Multiple Choice

Just a little piece of work I wrote for my Sunday afternoon writers' group.

**


Multiple Choice


Two words, she thinks, can turn your world upside down. Or at least tilt it and send it orbiting a little off-kilter.
She stares at the computer screen, taking in the bold, black name under the From heading in her inbox.
Greg Bentley.
Her fingers, poised to double-click, pause in the air just above the mouse. She glances over her left shoulder, then her right, though she knows that anyone walking by in the newsroom would have no idea why this message is different than the other twenty-seven that were waiting in her inbox this morning.
She stares back at the screen, forcing her eyes off of his name and onto the subject line.
I found you
It would sound almost menacing, she thinks, except she can hear his voice as she reads it – the warm baritone with the laugh always lurking in the background. She knows how he’d say it: teasingly, with a chuckle that’s part mockery, part caress. Then he’d smile, that slightly crooked grin that starts with a quirk in the left corner of his mouth and spreads until it creases the corners of his blue eyes.
She straightens up, pulling her shoulders back as she shakes her sandy hair out of her face. She determinedly ignores the mental image of those eyes watching her as she drives her index finger down with two firm clicks and watches the message appear.


It is you, isn’t it, Jules? It must be.
Drop me a line or give me a call sometime and we’ll get together for a coffee.
Cheers,
Greg
p.s. 778-773-0628
p.s. 2 By the way, I’ve moved to Vancouver.

Typical Greg, she thinks. Not asking if she wanted to get together, just taking her acquiescence for granted. And casually tossing off word of his move as if it was a fact of little consequence, instead of a cross-country trek with the potential to change – well, nothing really, she supposes.
She realizes belatedly that she’s staring at her left hand, watching the cool glint of the diamond catch the fluorescent lights above as she slowly makes a fist. She clenches her fingers tightly and stares again at the message.
The fingers of her right hand hover over the mouse, ready to double-click on Reply. But she’s stopped by the thought of Joel’s eyes, disconcerted by the realization that she’s now picturing his molten-chocolate stare alongside Greg’s laughing blue gaze.
Just hit Reply already, Jules, the blue eyes seem to taunt.
While the brown ones – slightly quizzical, slightly hurt – ask: Do you really want to?
Good question, she thinks. She just doesn’t know the answer.

*

“Greg? The Greg? As in, told-you-you-were-reading-too-much-into-the-relationship and had-no-idea-why-you-thought-it-was-serious Greg? As in, couldn’t-commit-to-a-weekend-never-mind-a-lifetime Greg? As in, took up with that blonde bitch and broke your heart Greg? That Greg?”
Juliana can tell that Sarah is trying to keep her voice down, but her usual inability to contain her feelings is getting the better of her. The last two words become a squeal that causes the two guys who are out for a smoke behind the building to turn their heads towards the two women huddled at the door.
Juliana glares at Sarah, mentally cursing herself for sharing so much information about her past relationships.
Sarah claps an apologetic hand over her mouth and shakes her dark curls vigorously. Then she removes the hand and continues in an urgent hiss. “You can’t be serious, Jules. It’s been what, six years since you moved out here?
“Seven,” Juliana corrects automatically, but Sarah waves her off impatiently.
“Whatever. You’re not going to e-mail him back, are you? And you wouldn’t really get together with him for coffee?”
Juliana is about to say “Of course not” but finds herself staring silently at Sarah instead.
“Oh Jules.” Sarah breathes the words out like a sigh. “No, no, no. Why would you do that to yourself?”
Juliana tries for a casual shrug.
“Well, you know what they say about closure,” she says, trying for a light tone to go with the shrug.
She sees in Sarah’s raised eyebrows that her efforts at nonchalance have been an abysmal failure, but she continues to meet Sarah’s eyes even though she can feel the heat rising in her cheeks.
“Closure?” Sarah makes a dismissive sound that comes out halfway between a sniff and a snort. “I think he gave you that when he started sleeping with Maya or whatever her name was.”
“Mia.” Juliana’s automatic correction earns another impatient hand-wave from Sarah.
“Whatever.” Sarah turns a pointed gaze onto Juliana’s left hand. “Point is, he was trouble then and he’d be even bigger trouble now.”
Juliana fights the impulse to shove her hand into her jacket pocket. She shrugs again.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Hey, we’d better get back in before Norm comes hunting us down.”
She turns, opens the door and strides back into the office without giving Sarah a chance to respond again. Which doesn’t stop Sarah from hissing another warning at her as they make their way back to their cubicles.
“Don’t be stupid, Jules. Just delete the damn message.”
Juliana doesn’t acknowledge her friend. She takes her seat at her computer and tries to turn her attention to her notebook, resolutely attempting to ignore the e-mail. But her scrawled notes from the city council meeting can’t compete with the message she knows is there. She soon abandons all pretence of paying even the slightest bit of attention to tax increases and traffic lights.
Instead, she opens her inbox and sees it waiting there.
I found you
She reads the entire message again, finding nothing in its brief contents to change the course of action she already knows she’s going to take.
She clicks on the mouse.

