Cornerstone - Part 1

another tweet-inspired piece!

“Kissing is so fascinating to me.”

My head shoots up when he says this, but he’s not looking at me. Something outside the window has caught his eye, and I’m honestly relieved. He didn’t need to see the hopeful look on my face.

“Like… how did we all collectively decide that smushing our mouths together is a cornerstone of intimacy?” he says, brow furrowed as he continues to stare out the window.

Curiosity piqued, I turn my head and my stomach drops like I’m going down one of the many terrifying roller coasters at this Six Flags. I sink in my seat ever so slightly, but he doesn’t notice. His eyes are still glued to the couple who are seemingly attempting to consume one another’s faces outside the chicken tenders place.

“Or are all our brains just hard-wired for that somehow? I’m not sure which one of those is stranger.”

It takes me a second to backtrack and remember what he’s talking about. Normally, I am very much here for these sorts of philosophical ponderings; it’s one of my favorite things about hanging out with him. But after what I just witnessed, I’m not completely sure I can hang. It’s unfortunate, because I never get this much downtime with Josh. Oh, sure we get the odd night out of forced-fun team-building, or an occasional late night before a big presentation, but a whole retreat day at a theme park with lots of free time? I’ve been looking forward to it for months. I, perhaps naively, thought that I would easily avoid my ex in a place this big.

“You okay, Stace?”

When he asks, I realize I’ve been picking at my cuticle. Like, to the point of making it bleed. I inconspicuously grab a napkin and press it to the spot where the blood is rapidly pooling and look up at him with the best impression of a smile I can muster.

“Great! I’m great.”

“What’d you do to your finger?” he says, and the small smirk he wears tells me he saw everything.

My mouth is the only part of my face that moves as I say, “Nothing.”

His smile grows, and if it weren’t for the pit that has opened up in my stomach, it would have made me giddy.

“You’re lucky Collins dumped this responsibility on me,” he says as he pulls a red backpack from under the seat and withdraws from it a first aid kit.

“Oh no, that’s not necessary,” I say, though I have no idea why; the napkin has collected enough bright red spots to be more than a little concerning.

“Oh, come on. Let me be your knight in shining… first-aid kit.”

I cringe. So does he.

“Let’s pretend you never said that.”

“Done.”

I bring my hand back into view and he opens the box to begin searching for an alcohol pad and a band-aid. When he finally finds the pad and tears it open, he reaches out to take my hand in his.

I’m really not the sort of person who allows or even wants someone else to tend to something like a cuticle tear for me, not in the slightest, and yet I allow it.

The pads of his fingers graze the skin on the back of my hand, and I’m so taken by the sensation that all thoughts of my ex and his new girlfriend from marketing fade from my consciousness. I am anesthetized from the pain of it by whatever is transpiring between us. I don’t even flinch when he wipes away the blood and it stings like hell.

While he’s putting on my band-aid, a thought occurs to me, then leaves my mouth without my full consent.

“It’s funny, but this actually feels more intimate than kissing.”

He looks up, and I suck in a small breath when I see a glimmer of what I assume my own face looked like earlier. Hopeful.

He holds my gaze a beat too long. Then, for an infinitesimally small moment, his eyes drift to my lips. Or did I imagine it? I’m certainly not imagining the way his thumb has started stroking my skin where he’s still holding my hand.

“Well well well, what have we here?”

My entire body freezes as I register the fact that my ex has now entered the chicken tenders place and has spotted us immediately.

Josh turns his head to look at him, but doesn’t let go of my hand.

“Hi, Tom,” I say with as little anything as possible.

How I ever let this man into my bed is beyond me. It’s all I can think of whenever I see him.

Unfortunately, he still harbors a weird fascination for me, even though he is the one who ended things between us.

“So what’s this?” he says, motioning between me and Josh. “A little budding office romance?!” He waves his hands in the air as he says this, and I wonder if I can get away with never telling Josh that I did, in fact, let this man into my bed.

Any hope of that is instantly dashed the moment Tom next opens his mouth.

“She sucks at Excel but she’s a freak in the real sheets if you know what I mean,” he says, then pats Josh on the back heartily. Josh does absolutely zero to show he is on board with this conversation. Instead, he seems pensive.

After a beat, he looks up at Tom and says, “What a fascinating way to begin a conversation with a colleague you’ve never met. Were you a must-hire?”

If I had been taking a sip of a drink I would have spit it out.

Tom scrunches his face in confusion. “A what?”

“You know, like the child of a celebrity, or a higher-up? A must-hire.”

Josh’s meaning is all but lost on Tom, so he continues to squint.

Let’s say I wasn’t attracted to him because of his brilliant mind.

Just then, the girl he’d been attached at the lips to comes stumbling in. She looks sunburnt and has a neon green wristband on, which means she’s been drinking.

“Tommyyyyy,” she drones. “I don’t feel so good.”

It happens so quickly that Josh and I barely have time to jump from our seats and out of the way, but we manage it just before she projectile-vomits all over Tom. She’s bent over, coughing and sputtering, letting out the remains of her stomach directly onto his shoes. A number of customers scream and vacate the building. In the back, a few employees are scrambling, presumably to find a mop. This must happen fairly frequently given the pairing of thrill rides and alcohol in the same place.

A few other customers, older women, come forward slowly to ask if she needs help, but that’s when Tom explodes. 

“You have got to be KIDDING ME!”

The women recoil at first, then wait for him to go thrashing over to where the napkins are, as if he’ll be able to do anything useful with those. They bend down to comfort the girl, who is continuing to vomit.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?” Josh says directly into my ear, and I’m instantly zapped back to this strange new reality. He’s still holding my hand. 

“Yeah, I don’t think anything in your first aid kit is gonna help her.”

“The park has better kits than this, it was just stupid protocol one of us had to have it.”

“Well, I’m glad, at least.”

“Me too,” he says with a grin that I get to unabashedly enjoy for the first time.