Fiction, Meghan Olivia Arenz
To show her coworker, Eli, her gratitude for letting her kiss his neck while drunk on the brown line, Naomi baked him his favorite dessert–an apple pie, specifically Granny Smith, with a lattice crust. She had spent all evening perfecting the cut of the apples, cutting some too big and some too small, resorting to eating them herself until her tongue burned. She had, thankfully, bought enough apples to spare a few to poor chopping and still have a nice mound to her pie. She took a fork to the crust to edge out the asymmetric divots, and took it out of the oven too early twice before finally having it golden brown ten minutes after she had told Eli she would be at his place.
His apartment was only a ten-minute walk south, but Naomi did not have a big enough tote bag to carry the still scalding pie tin in. She thought briefly about just carrying it in her hands, but she would have to wear gloves and it wasn’t far enough into the fall season for that to be anywhere near comfortable. There was a troubled thought in the back of her head that if she were to carry the apple pie out in the open, everyone would know who she was giving it to–that they would know exactly why she was giving it to him. But Naomi convinced herself it would make her hands too hot. She spent several minutes awkwardly fumbling it around in a black grocery-sized tote she had gotten from a local bookstore (for way too much money) before eventually leaving her own apartment, the pie tin clanging against her hip the entire walk there (it folded onto its side two minutes in, anyway).
Eli met Naomi at the entrance, or more so, when Naomi pressed her sweaty forehead to the old glass of the front door, Eli happened to be coming down the stairs to check his mailbox. Typically, Naomi would have to sit for around five to ten minutes on the front steps (she was very used to this–she had refined a very serious expression so passerby’s knew her presence was ephemeral) while Eli scurried around his apartment throwing scattered clothed into several hampers and hiding undone sink dishes into the dishwasher so Naomi couldn’t see. So when Naomi spotted Eli coming down the stairs as soon as the pointed tip of her shoe hit the first step, it took a couple seconds for Naomi to morph her transient face into a smile.
I have a surprise for you was Naomi’s opening line as soon as Eli closed his apartment door. Apple pie, with specifically Granny Smith apples and a forked lattice crust, turned out to be his personal favorite (Eli had told her several months prior during their lunch break and had forgotten he had done so. Naomi decided not to correct him). He told her thank you, thank you, thank you but more than that, he said you didn’t need to do this, you didn’t need to do this. Naomi ignored it as best she could, a weak voice in her head dissenting yes, you did. Yes, you did. They ate the still-steaming pie with leftover vanilla almond ice cream from Eli’s freezer and did not touch it. Naomi saw a demonstration in every flexing and unflexing of Eli’s hand. Neither one of them mentioned the brown line neck kiss. It simmered in the rivets of Naomi’s teeth but never found a way out.
Around 11:30 pm, Eli turned toward Naomi with a smile. She opened her mouth like the words last night were a deep breath she’d been needing to exhale for hours. But then Eli got up, thanked Naomi again (you didn’t need to do this), and asked if he could keep the leftover pie. She said yes, so long as he gave the pie dish back. When Naomi got back to her own apartment around midnight, she stayed up for almost an hour doing the leftover crusted dishes from pie-making, though most of that almost-hour was spent letting the warm water run over her cold wrists.
“You know you can say no, right?”
Naomi would swear to herself that they had this conversation at least once a day, once every three days at best. Eli, like a low-totem bee, seemed to always be whirring around the office doing somebody else’s job for them. When Naomi first got hired, she would catch him sometimes in the elevators, a placid smile on his face, but mostly she would see him hopping it from cubicle to cubicle like his yearly performance meeting was bright and early the next morning.
“I know. But it’s hard. Since I know I can help.”
It bothered Naomi to no end–to the point where if she needed something from specifically and only Eli, she would press her teeth into her bottom lip and swallow his name back down. Others in the office managed just fine. Why would they not? At the baseline, it was stupid just how much Eli would do for others.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. I mean, just last week you were talking about how swamped you were with your own shit.”
Naomi was able to catch Eli by the water pitcher every now and again, and it seemed to become an every-other-day thing between the two: wait by the asininely slow pouring of water and chat about life, home, office, food, weekends, bars, sometimes even other people. If Naomi was lucky, she got to learn a thing or two about Eli beyond surface level: I broke my nose at a concert last year and I swear it gave me a deviated septum, I don’t know if I want to live here forever, so on and so forth. Naomi took note of the blankness of his face whenever he talked about himself, nothing like the calmness he normally exudes when he’s running around for other people. It was low, dry, and dangerously thin.