*
Delete.
Juliana shakes her hair out of her face and straightens in her chair again as she watches the message disappear.
She tells herself she isn’t sorry.
Sarah was right. Greg was trouble in 2001 and he’d be even bigger trouble now.
Besides, when would she have time to meet up with him? She and Joel are so far into the throes of wedding planning that she barely has time to talk to her friends, never mind make contact with ex-boyfriends she hasn’t heard from for seven years.
And why would she want to? She conjures up an image of Joel – his molten chocolate eyes lighting up as she arrives home after work, his broad smile and his big arms enveloping her in warmth. She smiles at the thought.
Entirely uninvited, the mental picture of dancing blue eyes and a quirking mouth insinuates itself into her warm fuzzy moment.
She shakes her head and shifts her focus back to her notebook, flipping to the page where she’s jotted down the mayor’s rant about higher taxes.
She starts typing, automatically constructing the story that she knows Norm-the-jackass-editor wants for the front page.
But she can’t help wondering if he’ll ever e-mail again.
Not that she’d read it anyway, she tells herself. But still.

*
Reply.
Nice work, Sherlock.
It must have been pretty hard to run a Google search and wade your way through all those Juliana DeVries types working as reporters in B.C. You’re quite the detective.
She grins as she types, knowing that he’ll expect the sarcasm and that the corner of his mouth will quirk as he reads.
You definitely need a coffee after all that hard work. Yeah, let’s get together sometime. Give me a call.
She pauses for a moment, then types her cell number, reasoning that it’ll be easier for him to find her on it than on their home number, since she and Joel are hardly ever around the apartment these days anyway.
She hesitates for another instant, then closes with a simple Jules and hits send.
Then she shifts her focus back to her notebook, flipping to the page where she’s jotted down the mayor’s rant about higher taxes.
She starts typing again, automatically constructing the story that she knows Norm-the-jackass-editor wants for the front page.
She tells herself it’s unlikely he’ll call. And if he doesn’t, so what?
When would she have time to meet up with him anyway? She and Joel are so far into the throes of wedding planning that she barely has time to talk to her friends, never mind make contact with ex-boyfriends she hasn’t heard from for seven years.
Anyway, it certainly doesn’t matter.
She conjures up an image of Joel – his molten chocolate eyes lighting up as she arrives home after work, his broad smile and his big arms enveloping her in warmth. She smiles at the thought.
Entirely uninvited, the mental picture of dancing blue eyes and a quirking mouth insinuates itself into her warm fuzzy moment.
Then her cell phone rings.

