Neanderthal Seeks Human

Book 1: Knitting in the City

by Penny Reid

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Billionaires Romance; Workplace Romance; Standalone

Synopsis

There are three things you need to know about Janie Morris: 1) She is incapable of engaging in a conversation without volunteering TMTI (Too Much Trivial Information), especially when she is unnerved, 2) No one unnerves her more than Quinn Sullivan, and 3) She doesn't know how to knit.

After losing her boyfriend, apartment, and job in the same day, Janie Morris can't help wondering what new torment fate has in store.

To her utter mortification, Quinn Sullivan—aka Sir McHotpants—witnesses it all then keeps turning up like a pair of shoes you lust after but can't afford. The last thing she expects is for Quinn to make her an offer she can't refuse.

New York Times Bestselling Author Penny Reid’s debut novel!

★ AAR top 100 romances of all time ★

Neanderthal Seeks Human is book #1 in the Knitting in the City series. Each book is a standalone, full length (110k words), contemporary romantic comedy novel, and follows the misadventures and exploits of seven friends in Chicago, all members of the same knitting group.

Release date: March 14, 2013

Publisher: Cipher-Naught

Print pages: 382

Reader says this book is...: entertaining story (3) escapist/easy read (2) happily ever after (2) heartwarming (2) high heat (1) realistic characters (2) satisfying ending (2) strong heroine (2) swoon-worthy (1) terrific writing (2) unputdownable (2) year's top 10 (1) action-packed (1) emotionally riveting (1) heart touching (1) rich setting(s) (1) sex scenes (1) strong chemistry (1)

Sample

CHAPTER 1

 

I lost it in the bathroom.

Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women’s bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past.

Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel’s annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe’s gout and her one—no, make that two—car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena’s divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn’t really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes.

I sucked in a breath and reached inside the holder; my hand grasped for tissue and found only another empty roll. Leaning down at a remarkably awkward angle, I tried to peer into the depths of the vessel, hoping for another yet unseen roll higher up and within. Much to my despair the holder was empty.

“Shit,” I half whispered, half groaned, and then suddenly laughed at my unanticipated joke. How appropriate given my current predicament. A bitter smile lingered on my lips as I gritted my teeth and the same three words that had been floating through my head all day resurfaced:

Worst. Day. Ever.

It was, no pun intended, an extremely shitty day.

Like all good country songs, it started with a cheatin’ fool. The “cheatee” in the song was obviously none other than me, and the cheater was my longtime boyfriend Jon. Realization of his philandering arrived via an empty condom wrapper tucked in the back pocket of his jeans as I, the dutifully dumb girlfriend, decided to do him a favor by throwing some of his laundry in with mine.

I reflected on the resulting debate after the found condom wrapper was smacked to his forehead by my palm. I couldn’t help but think Jon had a good point: Was I upset with him for having cheated on me, or was I disappointed that he was such a dummy as to put the wrapper in his pocket after taking out the condom? I tried to force myself to think about what I’d said earlier that morning.

“I mean, really, who does that, Jon? Who thinks, I’m going to cheat on my girlfriend, but I’ve got too much of a social conscience to leave my condom wrapper on the floor—heaven forbid I litter.”

I stared at the blue and white Formica door of my stall, tearing my bottom lip through my teeth, contemplating my options, and trying to decide if staying in the stall for the rest of the day was actually feasible. Hell, at this point, staying in the stall for the rest of my life seemed like a pretty good option, particularly since I didn’t really have anywhere to go. 

The apartment that Jon and I shared belonged to his parents. I insisted on paying rent, but my paltry $500 contribution plus half of the utilities likely didn’t cover one-sixteenth the cost of the midtown two-bedroom two-bath walk-up.

I think part of me always knew he was a cheater; otherwise, he was too good to be true. He appeared to be all the things I always thought I wanted in a man (and still believed I wanted). Smart, funny, sweet, nice to his family, good looking in an adorkable kind of way. We shared nearly identical political views, ideological views, and values; we were even the same religion.

He put up with my eccentricities and he even said I was cute, whereas weird was the word I was most used to hearing about myself. 

He made romantic gestures. He was a wooer in a time when wooing was dead. In college, he wrote me poetry even before we dated. It was good poetry, topical, related to my interests and the current political climate. It gently warmed my heart, but it didn’t make my sensibilities explode; then again, I wasn’t an exploding sensibilities type of girl.

