January 14

1/14

I didn't go to work yesterday. I stayed up all night trying to finish my homework (I woke up two hours after finishing that last entry) and getting sidetracked by this stupid thought I can't get out of my head. I felt terrible in the morning, but I thought I might go to work anyway - until I tried to pull on what used to be my loosest pair of jeans and found I couldn't get them over my ass. That was the real reason I didn't go to work, not the sleepiness. I felt disgusting. I spent nearly a year maintaining my goal weight and living a lifestyle where no one ever got to look at me, and then I have to gain it all back right before I'm thrown into a room with the most attractive person I've ever met and no competition except those infinite mirrors reflecting my own fat face (and Teresa, but that's different).

Anyway, I spent a lot of the day finishing my assignments. I drew some very pretty diagrams in Photoshop, with gradients and textures and all those tacky things Teresa likes. And I wrote her an email saying I was very sorry but that I had gone into anaphylaxis after a dinner out with my parents and I wasn't even well enough to talk on the phone. That kind of BS only works once, so I may as well have used it.

The rest of the time I lay in bed and thought about Christopher. I didn't know I was capable of wanting someone as much as I wanted him. Especially not a man - a Filipino man. Two years in exclusively female society at Radcliffe had almost convinced me I could settle for the same sex.

While I was in the throes of one of these sick dozes, trying to think about anything other than him, my phone vibrated with a text. Of course it was Christopher, asking if I was feeling ok. I put my phone on silent and my pillow over my head.

All throughout my commute today I couldn't stop thinking about Christopher and what I would do when I saw him. I had longer to think than usual because the thaw had caused a water main break that was causing delays and cancellations all over the subway system, and I arrived at the apartment more than half an hour late. He opened the door for me.

“Hey,” he said. “You're back!”

To my surprise I had no trouble smiling at him and saying “It's good to be back.”

I was also surprised to see how genuinely concerned everyone seemed about my well-being. Teresa said she worried that I'd been hospitalized. Christopher was especially sympathetic because he's allergic to peanuts and asthmatic, too – and I wouldn't have learned that if I hadn't pulled that ruse, so there!

For lunch Teresa handed me her card again and sent me to the gourmet grocery on the corner with an order for soup, salad, and as many of those free packets of muscovado sugar from the coffee station as I could fit into a Ziploc bag she gave me. It was my first traditional intern errand. “If anyone gives you trouble, just say Growing Capiz – they know me,” she said.

The grocery was packed with a regiment of girls from the nearby private high school, buying expensive sandwiches in plaid skirts rolled high and knee socks rolled low. I somehow managed to maneuver two cups of soup, a large ready-made salad, a dish of roast broccolini, and a very large and very hot coffee to the register along with the bulging Ziploc of muscovado without making too much of a fool of myself.

“Big lunch, huh, Jane?” said the doorman as he opened the door for me on my way back.

Lunch that day was a feast of all the leftovers in the refrigerator because Teresa was leaving for the Philippines that very evening. It was my job to heat the dozens of dishes and lay them out neatly on the marble-protecting placemats. Christopher tried to help, but whenever he got up Teresa called, “Don't talk to her! Don't look at her! Do your work!” I'm pretty experienced at microwaving, though, and by the end of the meal everyone was beyond satisfied.

“Are we going to take a walk today, too?” asked Christopher.

“Yes, you are,” said Teresa.

“By myself?” he said, dismayed.

Turns out she was sending him on a diplomacy mission to meet some people who were donating expensive portable chargers to the GC cause. He brought along a Christmas present for someone's daughter, a stuffed monkey and a book which he wrapped hurriedly in a discarded gift bag he found under Teresa's dried-out Christmas tree. Then he left, and I missed his presence for several hours.

He returned with five of the bright-colored chargers plus some muslin for the green roof experiments I designed. I had the best camera among us, so Teresa had me take pictures of Christopher packing up the chargers for the GC Facebook page. So now I have some pictures of him that are my property and no one else's.

By then it was past five and we realized that we had just two hours to get everything done before Teresa had to leave for her flight. She called Anna, the head of the architectural firm we're partnered with, to make sure she was ready to go. As it turned out, Sarah had put the wrong date on her schedule and thought she was supposed to leave tomorrow. “Holy fucking shit, Teresa,” she said on the phone, sweetly. Luckily she was all packed so it wasn't that much of an issue.

While Teresa bustled around her apartment finishing her packing, Christopher and I could finally talk freely.

“So about those student-rush opera tickets,” he said, “are you planning to see a show anytime soon?”

“If there's anything good while I'm here.”

“Tell me if you do. You can get two tickets with one student id, right?”

I had a vision of being pressed next to him in a Lincoln Center orchestra seat for three and a half hours of German wailing, having to make small talk all through not one but two twenty-minute intermissions.

“Sure,” I said. “I don't even have to be in town. Just ask me if you want to see something and I'll let you buy the ticket through the student rush website.”

“It would be better if you were in town.”

I laughed uselessly and thought that I'd better head home soon.

Before I did, Teresa sat me down on the firm sofa again and gave me a goodbye speech. She told me that I was a good worker, quick and productive. She said I had a “good spirit.”

“And,” she said, shrugging, “I like you. That's all there is to it. I want to keep working with you.” She said I should apply for a grant from Radcliffe that could pay for interning with her again in the summer, and maybe even a trip to the build sites in the Philippines.

I thanked her again and again and then got up to put on my shoes and leave. She hugged me just before I opened the door. Over her shoulder I could see Christopher getting up to secure his own hug. Panic rose up my esophagus. I took a few clacking steps backward. He hugged me anyway, although I kept the fake Dooney&Bourke carefully between us.

As I clacked across the icy park I realized that I'd never see him again unless I did something about it. As I waited for my train in Penn Station I realized that I cared. All the way down the Montclair-Boonton line I thought about what I could do to sit beside him at that mirror-lined table again.

For the first time in my life I wasn't shying away from making serious plans about my future. And for the first time that I can remember the future seemed like something to look forward to.