***

She’s early.
Of course. It’s a habit she’s never been able to break. Not even after four years of being with Joel, who’s as chronically laid-back about time as she is obsessed. It’s not that he’s habitually late so much as that he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. He owns a watch – she bought it for him herself: a nice one with a brown leather strap and a built-in compass and settings for multiple time zones and all sorts of cool, guy-type features – but he doesn’t wear it often.
She forces the thought of Joel out of her mind as she paces up and down Commercial Drive in front of J.J. Bean.
She has six minutes before their appointed meeting, which means likely at least twenty before Greg shows up.
That gives her plenty of time to walk away. Go home. Tell Joel that the unexpected meeting that was keeping her after work – it wasn’t a lie so much as a partial truth, she’d told herself, and anyway she’d tell Joel all about it later – had been cancelled.
She can just e-mail Greg later and tell him something came up. Or she can not explain anything at all. She doesn’t owe him anything.
She realizes she’s shivering. She put on her favourite red blouse today instead of her customary hoodie, and she’s paying the price for vanity since her rain jacket is doing little to keep out the chill.
She eyes the inside of the coffeeshop. Some solitary coffee-drinkers have laptops open in front of them. Others are clustered with friends, four or five or six people squeezing chairs into spaces where there isn’t any space, laughing and talking animatedly. Still others are couples, face-to-face across small wooden tables, talking intently over steaming lattes. She sees they all look warm and pleased to be there.
Go in or go home?
She shivers again and shakes her hair out of her face, making her decision.

*
She takes one last look at the coffee-drinkers, turns on her heel and walks slowly away, towards the SkyTrain station.
She feels a little guilty and hopes that Greg doesn’t have to go far out of his way.
Then she mentally smacks herself for the guilt, reminding herself of the times Greg kept her waiting. In coffee shops or restaurants or, on one occasion that led to a screaming fight, outside a downtown Toronto theatre at the height of a January blizzard, waiting in vain for him to show up with their tickets to the symphony. That he later pleaded a late meeting at work, a traffic pile-up on the Don Valley Parkway and a bad case of the flu did little to mitigate the fact that she had waited outside the theatre for an hour and that her cell phone – charged, turned on, in her pocket and checked repeatedly – had never rung.
“It’s not about you not coming,” she raged at him later, when he tried to defend himself that he’d never have made it on time and he couldn’t have sat through the concert in his weakened state anyway. “It’s about having some tiny inkling of courtesy and not leaving me standing there wondering where the hell you were!”
She smiles a little to herself as she walks down Commercial Drive, pleased that this is the memory that has returned at this moment.
She’d been afraid it would be the others. The good ones. The times they curled up under her grey blanket on her squashy old couch to watch bad horror movies or laughed themselves silly over absolutely nothing or sat up all night with two bottles of the cheapest white zinfandel, making plans for how they’d break the biggest stories just as soon as they graduated and got their first jobs and how they’d work on their respective Great Canadian Novels on the side. The times he reached out for her with hands that were large and strong but somehow still gentle too, when he caressed her face and stroked her neck and played with the ends of her hair and
She cuts off that line of thought and forces her mind back to the day’s happenings in the newsroom, grimacing a little at the recollection of Norm waxing sarcastic about her uncharacteristic error in mixing up the possessive and the plural of its.
She quickens her pace, realizing that it’s starting to rain and the wind is picking up. She curses her decision to wear the thin red blouse and thinks how nice it will be to get home and change into her flannel pyjamas and curl up by the fire with Joel and a movie.
She’s lucky to be leaving now, she thinks.
The weather will be much worse later.