One major difference between us, however, was that he came from money—lots and lots of money. This was a thorn in our relationship from the beginning. I carefully measured each expense and dutifully tallied my monthly budget. He bought whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. 

As much as I loathed admitting it, I suspected that I owed him a lot. I always wondered if he or his dad, who always wanted me to call him Jeff, but whom I always felt more comfortable calling Mr. Holesome, pulled the strings that landed me an interview for my job.

Even after our fight, for it was the closest we’d ever come to a fight, this morning he told me I could stay, that I should stay, that he wanted to work things out. He told me that he wanted to take care of me, that I needed him. I ground my teeth, set my jaw, firmed my resolve. 

There was no way I was going to stay with him.

I didn’t care how smart, funny, or accepting he was. It didn’t matter how certain my head had been that his welcoming surrender to my oddities meant that he was the one; or even how nice it was to be out from under the crushing burden of Chicago rent, thus freeing money to spend on my precious Cubs tickets, comic books, and designer shoes. There was absolutely no way I was staying with him.

No way, José.

An uncomfortable heat I’d suppressed all day started to rise into my chest, and my throat tightened. The empty toilet paper roll that broke the camel’s back stared at me from the receptacle. I fought the sudden urge to rip it from the holder and exact my revenge by tearing it to shreds. After that, I would turn my attention to the Stonehenge of empties.

I could see it now: the building security team called in to extract me from the fifty-second floor ladies’ room, decimated toilet paper cardboard flesh all around me, my panties still around my ankles as I point accusingly at my coworkers and scream, “Next time replace the roll! Replace the roll!”

I closed my eyes. Scratch that—my ex-coworkers.

The stall door blurred as my eyes filled with tears; at the same time, a shrill laugh tumbled from my lips. I knew I was venturing into unknown, crazy-town territory.

As country songs do, the tragedy of the day unfolded in a careful, steady rhythm as I methodically worked my way through a mental checklist of all that had happened:

No conditioner leading to crazy, puffy, nest-like hair: Check.

Broke heel of new shoes on sewer grate: Check.

Train station closed for unscheduled construction: Check.

Lost contact after being knocked in the shoulder as crowd hustled out of elevator: Check.

Spilled coffee on best, and most favorite, white button-down shirt: Guess I can cross that off my bucket list.

And, finally, called into boss’s office and informed that job had been downsized: Double check.

This was precisely why I hated dwelling on personal problems; this was precisely why avoidance and circumvention of raw thoughts and feelings was so much safer than the alternative. I hadn’t wallowed—really wholeheartedly wallowed—since my mother’s death, and no boy, job, or series of craptacular events could make me do it now. After all, in the course of life, I could deal with this. 

Or so I must tell myself.

At first, I tried to blink away the moisture in my eyes; but then I closed them and, for at least the third time that day, I used the coping strategies I learned during my mandatory year of adolescent psychoanalysis. 

I visualized myself wrapping up the anger and the hurt and the raw, frayed edges of my sanity in a large, colorful beach towel. I then placed the bundle into a box. I locked the box. I placed the box on the top shelf of my imaginary closet. I turned off the light of my closet. I shut the closet door.

I was going to remove the emotion from the situation without avoiding reality.

After multiple attempts at choking back tears and doing so with a great deal of effort, I finally succeeded in suppressing the threatening despondency, and I opened my eyes. I looked down at myself and pointedly took a survey of my appearance: borrowed pink flip-flops to replace my broken pair of Jimmy Choos; knee-length gray skirt, peppered with stains of coffee; borrowed, too tight, plunging red V-neck to replace my favorite cotton button-down; my raucous, accidental afro. 

I pushed my old pair of black-rimmed glasses, replacement for the missing contacts, farther up my nose. I felt calmer and more in control despite my questionable fashion non-choices.

Now, sitting in the stall, the numbness settling over me like a welcome cool abyss, I knew my toilet paper problem was surmountable. I squared my shoulders with firm resolve.

All my other problems, however, would just have to wait. It’s not as if they were going anywhere.

* * *

As I approached my desk—scratch that, my ex-desk—I couldn’t help but wonder at the circle of curious faces that lurked around my cubicle, wide eyes stealing glances in my direction. They hovered at an appropriate blast radius: close enough to watch my shame unfold but far enough to pass for a socially acceptable distance. I wondered what this kind of behavior said about my species. What was the closest equivalent I could draw as a comparison between this action and the lesser species in the animal kingdom?

