On the first of July, I moved to my new apartment. I'd never been so excited about a new place before. Maybe that was because all of my other apartments, besides the tiny efficiency unit I was leaving, had been shared with college room-mates. This felt like my first grown-up place, and I was still thrilled that I could afford a place with such a great view and in a safe neighborhood.
Bridget, Kane, and Kane's friend Darius helped me move. I didn't have much, so we were done by lunch time. Bridget went out to get tacos for us and the guys started to help me unpack boxes. Kane pulled out my birch trunk candle holders and asked, "Why on earth do you have logs in this box?"
I laughed and pulled one out of his hand. I dug into the box, pulled out a wax pillar, and set it inside of the hollowed end of the log. "It's called a candle holder," I said sarcastically.
"Honey, this ain't Little House on the Prairie," Darius said with a teasing grin.
"I happen to like rustic décor," I said defensively, but I wasn't really offended. In fact, I was quickly realizing why Kane and Darius were such good friends. It made me wonder what Kane's boyfriend was like, because he and Darius seemed so much more suited to each other, although I had no idea whether Darius was gay.
"Whatever works for you, as long as you don't have to use an outhouse," Kane teased.
"No, only when I'm at home in Wisconsin," I replied, sticking my tongue out at him.
Kane laughed, shaking his head. "You are going to have to grow up a little if you want to land Mr. Tall, Dark, and Loaded."
"Try Tall, Dark, and Crazy," I said, rolling my eyes. "I think that ship has sailed. I don't want to deal with his emotional swings. You know what he's like!" I fell onto the couch, slumping back into a corner. "But, god, why does he have to be so magnificent?"
"Ellie, Ellie, Ellie," Kane chided, slouching deep into the couch. "First you don't want your ex stalking you, now you're going to let a little thing like insanity stop you from getting the hottest guy ever? Your standards are too high."
"Shut up," I laughed, punching Kane's thigh. Realizing how good it felt to laugh, I indulged in a few more giggles. "I'm thankful for friends like you. If I didn't have anyone to make me laugh, I think I'd curl up in a ball and die."
"Dramatic much?" Darius chimed in.
"I'm an extrovert!" I yelled. "I need people, and I need to laugh. Don't you?"
"Everyone needs to laugh," Darius agreed.
We continued unpacking while we listened to some retro. I moved into the kitchen and opened a box of utensils. I pulled out a wooden spoon and started singing along to the music. "Whoa-oh, we're half-way there, whoa-oh, livin' on a prayer, take my hand and we'll make it, I swear-"
"Tone down the Def Leppard, sweet cheeks," Darius laughed. "This is a classy place. Your neighbors ain't gonna like you serenading them twenty-four-seven."
I stopped singing and stalked over to Darius, giving him an fake look of anger. "It's Bon Jovi."
Bridget arrived with tacos and freshly made salsa for all of us. After a very satisfying lunch, the guys said good-bye and Bridget stayed to help me unpack some more. We were both getting the kitchen in order when she pulled out my utensil rack.
"What do you do with a rake in your kitchen?" She asked.
"It's not a rake when you use it like this," I said, pulling out some of my pretty light bluish utensils and hanging them on the tines.
"You're weird," she said, grinning.
"I'm artsy," I corrected her. "A combination of rustic and shabby-chic. I love using re-purposed items. Why throw something away when it makes a perfectly good rack?" I grabbed a hammer and a small nail, and in no time, I had my utensil rack hung neatly above the stove.
The afternoon was a great opportunity to get to know Bridget better. We had spent a decent amount of time together, but never one on one. I learned a lot more about her, like the fact that she was kind of artsy, too, just in different ways. She was into jewelry-making and pottery and mosaics. She was from Texas, so we had just a little in common, both coming from farming country, albeit vastly different types of farming. I loved her Texas accent, too, and she told me mine was "cute" as well. I remembered Dr. Styles commenting on my accent at the bar. He seemed like an entirely different person then, and that was only a little over a week ago.