*

She takes one last look at the coffee-drinkers and takes a resolute step towards the door. Then another. Then another.
Until she finds herself safely ensconced in the warmth of the shop.
Juliana doesn’t need to look at the menu – how hard is it to order a large non-fat latte? – but she finds herself studying it as she waits in line, carefully taking in each item as though mentally sounding out the words is the only way to make sense of all the letters.
She’s startled out of her contemplation by the feel of a warm hand on her neck.
“Hey, Jules.”
His tone is as casual as if their last meeting had been yesterday over coffee, rather than seven years ago over beer and tears and an irredeemably messy scene that had made Juliana vow to never set foot in the Duke of Gloucester Pub again.
She forces herself to turn slowly. She sees the quirked mouth first. The smile that spreads to his blue eyes and creases them at the corners. The blond hair in short, erratic spikes.
“You haven’t changed a bit.”
She speaks the words just as he says, “You look just the same.”
They share a companionable laugh, and he leans in to hug her.
Juliana hugs him back, a brief and casual salute that still gives her nose time to recognize the faintly spicy scent of his cologne and the fresh, slightly soapy smell that suggests he showered not long before coming to meet her.
She can’t resist a glance at her watch, trying to be subtle enough that Greg won’t catch her doing it.
But he laughs.
“Oh, Jules, still the schedule freak, eh?” He flashes a teasing grin at her. “I’ll have you know I made a point of being on time today, just for you.”
It is, she notes, precisely one minute before their appointed meeting hour, and she can’t help grinning back.
“So it turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks after all,” she says, with a faint emphasis on the word ‘old.’
She used to get endless fun out of their age gap, the four years separating them seeming like such a vast distance at the time.
She knows he remembers when he mimes pulling a knife out of his heart.
“Ah, Jules, you wound me,” he says, melodramatically enough that a couple at a nearby table stops gazing into each other’s eyes long enough to look over at them.
She smacks him playfully across the back of the head.
“Don’t be a jackass,” she says.
But she can’t help the grin that she knows is teasing at the corners of her mouth.


***

She has no idea what time it is. She hasn’t looked at her watch once.
But she knows she’s been lulled into a state of unexpected warmth and comfort that has nothing to do with the coziness of the coffee shop and everything to do with the blue eyes watching her across the table.
Juliana never used to believe people who’d run into and old friend and say, “When we started to talk, it was just like old times. It was like we’d never been apart.” Her own experience has been rather the opposite – that catching up with old friends is usually filled with awkward silences and long pauses in conversation as you attempt to cope with the fact that you are nothing more than pleasant strangers.
Perhaps, she thinks, it’s different now because she and Greg were never friends. Even at their best they never had that.
What they had was sparks. Right from the first time they’d met in the campus coffee shop, there had always been a little electricity in their interactions. It had taken weeks before he asked her out, but every time she bumped into him in a hallway or in the Journalism 100 lecture they shared, she felt the little zing that heightened her awareness of his presence.
Cath and Jess used to accuse her of only being fascinated by his masculine charms.
“Not that I can blame you,” Jess said once. “If I could snag a man with an ass like that, I’d be pretty fascinated too.”
In vain, Juliana protested that it wasn’t just about looks. Or sex. Although that was more than memorable enough to make her blush madly when Jess peppered her with nosy questions about whether a man who looked that good could back up his image with an appropriate level of performance.
She feels a blush stealing across her cheeks again and forces her mind off the subject as she regards Greg across the table, realizing that she’s lost the thread of their conversation.
Greg seems to realize it too, and he waves a hand in front of her eyes.
“Hello, is there anybody in there?” His teasing baritone sends something warm shooting into Juliana’s fingertips, though she makes up her mind to ignore the feeling. “Sorry if I’m boring you.”
But he says it with a cocky grin that tells Juliana he knows she’s not the slightest bit bored.
They never could bore each other. They could spend endless hours debating and arguing and analyzing and dissecting everything about life and love and the meaning of the universe. They could drive each other crazy. They could hurt each other – although, Juliana admits to herself, it was more often Greg hurting her than the reverse. Juliana reminds herself she cried a lot then. But she was certainly never bored.
That’s been true tonight, too, she realizes. They haven’t stopped talking since they sat down with their lattes – although Juliana realizes guiltily that the one thing they haven’t talked about is Joel. Greg has asked nothing about the ring, and she’s volunteered no information.
Greg’s hand moves, so quickly that Juliana almost doesn’t see it. She feels it, warm and solid and slightly rough but somehow soft too, resting against her cheek.
Greg holds it there, still, for a long moment. Then his fingers stroke her cheek in a gentle gesture that reminds her, fleetingly, of Joel.
Greg speaks, somewhat abruptly, and it occurs to Juliana that it’s the first moment she’s sensed discomfort from across the table.
“I’d say we’ve taken up this table long enough.”
He speaks casually, but the blue eyes search hers as he speaks.
“I just live around the corner. I could brew us a pot of coffee over there and we could get out of people’s way.”
Juliana forces herself to meet his gaze, hoping her own eyes don’t betray the fact that her heart has just started to pound and that she’s having a hard time forcing her breath to stay slow and even.
She allows the silence to grow, knowing what she’s going to say but finding it hard to form the words.


