...

He put his car key into the driver's side icy lock, pulled open the door handle and enjoyed the sound of the thin shell of ice cracking along the gap between the driver's side door and the hardtop chassis of his Jeep Wrangler. He started the engine, and rubbed his hands over the cold, but hopefully imperceptibly warming air coming out of the vent to the left of his steering wheel. The cold had finally surpassed his ability to enjoy it to the detriment of his headache, and he was now uncontrollably shivering. Thinking again of Grace's warning, he put on his "Loden" colored, Filson wool cruiser, but left his own knit, black watch cap in the jacket pocket. Finishing that, and noting that the air coming from the vents was now merely cool and moving slowly toward luke warm, he put his Jeep into gear (manual transmission, thank you very much), and drove toward the outlet of the parking lot.

"God, she looks lonely and cold." He said to himself, pulling up even with, but about five meters West of the bus shelter. Grace sat on the cold aluminum bench, her legs crossed at her ankles above her Adidas "superstar" sneakers and her arms wrapped around her stomach, mittens under her arms.

Jimmy stopped and reached over to roll down the passenger side window ("What's the use of electric windows if I end-up in the water?" he always reminded himself as he rolled the windows up or down). "Grace, are you all right?" He asked.

She smiled wanly and nodded, her nod was as much a shiver that moved her head back and forth as it seemed to be a voluntary muscle movement. He kept looking at her, thinking for a moment.

III

"Grace, can I give you a ride?" He asked. "You look miserable." She nodded again and quickly stood up and jogged the short distance to his Jeep as he quickly rolled the window back to closed. He'd just unlocked the passenger side door ("Manual locks only, please." He'd told the incredulous Military Vehicle Sales clerk at Bagram as they designed his post-deployment Wrangler) when she lifted the handle and very quickly hopped in. However, once she was in her seat and had closed her door, she leaned over toward him and wrapped her arms around his right side, her whole body shaking. She buried her face against his arm and shoulder and shook against the soft, wool fabric of his cruiser while she soaked up the now almost warm air in the Jeep.

Jimmy was surprised, but decided to not react and just drive out of the lot toward the road. "Watch your head as I shift to second." He warned her once they were on the road and had picked up enough speed to necessitate up-shifting. She reacted by moving stiffly back to her own seat and engaging her seatbelt, thankfully ending the otherwise constant bleating of the Jeep's protest to her audacity at sitting unbelted in her seat.

"Oh my God, it's so cold!" She commented, pulling off her mittens and holding her hands in front of the air vents in the center of the dashboard. Jimmy turned up the vent output to maximum, and checked that the temperature setting was as far moved to the "red/hot" side of the dial as he could move it.

"It is." He remarked, noticing how shiny and smooth her nails appeared in the intermittent flash of street lights under which they passed. From what he could see, the polish she used looked thick, almost like a lacquer, making her nails look to his eye like ultra-cute, and very feminine claws... He liked them. Jenny always kept her nails very short, and only used clear or "natural" colored polish, insisting that women over the age of 20 who used brightly colored polish were "cheap" or "trashy." Jimmy had come to the conclusion after being with Jenny for the last two years that perhaps 'cheap' and 'trashy' were what he liked, what he needed. He was tired of dour and painfully subtle.

"Do you have any plans this weekend, Jimmy?" Grace asked him. Then nervously, "I mean, do you and Jenny have any plans. Sorry. Didn't mean that to sound... I don't know..."

Jimmy looked sideways at her and smiled, doing so in a way that had endeared him to her the first time she'd seen him do it, though he was, quite honestly, oblivious to this effect. "No worries, you were right the first time. Jenny's been gone the last three weeks and won't be back for at least another six. She's doing her fieldwork for her thesis."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know." Grace said, smiling in a way that even someone as uninterested and (at least consciously) unfocused upon non-verbal communication as was Jimmy, could still discern that his answer relieved her.

"No need to be sorry. How could you know?" He said, smiling again. "I don't have any plans. My head feels like shit, er, it feels bad," he said, still in work mode wherein he tried to not openly swear. "I'll probably just go take a shower, keep my head under the hot water as long as I can take it, and then go to bed. How about you? Any dates this weekend?" He asked her and then kicked himself mentally. "What the fuck business is that of yours, shitbird?!" He cursed himself.

