A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

start treating me like a normal human being again, or I’m going to rip apart the water cooler with my bare hands. Okay?”

There was a long pause. Then Miles threw his head back and laughed. “Okay,” he said.

A team of us headed over to the bar after that. We gossiped and played darts, and as our first drinks disappeared and our second came to replace them, Miles and I gravitated toward each other. “It’s good to have you back, Beckley,” he said. “The office had gotten too . . . pleasant without you.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, and smiled at him.

We jumped from topic to topic, cracking jokes, trying to one-up each other. Occasionally, other writers joined in for a few minutes, but Miles and I kept turning back to the electric energy of our own conversation. The bone-deep weariness I’d been living with lifted. My belly hurt from laughing. Everyone else trickled out, but we only noticed when the last two said their good-byes, leaving us alone. “It got late. I should probably go too,” Miles said, looking at his watch.

“Come on, Emmy’s out of town, right?” I put on some jokey puppy-dog eyes. “So you could go home and rewatch The Wire by yourself, or you could have one more drink with your grieving friend in her time of need.”

“I thought you didn’t want people treating you any differently,” he said.

“I don’t. I’m just worried about you. Abandoning a grieving friend makes you a terrible person, and I don’t want you to go to hell.”

He laughed. “When you put it that way . . .” Then he leaned over the bar and ordered us each a gin and tonic.

When we’d finally closed out, as we were putting on our coats and lurching onto the sidewalk, the night chilly around us, I said, “Thanks for this. I just . . . Thank you.”

“Of course,” he said.

“I’m glad to be back at work for real now,” I said, the words escaping my throat in a rush. “I’m going to write so much good stuff. Make you proud.”

He stopped walking. “I have to tell you—I got another job offer. I’m giving my two weeks’ notice on Monday.”

A roaring started up in my ears. I did not care for this particular change, not at all. “No, what? You can’t leave. You’re the best part about Quill!”

“I’ve got to take it,” he said, and a satisfied smile momentarily lit up his solemn expression. “It’s the New York Standard.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “That’s amazing. Of course they poached you. You’re amazing.”

“Thanks,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. “It’s what I’ve wanted, forever.” He cleared his throat. “I will be sad to leave you, though.”

My eyes filled suddenly with tears, tears for him leaving and about other things too. Endings all over the place. The unfairness of how the bottom can be pulled out, when you thought things were so solid. “Oh God. Sorry,” I said as I dragged my hand across my face and blinked the tears away.

“Jillian Beckley crying? I never thought I’d see the day,” he said.

“I’m not. Shut up.”

He pulled me into a hug to comfort me. We’d never hugged before. He was stronger than I’d expected.

“Whoa, man, you work out?” I said.

“Oh yeah, total gym rat.” One hand of his reached up and stroked my hair, and then, with my nose against his neck, I made a mistake: I breathed in. He smelled like coffee, but more than that. Like security. Yes, I know that sounds dumb.

I watched myself put my arms around him too as if from outside myself, watched somebody who looked exactly like me doing something that I would never do. This bad decision-maker that had my face pressed herself against him, not just head against chest, but hips against hips and then, as he pressed back, I was no longer watching from outside myself. I rocketed back into my buzzing body, and oh, my body wanted him bad. “I wish you would stay,” I said.

“You guys will get some great new editor and forget all about me soon enough,” he said, his voice low, a hitch in his breath.

I drew back and punched his chest lightly. “Right, maybe we’ll get someone who actually appreciates good pop culture.”

He gave me a gentle push. “Let’s hope they can put up with your typos.”

I pushed him back, and then as he stepped forward again, I knew what I was going to do before I did it, and I hated myself. I put my hand on his cheek and kissed him. He drew away for a moment. And then he kissed me back.

It was like neither one of us could catch our breath. He held on to me so tight it bruised my arms. I hadn’t been kissed in almost two years, since my mom had gotten her diagnosis, and my boyfriend at the time had asked if I really had to miss his work party to take her to chemo, and he was promptly not my boyfriend anymore. After I moved home, my mom worried that I wasn’t dating, that I was focusing too much on her, so I’d sometimes tell her that I was going out with someone I’d met online. Then, I’d sit in a café and read a book for a few hours before coming home and spinning her tales of imaginary men—how this one had been rude to the waitress and that one had smelled like fish left out in the sun.

So I’d forgotten how kissing someone felt, the beautiful messiness of it. I was throbbing, a pulsing, exposed, EXTREMELY HORNY heart. But also, I’d never been with someone who kissed me as hungrily as Miles did, who kissed me like he’d also been denied something beautiful and messy for years, and had to make up for it all right now.

Then, abruptly, he pulled away. The flush on his face was so deep it showed even in the weak light from the cars whooshing by us. “I can’t.”

“Right, we shouldn’t,” I said,