“Yeah, you know. I’ll get to it, though.”
“Let me know if you need help, okay?” Naomi chanced a wide glance to his face and a wide palm to his upper arm. She could feel his heartbeat ringing through her fingers.
“Yeah, of course.”
Naomi had thought a couple times about telling him about herself–really telling him about herself, you know–but it always felt like an intrusion on something. She had a running list of things she could tell him going in her notes on her phone, constantly shifting things from “too bland” to “too revealing,” nothing ever falling under the category of “tell him.” As Eli’s lips trembled upward into an unfeigned smile, Naomi’s eyes drifted to the dark, sore lines of Eli’s neck. Don’t think about it she thought. But Eli turned on his heel, seemingly off to go do something for someone, his half-empty water cup still sweating on top of the pitcher.
When Eli learned later into the year that Naomi had nowhere to go for the brief winter holiday every employee was allotted, he invited her back to his hometown for several days. Naomi had never been to Racine (actually, she’d never been to Wisconsin in general, but now there was something special about never having been to Racine, Wisconsin), so he planned several fascinating stops for their trip–North Beach, a Danish bakery off of Washington Avenue next to his old high school job, and a small, square, red & beige Mexican restaurant near where his friend Nick lived.
Naomi had offered to fly up when it got closer to Christmas at first. I don’t want to bother anyone she’d said. To which all Eli offered was a curt who would you be bothering? before clarifying that they would be driving up there together and driving back together on the 26th with an inarguable finality.
The ride up was filled with long stretches of silence in which Naomi was able to angle her head in just the right way, between the car window and the side of her headrest, that she could see Eli’s reflection like mist between the country clouds. If the light shined away, she could make out his nostrils, the dark freckles on his chin, the thicket of blonde hair growing above his upper lip, his solemnly focused eyes hooded by thick eyelids. She soaked it up, pretending to be deep in thought. If he tried to start a conversation during this time, Naomi kept her responses engaged, but short. The more time she could spend quiet, the more time she could spend studying the exact why his cheekbones crease when he’s thinking.
Eli’s mother was a short, kind woman, his father a tall, funny one. His little brother, Max, was still too deep into his own high school angst to pay anyone much attention, but still managed one good “hey” to Naomi when they first walked in. They smiled around her like she was a foreign exchange student–they would glance back at her when doing things like sliding the glass door to their patio open, or when opening drawers in the kitchen, like anything about their domesticity could possibly be fascinating to her. Naomi could’ve said having absent parents didn’t mean spoons and a backyard were alien to her, but she enjoyed how much Eli enjoyed them, so she said nothing.
North Beach was a flat, rocky shore along Lake Michigan, no more or less impressive than it was in Chicago, but it did feel different to look to the left and see just flatness. It was too cold to dip toes in, though, or really stand close to the water for long.
When I was younger, Nick, Jimmy and I would dare each other skinny dip in the lake when it was like this. But Nick convinced us all that our nuts could get frostbite tens times faster than the rest of our bodies because it’s so much more sensitive. So we never did it Eli rambled off the memory as they both turned around to get back to the car.
If I were a boy, I would want to do it ten times more after hearing that. Just to see if it was true, you know? Naomi mumbled gleefully, dragging the front of her foot under the sand.
No way, no way Eli giggled back, his head raised to the now cloudless sky.
The Danish bakery (which turned out to be a literal Danish bakery, specializing in various kinds of danishes, from cheese to cherry, and flaky to downright moist, ripping apart like a wet paper towel) was a much longer stop than Naomi had anticipated. They ran into Eli’s old manager, Kelly, from his three-year-long career as a meat slicer at the deli next door. Kelly asked him how his college career went, if he still liked living in the big city, and if he ever wanted to move back, she would always have an open position for him. Eli politely laughed and said I never want to work there again. The only good part about that place was you. Kelly let out an exaggerated sigh and said I know. I miss you, though. Naomi felt like a machine, completely avoiding the conversation and instead calculating everything that was said. If she were a forty-year-old deli counter manager in Racine, would she still miss Eli after seven years? Naomi grinned at Kelly when they were finally able to leave, her thumb puncturing a hole in the center of her cheese danish.