*

She shakes her head with what she hopes is a relaxed, friendly smile.
“Nah, better not,” she says lightly. “Early morning tomorrow, you know.”
Then, on impulse, she adds, “Besides, my fiancé will be wondering where I am if I don’t get home soon.”
The blue eyes flicker slightly but don’t give away much.
Then Greg shrugs, an expansive, palms-up gesture that strikes Juliana as looking rather too theatrical for the moment.
He grins, though Juliana wonders if it’s her imagination that the left corner of his mouth doesn’t seem to quirk as much as usual.
“Still the sensible one, I see,” he says in a tone that mocks her gently. It’s meant affectionately, she thinks, but she’s irritated by the comment.
It reminds her of the many arguments that ended in similar fashion, with Juliana disagreeing with Greg over something – the passage of a bill in Parliament or the editor’s choice of front-page photo or something as mundane as how steak should be prepared – and Greg responding with a lightly mocking, ever-so-faintly-dismissive label that put Juliana in her place. ‘Sensible’ came up often. ‘Nice’ too. Or ‘bleeding heart’ or ‘good girl’ or ‘middle-class’ (the latter of which made Juliana point out that his parents were teachers just like hers, and she wasn’t entirely certain how that made a difference to whether either one of them should be allowed to have an opinion about how food should be cooked or whether marijuana should be decriminalized).
But she meets Greg’s eyes again, and something in the blue eyes makes her smile back despite herself.
“It was good to see you,” she says. Meaning it.
“You too,” he replies readily. She thinks he means it too.
They hug again, another brief contact that gives her one last whiff of spice and soap.
“So let’s catch up again sometime,” he says.
“Yes,” she replies. “Let’s do that.”
But as she turns and leaves the coffee shop with one last wave, she knows she won’t hear from him again.