Was it sharks circling around a hint of blood? I imagined, in this analogy, the sharks would instead be hoping to feast on my drama, my dismay, and my discomfort. I indulged my ethnographic curiosities and studied the hovering group, not really feeling the embarrassment that should have precipitated my exit, but instead observing the observers. I tried to read clues on their faces, wanting to see what they hoped to accomplish or gain. 

I was wrapped in my detachment, and I drew it close around me.

I didn’t register the drumming of approaching footsteps behind me, nor did I realize that a hush had fallen over cubicle land until two large fingers gave my shoulder a gentle, but firm, tap. I turned, feeling steady but somewhat dazed, and looked from the hand, now on my elbow, up the strong arm, around the curve of the bulky shoulder, and over the angular jaw and chin, until my eyes met the breath-hijacking sight of Sir Handsome McHotpants’s piercing blue eyes. 

I cringed.

Actually, it was more of a wince followed by a cringe. And his name wasn’t Handsome McHotpants. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him as one of the afternoon security guards for the building—the one that I’d been harmlessly admiring-slash-stalking for the past five weeks. 

I had never learned his name because I had a boyfriend, not to mention that McHotpants was about twenty thousand leagues out of my league (at least in the looks department), and, according to my friend Elizabeth, likely gay. Elizabeth had once told me that men who look like McHotpants usually wanted to be with other men who look like McHotpants.

Who could blame them?

More often than I was comfortable admitting, I reflected that he was one of those people who were just decidedly too good looking; his perfection shouldn’t have been possible in nature. It wasn’t that he was a pretty guy; I was certain he would not look better dressed in drag than ninety-nine percent of the women I knew. 

Rather, it was that everything about him from his consistently, perfectly tousled light brown hair to his stunningly strong square jaw to his faultless full mouth was overwhelmingly flawless. Looking at him made my chest hurt. Even his movements were gracefully effortless, like someone who was dexterously comfortable with the world and completely secure with his place in it. 

He reminded me of a falcon.

I, on the other hand, always hovered in the space between self-consciousness and sterile detachment; my gracefulness was akin to that of an ostrich. When my head wasn’t in the sand, people were looking at me and probably thinking what a strange bird!

I’d never been comfortable with the truly gorgeous members of my species. Therefore, over the course of the last five weeks, I’d been incapable of meeting his gaze, always turning or lowering my head long before I was in any danger of doing so. The thought of it was like looking directly at something painfully bright. 

Therefore, I admired him from afar, as though he was a really amazing piece of art such as the kind you only see in photographs or displayed behind glass in museums. My friend Elizabeth and I affectionately referred to him as Handsome McHotpants; more accurately, we knighted him Sir Handsome McHotpants one night after drinking too many mojitos.

Now, looking up into the endless depths of his blue eyes through my black-framed glasses, my own large eyes blinked and the protective cloak of numbness started to slip. A tugging sensation that originated just under my left rib quickly turned into a smoldering heat that radiated to my fingertips then traveled up my throat, into my cheeks, and behind my ears.

Why did it have to be Sir McHotpants? Why couldn’t they have sent Colonel Mustard le Mustache or Lady Jelly O’Belly?

He dropped his hand to his side and then he cleared his throat, removed his gaze from mine, and glanced around the room. I felt my face suddenly flush red, an unusual experience for me, and I dipped my chin to my chest as I mocked myself silently. 

I finally felt embarrassment. 

I took stock of the day and my reaction to each event. 

I knew I needed to work on being engaged in the present without becoming overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I was demonstrating more despair over a stall of empty toilet paper and the presence of a gorgeous male security guard than discovering that my boyfriend had cheated on me, thus leading to my present state of homelessness, not to mention my recent state of unemployment. 

Meanwhile, Sir McHotpants appeared to be as uncomfortable with my surroundings and the situation as I should have been. I could sense his eyes narrowing as they swept over the suspended crowd. He cleared his throat again, this time louder, and suddenly, the room was alive with self-conscious movement and pointedly averted attention.

After one more hawk-like examination of the room, as though satisfied with the effect, he turned his attention back to me. The stunning blue eyes met mine, and his expression seemed to soften; I guessed most likely with pity. This was, to my knowledge, the first time he had ever looked directly at me. 