Naomi got to see Nick briefly inside of the Mexican restaurant, just long enough to make brief eye contact approximately three times. Nick was wearing basketball shorts and sliders, obviously having just left his house when Eli texted him, and danced through an elaborate handshake with Eli when they saw each other (they had been perfecting it since the second grade, Eli had told Naomi afterward–she believed it, the way she swore they hadn’t even made eye contact before they went through the motions of the handshake). They exchanged some things she was familiar with–telling each other you need to come around more often, yet neither one offering up another weekend they were free–and some unfamiliar things, namely first and last names being tossed around like slang. Every time a new name dropped, Eli would glance to Naomi as if to say I’ll explain later. Naomi thought about butting in like a fly and questioning who is that? Who is that? But Eli was really, really smiling. So Naomi stayed quiet, save for succinct responses to Nick’s sparse questions about herself.
On Christmas Day, Eli’s mother apologized to her in the afternoon for not getting her anything–said Eli had given her no time to decide on a gift. Naomi said it’s no big deal. Being here was enough for me, I promise and Eli’s mother gave her that same foreign-exchange-student smile. Somehow, the fondness felt much further away. Neither of them mentioned anything about Eli not giving her a gift–simultaneously, they both thought it would be overstepping something. After Christmas dinner, where they all loudly ate a roasted ham Eli’s father had slaved over for four hours, Naomi asked Eli while on the back porch if he remembered the time they went to Marty’s and she drank three martinis within an hour. He said he did, his smile thin. He said you knocked every single stool on you way out while scratching his temple. Naomi asked did you have fun? That night? Eli said yes, for the most part. I shouldn’t let you get that drunk again, though. Naomi said sorry, that was my bad. Of course, that was the night that I forgot to eat beforehand. She was peeking looks at him as if he were a star up close, holding stares and then ripping them away.
Next time, we go out, make sure you eat something Eli said after a momentary silence. He smirked at Naomi very, very cordially. Like she was his favorite coworker. The thought burned like hot cigarette smoke under her tongue. She practically coughed out next time?, saying it so quickly her head drooped to the side like her words were sinking her down.
Yeah, next time. I won’t let you get like that again Eli said as stern as a father. He turned his eyes, now dull compared to the white snow glistening in the air, to her. That night is not happening again.
Naomi opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again and let it hang. She wanted to ask if he was referring to a different night altogether. She wanted to say I actually want it to happen again. But she said nothing. On the ride back, Naomi couldn’t discern Eli’s face in the window even once–the light never seemed to hit it quite right.
The first time Eli and Naomi met, it was at the first leadership activity event their bosses was hosting for the summer. Eli had been hired in March, Naomi in May, and they had not spoken until Boss Janet had paired them up to talk about a time in which they had stood up for themselves.
Eli recalled a time when, in the fourth grade, a physically disabled girl got her lunch box smashed on the ground and couldn’t bend down to pick it up. Even if she could, it kept getting kicked around her. Eli said I stepped in and told him to knock it off. Not gonna lie, he did kick my ass, but she said it made her feel so much better. Eli arched his neck with a sheepish smile and said nothing–simply waited for when Naomi had stood up for herself.
I–can’t remember. The last time I stood up for myself. Probably in elementary school, too.
Can you remember just one? Eli asked.
For the first time, Naomi looked into Eli’s eyes, really looked into them, like how they show it in movies and shows. He seemed to have a permanent twitch in his left, and there was a light brown that traced the iris like a duvet over a sheet. They widened with anticipation. Naomi remembered all the times she’d ever made eye contact, and floating on her tongue, bitten back by her teeth was do you look at everyone like this? She tenderly closed her eyes for a second, opened her mouth, but before she could ask what is your name, Boss Janet clapped and Eli’s eyes snapped away from hers. It took a moment or two for Naomi to lacerate her stare from the side of his face.
Meghan Olivia Arenz is a second-year creative writing MFA candidate at Columbia College Chicago. Originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, she now lives in Chicago, Illinois, because she cannot get enough of the Midwest. Her work has been published in Scribe and The Flintlock, and she has worked on the literary magazine Allium.
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