Grace smiled shyly and turned to look directly at him. "No, no plans, no dates. I'm not seeing anyone now, haven't for awhile."

He screwed up his face into a perplexed scowl, but continued to stare ahead. "Really? Why not? How blind are the guys around here?" He asked her, his scowl quickly morphing into his confident and winning smile.

Grace just shrugged and kept looking at him, smiling and willing him to be more inclined to read into their pregnant pauses and her obvious interest in him.

"So, where can I take you?" He asked her, looking over directly at her, as they'd come to a red light, noticing the way her eyes sparkled. "So unlike Jenny..." He thought, recalling Jenny's always-sincere and scolding eyes behind her unisex, oval frames. Grace's eyelashes were heavily mascaraed and she'd drawn black penciled lines on the edges of her eyelids, framing her dark brown eyes. "Brown eyes with blond hair." He thought. "Kind of like Brittany Murphy." He was beginning to feel very attracted to Grace's robust and overtly feminine expression of her sense of beauty.

"Well, I'm kind of hungry. Can you take me to Iron Heart Brewery?" She asked.

He thought a moment, pursing and then shifting his lips like McKayla Maroney famously did. "Sure, that's not far, I think it's right off of University Ave." He said, refocusing on the road.

They'd driven for about four minutes past the stoplight, all of it in silence. "Mind if I turn on the radio?" Grace asked.

"Not at all." Jimmy said, noticing that he was now feeling better than he'd felt all day. His headache had dramatically receded, removing the need to take another round of Excedrin once he'd arrived at home.

Grace smiled and scanned through the available stations, choosing a soft rock or easy listening station. It was "Oldies" night and the station was playing "Toy Soldiers," by the singer "Martika." She listened in silence as Toy Soldiers finished and "It Must Have Been Love," by "Roxette" followed. "Interesting choices..." Grace mused, wondering if the DJ had some insight into her own feelings of the moment.

When they arrived at Iron Heart Brewery, Grace put her mittens back on, gathered up her purse and put her hand on the door handle, but paused before opening it.

"Jimmy, why don't you let me buy you dinner, to thank you for the ride?" She asked, looking at him again with that same sparkle in her eyes. He was fascinated with the sheen of light that played across her shiny, blond hair.

"That's not necessary, Grace. It's the least I can do. Plus, I don't think I'd be good company tonight."

She didn't show her disappointment, and was about to turn away and exit the vehicle, but perhaps as a result of the sentimentality of the music, she tried again. "C'mon, Jimmy, I can tell you're feeling better, you're smiling a lot more and..., you even seem a little playful." She smiled widely as she ended her appeal, and despite his lingering reticence, he, too, smiled.

"Okay. I'm kind of hungry, now that I think of it." He turned his attention back to swinging the Jeep through the parking lot to find a spot in the thinning but still nearly full parking lot. He didn't see the way Grace's gaze lingered on him, nor had any inkling to the effort she had to put forth to not reach out her mitten and squeeze his knee, as would have been her normal inclination.

IV

They had to park near the Southeast corner of the lot, and had a bit of walk through the now nasty wind of the cold night. Grace was nearly doubled over in trying to lean into the wind and cover herself with her arms. Jimmy kept his posture ramrod straight, but had to nearly close his eyes from the force of the cold wind blowing into his face. He felt Grace's mitten reach out and grab his numbed hand and he instinctively squeezed her hand in return, gripping her mitten snugly and pulling her along as they trooped through the wind.

Their timing had been excellent, as they arrived just as a busboy had cleared a small booth for two. The hostess seated them as soon as Jimmy's partially frozen lips were able to make clear they were a party of two. As their luck would have it, they were directly under the air vent, which was now billowing out a warm, dry flow. Grace shivered and smiled as she took off her mittens and ear muffs, and then held her hands out to thaw in the warm air. Jimmy again admired her nails and her hands, noticing for the first time, likely due to the improved lighting conditions here when compared to their office, that despite her pale coverup/foundation makeup, her complexion had a slight caramel hue to it, which helped explain her brown eyes. He noticed that her eye brows were blond, not as blond as her hair, but seemed to indicate she was a natural blond. He'd never looked at her like this before, and hadn't before felt serious interest in studying her as he did tonight; "Strange." he thought. He felt a switch engage in his consciousness, and realized he was very attracted to Grace.