I had watched him every weekday for the last five weeks. He was why I started taking a late lunch, as his shift started at one thirty. He was why I now frequently ate my lunch in the lobby. He was why, at five thirty on days when Elizabeth met me after work, I began loitering in the lobby by the arboretum and fountain; I would peek at him through the squat tree trunks and tropical palms, knowing my friend would not be able to meet me in the lobby any earlier than six o’clock.

McHotpants and I stood for a moment, uneasily, watching each other. My cheeks were still pink from my earlier blush, but I marveled that I was able to hold his gaze without looking away. Maybe it was because I’d already put most of my feelings in an invisible box in an invisible closet in my head. Maybe it was because I realized this was likely the twilight of our time together, the last of my stalkerish moments due to the recent severing of gainful employment. Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to look away.

Finally, he placed his hands on his narrow hips and lifted his chin toward my desk. In his gravelly deep voice, which was just above whisper, he asked, “Need help?”

I shook my head, feeling like a natural disaster on mute. I knew he wasn’t there to help me. He was there to help me out of the building. I huffed, spurning his offer. I was determined to get my walk of shame over. I turned, pushed my black-rimmed glasses up my lightly freckled nose, and closed the short distance to my desk. The borrowed flip-flops made a smacking sound against the bottom of my feet with each hurried step: smack, smack, smack.

All my belongings had been packed into a brown and white file box by some employees from the human resources department while I waited, as told, in a conference room. I glanced at the empty desk. I noted where my pencil cup had once been; there was a clean patch of circle surrounded by a ring of dust. I wondered if they removed the pencils before packing the cup into the box.

Shaking my head to clear it of my ridiculous, pointless pondering, I picked up the box, which, unbelievably, held the last two years of my professional aspirations, and walked calmly past McHotpants and straight to the reception desk and the elevators beyond. I didn’t meet his gaze, but I knew that he was following me even before he stopped next to me, close enough that his elbow grazed mine as I tucked the box against my hip and jabbed a finger at the call button. 

I thought I could feel his attention on my profile, but I did not attempt to meet it. Instead, I watched the digital red numbers announcing the floor status of each elevator.

“Do you want me to carry that?” His gravelly voice, almost a whisper, sounded from my right.

I shook my head and slid my eyes to the side without turning; there were about four other people waiting for the elevator besides us. 

“No, thank you. It’s not heavy; they must’ve taken the pencils.” I was relieved by the flat, toneless sound of my voice.

Several silent moments ticked by giving my brain a dangerous amount of unleashed time to wander. My ability to focus was waning. This was a frequent problem for me. Time with my thoughts, especially when I’m anxious, doesn’t work to my advantage. 

Most people in stressful situations, I’ve been told, have the tendency to obsess about their current circumstances. They wonder how they arrived at their present fate, and they wrestle with what they can do to avoid it or situations like it in the future. 

However, the more stressful my situation is, the less I think about it, or anything related to it.

At present, I thought about how the elevators were like mechanical horses, and I wondered if anyone loved them or named them. I wondered what steps I could take to remove the word ‘moisture’ or even ‘moist’ from the English language; I really hated the way it sounded and always went out of my way to avoid saying it. I also really didn’t like the word slacks, but I felt vindicated recently when Mensa came out against that horrible word in an official statement proposing that it be removed from the vernacular.

Sir McHotpants cleared his throat again interrupting my preoccupation with odious-sounding words. One of the herd of elevators was open, its red arrow pointing downward, and I continued to stand still, lost in my thoughts, completely unaware. No one else had yet entered the elevator, and I could feel everyone watching me. 

I shook myself a little, attempting to re-entrench in the present. I felt McHotpants place his hand on my back to guide me forward with gentle pressure. The warmth of his palm was soothing, yet it sent a disconcerting electric shock down my spine. He lifted his other hand to where the door slid into the wall, effectively holding the elevator for me.

I quickly broke contact and settled into one of the lift’s corners. Sir Handsome followed me in, but loitered near the front of the elevator, blocking the entrance; He pressed the Close Door button before anyone else could enter. The partitions slid together and we were alone. He pulled a key on a retractable cord at his belt and fit it into a slot at the top of the button pad. I watched as he pressed a circle labeled BB.

I lifted an eyebrow, asked, “Are we going to the basement?”

