“You ready?” Dana sticks her head into my office at lunchtime, interrupting my hundred e-mail streak.
“Yeah, hang on,” I say, typing quickly. Dana laughs from the doorway.
“You work too hard, Kate,” she says.
“Well it’s better than the alternative,” I laugh as I shut down my computer. I am so thankful for this opportunity to talk to Dana. Hopefully it will help me uncover some of the mystery that is Michael. But I need to be careful.
“Right you are,” Dana laughs, shutting my office door behind us. We take the elevator downstairs and walk outside, turning left instead of the way I turned right with Michael. “There’s a little Italian place around the corner that’s to die for,” Dana says as we walk.
“That sounds good,” I say. Now that we are alone it is slightly awkward, but that could just be my imagination.
“Kate, do you mind me asking… about you and Michael?”
“No,” I say, knowing that my cheeks are flaming. I am glad that she isn’t looking at me.
“When did you two start seeing each other?” Her tone is kind, not at all businesslike, just curious.
“This is kind of weird,” I start. There is really no way to tell the story without coming clean, and Michael never really told me to keep the secret. “Michael and I actually… kind of… live in the same building.”
Dana’s eyebrows raise and she laughs, bumping my elbow with hers. “Well that’s something I didn’t see coming,” she says with a laugh. “Didn’t he just move in?”
“Yeah, a few weeks ago,” I say. “To the apartment directly above mine. He and I did not exactly have a cordial introduction.” I recall the night with a smile and realize that I don’t mind sharing the details. Dana is quiet, so I go on. “Michael had been flooding his apartment almost every other day, and there was water dripping from my ceiling constantly. I wasn’t going to even say anything because the building was taking care of it, but one night I just lost it. It was really late and he was being so loud and water was dripping everywhere. I ended up pounding on his door.”
“He didn’t get pissed at you?” Dana asks incredulously. “He just let you help him?
“No, he was definitely pissed,” I laugh. “I didn’t really give him a choice not to let me help him, he wasn’t doing anything on his own.”
Dana nods her head. “Michael is like that, he doesn’t take help even when he needs it. But what happened then, you two just hit off?”
“Erm… kind of. He figured out that I was interviewing here... that’s the day he ‘stopped by,’” I make air quotes with my fingers and Dana laughs loudly.
“That’s what that was!” She says. “Oh my god, that makes so much sense! I’ve been wondering about that since that day, I never put two and two together.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. I don’t want to continue the story exactly how it happened. I don’t want to tell her about her brother constantly appearing in my apartment, his constant abrupt departures. I don’t want to tell her about the day at the air field or our disastrous but perfect first kiss. Those memories belong to Michael and I, no one else. I wish I could red-leaf some of Dana’s questions. “And we’ve just been… talking… since,” I finish somewhat lamely.
Dana pulls open the door to the restaurant as we reach it, holding it open for me. I thank her and the hostess seats us in a corner booth, quiet and cozy, where we resume our conversation.
“I think you will be very good for Michael,” Dana says. “It’s just… difficult.”
“What is?”
