'Til Somebody Loves You

‘Til Somebody Loves You

by Dee DeTarsio   

Romantic Comedy Quick-Pick

When a copywriter for a Chicago ad agency has to promote a new celebrity fragrance, she’s convinced its secret ingredient is the key to her happily-ever-after! MaryBeth Winters weaves advertising slogans with sweet dreams about her office crush, Dean Dineno. Adventures along the way help her discover how much fun it is to be a damsel in distress—who can also save the day!

Chapter 1

Rapunzel

Just because I’m a whiz at repairing the copy machine, it doesn’t mean that is the sum total of my talents, or aspirations. Just because I met the Object of my Affections at work and he’s dating my boss, doesn’t mean I’ve given up on my dream, or fantasies. OA, as I call him in code in text messages to my friends for fear of discovery, (like if I lost my cell phone and OA finds it for me, reads some texts to determine whose phone it is and busts me obsessing on him big time), may not know I’m alive, but then he hasn’t rejected me, either.

Since his name is Dean Dineno, le sigh, if he ever found my cell he would never be able to put two and two together and realize he is the Object of my Affections. My long-suffering-from-boredom friends respect my need for secrecy, but feel entitled to code name him Fantasy Man, since they A. have to hear all of my erotic escapades I dream about, and B. have gently tried to nudge me into a more realistic love life. Not going to happen. I know Dino and I are meant to be together, it’s just a matter of time. To the haters that refer to him as LOL, just because of that one time I called him the Love of my Life, suck it.

“Ding!” The elevator bounced to a stop at my floor, interrupting my daydreaming. Not that I was a stalker or anything, but I timed my errands downstairs with a sixty- to seventy-percent chance of hitching a ride on the Dino train. Not that it did any good. When success happened, I was usually so tongue-tied I could usually only manage to swallow my saliva while trying not to choke. I let my yearning do the talking for me; my face, a mood-ring of emotions, probably looked like a rising thermometer, shades of mottled pink melting into hot red she’s-gonna-blow territory. How exactly can he not notice?

The highlight of our one conversation, that I have memorized, certain there are missing clues of undeclared love there, has become my daily grace—as in I even recite it before meals. “Bless Us Oh Lord” and these Thy gifts of eighteen magical words that spilled from his Michael Corleone lips are seared into my psyche, that I could recite like a rosary. (You can take the girl out of the church . . . )

A few months ago, I had headed on downstairs to the supply room at roughly three-eleven in the afternoon. This timing had proven to be fortuitous on more than one occasion as Dino occasionally had three o’ clock meetings, to which he was inevitably late. Though I was only going down four floors, he would be traveling another six, down to the fourth floor. Not that I had any control over it, I was happy enough with the logistics, since it would give him a chance to admire my best feature, and I’m not talking my hair or the worn out heel of my right foot driving shoe. I wouldn’t have even noticed that visual, if I hadn’t run home after work that evening and set up a complicated positioning of mirrors to get the full effect of what Dino would have seen. Of course I had been so self-conscious with Dino in the elevator, when I made my exit it felt like I was doing the robot or something. Unhappy face here.

Back to our encounter. It was a story I practiced, embellished, and even imagined telling my first-born granddaughter. Dino and I worked on the same floor, but in separate universes. We worked for Miracles Advertising Company, or as a lot of the employees, not me, liked to say, it’s a Miracle people ever believed this shit.