He made no sign of affirmation as he turned to me and regarded me openly; we were standing in opposite corners. I imagined for a moment that we were two prizefighters; the spacious elevator was our ring, and the brass rails around the perimeter were the ropes. My eyes moved over him in equally plain assessment. He would definitely win if it came to blows between us. 

I was tall for a girl, but he was easily six feet and three or four inches in height. I also hadn’t worked out with any seriousness or intensity since my college soccer days. He, judging by the large expanse of his shoulders, looked like he never missed a day at the gym and could bench press me as well as the box I was holding, even if it contained the pencils.

His eyes weren’t finished with their appraisal, but instead lingered around my neck. The tugging sensation beneath my left rib returned. I felt myself starting to blush again. 

I tried for conversation. “I didn’t mean to be imprecise; I imagine this building has more than one basement, although I’ve never seen the blueprints. Are we going to one of the basements and, if so, why are we going to one of the basements?”

He met my gaze abruptly, his own unreadable. 

“Standard procedure,” he murmured.

“Oh.” I sighed and started tearing at my lip again. Of course, there was a standard procedure. This was likely a common experience for him. I wondered if I were the only ex-employee he would be escorting out today. 

“How many times have you done this?” I asked.

“This?”

“You know, escort people out of the building after they’ve been downsized; does this happen every day of the week? Layoffs typically happen on Friday afternoons in order to keep the crazies from coming back later in the same week. Today is Tuesday so you can imagine how surprised I was. Based on the international standard adopted in most western countries, Tuesday is the second day of the week. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention, Tuesday is defined as the third day of the week.” 

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

I drew in a deep breath, clamped my mouth shut, and clenched my jaw to keep from talking. I watched him watching me, his eyes narrowing slightly, and my heart pounded with loud sincerity against my chest in what I recognized—for the second time that day—as embarrassment. 

I knew what I sounded like. My true friends softened the label by insisting I was merely well read; everyone else said I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Although I’d been repeatedly urged to audition for Jeopardy and was an ideal and proven partner in games of Trivial Pursuit, my pursuit of trivial knowledge and the avalanche of verbal nonsense that spewed forth unchecked did little to endear me to men.

A quiet moment ticked by, and for the first time in recent memory, I didn’t try to focus my attention on the present. His blue eyes were piercing mine with an unnerving intensity, arresting the usual wanderlust of my brain. I thought I perceived one corner of his mouth lift, although the movement was barely perceptible. 

Finally, he broke the silence. “International standard?”

“ISO 8601, data elements and interchange formats. It allows seamless intercourse between different bodies, governments, agencies, and corporations.” I couldn’t help myself as the words tumbled out. It was a sickness.

Then, he smiled. It was a small, closed-lipped, quickly suppressed smile. If I had blinked, I might have missed it, but an expression of interest remained. He leaned his long form against the wall of the elevator behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. The sleeves of his guard uniform pulled in taut lines across his shoulders.

“Tell me about this seamless intercourse.” His eyes traveled slowly downward, then, in the same leisurely pace, moved up to mine again.

I opened my mouth to respond but then quickly snapped it shut. I was suddenly and quite unexpectedly hot.

His secretive yet open and amused surveillance of my features was beginning to make me think he was just as strange as I was. He was making me extremely uncomfortable; his attention was a blinding spotlight from which I couldn’t escape. 

I shifted the box to my other hip and looked away from his searching gaze. I knew now that I’d been wise in avoiding direct eye contact. The customs and acceptability of eye contact vary greatly depending on the culture; as an example, in Japan, school-aged children…

The elevator stopped and the doors opened, rousing me from my recollection of Japanese cultural norms. I straightened immediately and bolted for the exit before I realized I didn’t know where I was going. I turned dumbly and peered at Sir Handsome from beneath my lashes. 

Once again, he placed his hand on the small of my back and steered me. I felt the same charged shock as before. We walked along a hallway painted nondescript beige gray with low-hanging fluorescent lights. 

The smack smack smack of the flip-flops echoed along the vacant hall. When I quickened my step to escape the electricity of his touch, he hastened his stride and the firm pressure remained. I wondered if he thought I was a flight risk or one of the aforementioned crazies.

We approached a series of windowed rooms, and I stiffened as his hand moved to my bare arm just above the elbow. I swallowed thickly, feeling that my reaction to the simple contact was truly ridiculous. It was, after all, just his hand on my arm.