*

She meets his eyes and nods with a half-shrug that she hopes conveys a casual Why not? rather than an anxious Holy shit what am I thinking going over to my ex-boyfriend’s house and why is he inviting me anyway?
“Sure, sounds like a plan.” She stands up and puts on her coat. “That couple over by the counter has been eyeing our table for eons. They’ll probably be glad to see the back of us.”
Greg grins and slings his right arm around Juliana’s shoulders as they make their way out of the coffee shop and onto the street. Something in its comforting warmth lulls her into leaning a little closer to him and sliding her left arm around his waist, and Greg squeezes her shoulder in reply.
They walk unhurriedly, in matching cadence, as they make their way to the next block and around the corner.
Greg releases her at the door of his apartment, a first-floor flat in a converted older home. From what Juliana can see, it contains only an old formica table, two kitchen chairs and an assortment of throw cushions tossed on the hardwood floor of the front room.
She tries to keep her face expressionless, but Greg catches her eye and laughs. “I only moved in a week ago, give me a break.”
A week. She wonders if that’s how long he’s been in the city and if he actually searched her out that soon after his arrival. But she won’t ask.
She’s glad when Greg vanishes into the tiny galley kitchen, telling her to make herself comfortable on some of the cushions while he puts the coffee on.
It gives her time to try to shut off the thoughts that are already starting to churn in the back of her mind and to steady the breathing she’s still having trouble controlling.
She settles herself onto two large blue cushions and breathes deeply. She believes she looks appropriately composed when he returns, bearing two large mugs of coffee, and plunks himself cross-legged on the cushion next to her.
She takes one of the mugs, grateful for the distraction of something to do with her hands as she raises it and takes a sip.
“Quite acceptable,” she pronounces with a smile, and she knows from his answering smile that Greg recognizes the phrase he always used to use.
(“Other people may call this plonk, but I call it quite acceptable,” he’d say with a flourish, taking a gulp of cheap white zinfandel. Or, brandishing a forkful of Kraft Dinner, “Other people may prefer linguini carbonara, but I find this quite acceptable.”)
He takes a sip of his own and looks at her.
“Acceptable? Is that all I get?”
Then he sets down his mug and reaches a hand out towards her, stroking her cheek again in the same gentle gesture from the coffee shop.
“I hope you can find some stronger words than ‘acceptable’ for the rest of the evening.”
Juliana is sure she’s holding her breath but can’t seem to find a way to make her lungs start working again. She sets down her mug and watches, almost in a trance, as the rest unfolds in the slowest of motion.
She sees Greg lean closer, the quirked mouth and blue eyes and blond spikes going almost out of focus as they fill her field of vision. She sees him shift. Watches his other hand come towards her, reaching to stroke the sandy hair that’s fallen around her face. Feels the inevitability of the moment and allows herself to be drawn in to its seductive warmth, shifting her own body and tilting her head towards the blueness of his eyes.
And sees, suddenly, chocolate brown instead.
The thought makes her straighten up so abruptly that she nearly topples her coffee mug and just misses having her chin make contact with Greg’s nose.
Greg straightens too but says nothing as he watches her levelly.
She forces herself to meet his eyes, uncomfortably aware of the blush that’s making her face flame.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Her voice sounds unnaturally loud in the nearly empty room. “I should be heading home.”
Greg raises one eyebrow, a habit that Juliana always found pretentious and affected.
“Always about should and shouldn’t, eh Jules? A good girl to the end.”
The comment reminds her suddenly of the many arguments that ended in similar fashion, with Juliana disagreeing with Greg over something and Greg responding with a lightly mocking, ever-so-faintly-dismissive label that put Juliana in her place – ‘good girl’ or ‘bleeding heart’ or ‘sensible’ or ‘middle class.’
Unexpectedly, the memory makes her laugh.
Greg’s other eyebrow shoots up, and Juliana laughs a little harder.
She thinks of Joel, waiting to welcome her at the door.
“It’s not just that,” she tells Greg. “No, I shouldn’t be here, but it’s more than that. I don’t want to be here. I want to be home. With my fiancé. Joel.”
She stands up and heads towards the door, then turns with a smile she hopes is apologetic but not too regretful.
“It was good to see you,” she says. Meaning it.
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. But he smiles and replies, “You too.” She thinks he means it too.
She doesn’t bother saying she’ll call. Neither does he. They both know they’ll never talk again.


***

Joel meets her at the door, as he invariably does, his brown eyes alight with the smile that never fails to wash over his face when he sees her.
It’s the smile he greets her with even when the alarm forces them both out of sound sleep, when she rolls over with morning breath and bedhead and a bad case of pre-caffeine crankiness and he looks at her and says, in a soft voice that touches her like a caress, “Good morning, beautiful.”
It’s the smile he wears every time she comes home tired and stressed from the office, every time he spots her across the pub when they’ve planned to meet for drinks after work, every time she gets back from martini nights with Sarah.
She realizes that she’s smiling too.
The same smile she always feels when she sees him. Even when she’s mad at him or upset with work or her family or the world in general, that smile never really goes away. It’s always there, just hiding, ready to be coaxed into being again, prompted by his gentle teasing or a back rub or a simple, “How can I help?”
She realizes that she never wants to lose that smile.
She considers, momentarily, saying nothing at all about her day. After all, it’s not like anything happened. There’s really nothing to tell. But she dismisses the thought as unworthy of both of them.
She buries herself in Joel’s welcoming arms and returns his hug, more fiercely than usual, then tilts her face up for a kiss.
Then, as he releases her, she grins up at him.
“So,” she says. “You’ll never guess who I heard from today.”
She’s pleased to hear that her voice sounds nonchalant. Casual. As if there had been no question asked, no decision made.
Then again, she thinks, that’s not so far from the truth. There was only ever one answer. One decision.
She feels herself smiling again as she meets Joel’s brown eyes.