When we were finally finished unpacking, we ordered dinner and put in an old movie, although we talked most of the way through it.
"So Kane is playing cupid for you and Harry, huh?" She asked.
"Harry?" I asked in shock. "You don't really call him by his first name, do you?"
"Only when he's not around," she laughed. "But damn, he's fine. He's out of my league, though."
I stared at her in disbelief. She was tall and had long, dark, silky hair, unlike my pile of frizz. She was slender her eyes were the most stunning blue I'd ever seen. I scoffed and said, "If he's out of your league, then I'm not even playing the same sport! There's no way I'd ever end up with someone like him. Besides, for all I know, he's probably married."
"God, his wife is a lucky woman," Bridget drawled. "He's one sexy motherfucker."
I burst into laughter. "How about you?" I asked after I'd collected myself. "Anyone special?"
She shrugged. "I guess I'm happy to be single for now. Hell, I thought Kane was hot when I first started, but then I found out he's gay," she replied. "I took that as a sign that I should stay off the market for a while."
"Have you ever been in a serious relationship?" I asked.
"Yeah, a few. I was engaged to someone, but then he broke it off because he got back together with his old girlfriend. I was so pissed, I vowed that I would castrate him if I ever saw him again!"
I laughed so hard that I choked on my drink. She started laughing at me choking and soon we both had tears streaming down our faces.
While still wiping the moisture from my eyes, I told her, "I've been in exactly one serious relationship, if you can call a high school romance serious. We were together for three years. We thought we'd get married, but when I was getting ready to move to Milwaukee for college, he got really clingy and begged me not to go. I realized that he wasn't even thinking of me or what I wanted, so I ended it the day before I started my freshman year. He went to a community college near our hometown, but he pestered me for a few years, begging me to take him back. There was no way I was going to stay with someone that needy and desperate."
"Amen," Bridget said with a chuckle, raising another glass of wine to the sentiment.
"It's weird, though," I said. "He hasn't contacted me in three years, but then he sent me an email right after I started working at the hospital, asking if he could see me. I deleted it, but he sent me three more messages. I finally put his email on the spam list."
"What a creep," Bridget said and I agreed.
I spent the rest of my time off organizing and decorating my apartment. I went out and hit some yard sales, thrift shops and even some antique stores. I found an older ladder, which I put to use as a towel rack in my bathroom. An old, over-sized soup ladle would become a wall-mounted candle holder. But my favorite finds for the day were a matching vintage copper kettle and crock. I polished them up and set them up in my fabulous brick kitchen, which I knew I would grow to love more and more. I silently thanked the previous tenants, who must have had some special pull with the building manager since brick and mortar were not a popular theme in a building of this caliber.
I was growing more content in Chicago. My job was working out well, I was making awesome friends, and it made me happier than ever to create my own space to call home.
To top it off, my heated crush for Dr. Styles had tapered off considerably due to his intolerable behavior. But during my next round of three twelve-hour shifts, he seemed a little more relaxed and somewhat decent. Maybe a little more like the man who had given me rides in his silver Beamer and bought me a drink at the club. While he wasn't particularly friendly, maybe he'd actually taken to heart some of the words I'd spat at him the last time we'd worked together. And thankfully, he hadn't reported me to my superiors; not that I knew about anyway.
Regardless, the torch I'd been carrying for the handsome doctor was dying out, and that was a good thing because I discovered one final and crucial piece of information that would have put an end to my school-girl crush anyway; namely his wife. Or maybe it was his girlfriend. In the wee hours of the morning, just as I was finishing up a shift, I walked by his office and happened to glance inside. The door was almost closed, but I could see a woman who was almost as tall as him, with long, straight hair. She was hugging him tightly and giving him a kiss on the cheek. I hurried away from the door, not wanting him to think I'd been spying.
I was relieved, actually. I still wanted peace between us as co-workers, but it would be so much easier now, without the added pressure I'd been putting on myself of expecting us to create anything but a professional relationship.
* * * * *
Thanks for reading! xoxo