He pulled me into one of the rooms and guided me to a brown wooden chair. He took the box from my hands with an air of authoritative decisiveness and placed it on the seat to my left. There were people in cubicles and offices around the perimeter; a long reception desk with a woman dressed in the same blue guard uniform that McHotpants wore was in the middle of the space. I met her eyes; she blinked once then frowned at me.

“Don’t move. Wait for me,” he ordered.

I watched him leave and their subsequent exchange with interest: he approached the woman, she stiffened and stood. He leaned over the desk and pointed to something on her computer screen. She nodded and looked at me again, her brow rising in what I read as confusion, and then she sat down and started typing. 

He turned, and I made the mistake of looking directly at him. For a moment he paused, the same disquieting steadiness in his gaze causing the same heat to rise to my cheeks. I felt like pressing my hands to my face to cover the blush. He crossed the room toward me but was intercepted by an older man in a well-tailored suit holding a clipboard. I watched their exchange with interest as well.

After pulling a series of papers off the printer, the woman approached me. She gave me a closed-mouth smile that reached her eyes as she crossed the room.

I stood and she extended her hand. “I’m Joy. You must be Ms. Morris.”

I nodded once, tucking a restive curl behind my ear. “Yes, but please call me Janie; nice to meet you.”

“I guess you’ve had a hard day.” Joy took the empty seat next to mine; she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Don’t worry about it, hun. It happens to the best of us. I just have these papers for you to sign. I’ll need your badge and your key, and then we’ll pull the car around for you.”

“Uh…the car?”

“Yes, it will take you wherever you need to go.”

“Oh, ok.” I was surprised by the arrangement of a car, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. 

I took the pen she offered and skimmed over the papers. They looked benign enough. I hazarded a glance toward Sir Handsome and found him peering at me while he seemed to be listening to the man in the suit. Without really reading the text, I signed and initialed in the places she indicated, pulled my badge from around my neck along with my key, and handed it to her. She took the documents from me and initialed next to my name in several places.

She paused when she got to the address section of the form. “Is this your current address and home phone number?”

I saw where I had filled in Jon’s address when I was first hired; I grimaced. “No; no it isn’t. Why?”

“They need a place to send your last paycheck. Also, we also need a current address in case they need to send you anything that might have been left behind. I’ll need you to write out your current address next to it.”

I hesitated. I didn’t know what to write. “I’m sorry, I—” I swallowed with effort and studied the page. “I just, uh, I am actually between apartments. Is there any way I could call back with the information?”

“What about a cell phone number?”

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t have a cell phone; I don’t believe in them.”

Joy raised her eyebrows. “You don’t believe in them?”

I wanted to tell her how I truly loathed cell phones. I hated the way they made me feel reachable twenty-four hours a day; it was akin to having a chip implanted in your brain that tracked your location and told you what to think and do until, finally, you became completely obsessed with the tiny touch screen as the sole interface between your existence and the real world. 

Did the real world actually exist if everyone only interacted via cell phones? Would Angry Birds one day become my reality? Was I the unsuspecting pig or the exploding bird? These Descartes-based musings rarely made me popular at parties. Maybe I read too much science fiction and too many comic books, but cell phones reminded me of the brain implants in the novel Neuromancer. As further evidence, I wanted to tell her about the recent article published in Accident Analysis & Prevention about risky driving behaviors.

Instead, I just said, “I don’t believe in them.”

“O-o-o-o-k-a-y,” she said. “No problem.” Joy reached into her breast pocket and withdrew a white paper rectangle. “Here is my card; just give me a call when you’re settled, and I’ll enter you into the system.”

I stood with her and took the card, letting the crisp points dig into the pads of my thumbs and forefingers. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”

Joy reached around me and picked up my box, motioning with her shoulder that I should follow. “Come on; I’ll take you to the car.”

I followed her, but like a self-indulgent child, allowed a lingering glance over my shoulder at Sir Handsome McHotpants. He was turned in profile, no longer peering at me with that discombobulating gaze; his attention was wholly fixed on the man in the suit. 

I was dually relieved and disappointed. Likely, this was the last time I would see him. I was pleased to be able to admire him one last time without the blinding intensity of his blue eyes. But part of me missed the heated twisting in my chest and the saturating tangible awareness I’d felt when his eyes met mine.