The last I saw of Mark was him walking across the stage to get his diploma, five whole rows before me, with the other Bs. B for Ballentine--Mark Ballentine. I was a little ways back with the other Hs, as in Hawthorne. Nikki Hawthorne.
"Nikki Hawthorne," came the announcement about a half hour later, and as I crossed, I looked directly at where he sat after having returned to his seat... But my best friend couldn't even be bothered to raise his eyes and give me a congratulatory smile.
He had a smile that could knock a girl right out of her pants.
Or so I'd heard. He never tried to get me out of mine.
Not that he would have had to try.
But at least we were friends, or so I thought, so imagine my puzzlement when I went looking for him only to hear that he'd already left and wouldn't be coming to the after party. That was a final slap in the face that, if I was being honest, set my confidence meter so low that I didn't dare seek him out on social media for years after.
And he was just gone, leaving a troublingly large hole in my heart. A pale chalk outline where a vibrant friendship had been.
Something about him had already been receding from me, even before that. It started a month before graduation, in late spring, when the rain would come down in buckets one moment, and the next thing you knew, the sun would light it all up like pearls on the windows.
We used to walk home every day together, rain or shine.
I used to think I had a chance with him.
As time ticked down and our senior year flew by, I felt more and more desperate. Would those big brown eyes come closer and closer to me--would his thick lashes droop shut--would his lanky arms cradle my body as he kissed me? Would he spark the tinderbox inside me that I had only recently started to notice existed?
When would it happen? I was a whirlpool of anxiety and hope and some other jagged feeling that time was running out. We were going our separate ways, at least, that's what I assumed. I was going to college and he was going--well, I thought I knew where he was going, but then everything started changing and getting weird.
One minute I was a girl pining for her best friend. The next, I had no best friend--just a guy who couldn't seem to sit still long enough to even look at me anymore.
And now I was here in a dark, unfamiliar hallway looking through these big glass doors at goddamn Mark Ballentine.
All grown up.
Even though his head leaned a little over his cluttered desk, I could tell he'd gone from long-limbed bordering on gangly to broad and big--maybe even thick. He rolled his shoulders as I stared, shoulders I'd cried on more than once, shoulders that were disconcertingly muscular. I knew those shoulders, yet they were foreign.
I knew that thick dark hair that he swept a hand through; I knew that hand, which had pulled me up into a tree we used to climb together all the time, had untied me when some jerks from high school band had pranked me; I knew that mouth, I knew that chin, and even though I didn't know the brawn or the stubble, I knew it was him. My whole body was shouting at my brain: That's Mark!
I couldn't stop the swell of joy I still felt at seeing him. And it hurt like hell when memory crushed me a moment later.
My second day on the job and I was going to fucking cry.
But fuck me if Mark was going to see me like that. My brain assessed the situation: glass doors, glass walls, too much damn glass in this place. If I moved suddenly, surely he'd look up and see me. There wasn't the usual office bustle to camouflage my movements; I was working late, and I hadn't seen anyone else for over an hour.
So I'd have to move slowly and deliberately until I could round a corner.
I could feel my poor face, stuck between warring emotions of "cry, girl," and "don't you dare cry, don't be a baby," and "your heart is being CRUSHED all over again, damn right you're going to cry" when suddenly it became urgent that I not cry, because Mark had looked up, and since me seeing him meant he could see me, and since he had the benefit of having known me for six years, even in a darkened hallway he would be able to tell why my face was all scrunched up.
So that's probably why I went for anger. Oh yeah, I felt that frown all the way down in my stomach. I was in full-on glower mode because my face muscles were fighting to do something I couldn't let them do.
I saw him stand up--man, he had to have grown another couple of inches, and he looked so solid--and take a lurching step toward me. After that I didn't see what he did, because I gave up all pretense and sprinted down the hall.
Back to my desk.
I needed to get my purse, my jacket, my other pair of shoes, my favorite coffee mug. The picture of me and my parents. Every item I'd brought to personalize my new work space.
