Bridge Painter for the Night

So here's how my Tuesday night started: me, a green plastic watering can, and the glass door of the Plumco call center lobby, which I have never once managed to open gracefully. You have to pull it, not push it, and every single time I push it and do this little stumble hop. Every time!

"Smooth entrance, Connie," said a voice near my feet.

I looked down and nearly dropped the can. There were boots in my path. Big work boots, splattered with white paint, attached to a guy sitting on the lobby bench like he owned it. Dan. My ex, Dan. Bridge painter Dan, with his reflective vest still on and a smear of zinc orange across one forearm.

"You're kidding me," I said. "It's ten o'clock at night. Why are you here?"

"Break's at ten, you know that. Vending machine's better than the one on the highway deck." He stood up, and of course he's still tall and still smells like paint thinner, which honestly should be a turnoff and is not, and that's annoying. "Watering Timothy's plants again? He's got you trained, huh?"

"He does not have me trained! I volunteer! It's a nice thing I do!" I am twenty-eight years old, I've been a licensed veterinarian for three years, and I was absolutely defending a watering can like it was my honor. "Somebody has to keep those poor things alive. You should see the pothos. It's tragic."

"Uh huh." He grinned at me. Dan has this grin, kind of crooked, and I hate that it still works on me even a year after we broke up. "So how's the dating life, Connie? Meet anybody new at the dog park?"

And this, this right here, is where I should have just said no, not really, and moved on with my life. But there's something about your ex asking that question with that grin that makes your brain go completely offline. Also Veronica had just come through the vestibule behind me, and she's the team lead, and she was clearly about to ask me the same thing, and I don't know. Something in me panicked.

"Actually," I heard myself say, "we got back together last week."

Silence. Dan's eyebrows went up. Veronica said, "Wait, who?"

"Us," I said, and gestured between me and Dan like a game show assistant revealing a prize. "Me and Dan. We, uh. Reconnected."

There was this awful beat where I could see Dan deciding something behind his eyes. I was already composing my apology in my head, already thinking about which exit I could use, when he shrugged and said, "Yeah. Last week. It just sort of happened."

WHAT. I nearly dropped the watering can for real that time.

Veronica clapped her hands like this was the best news she'd gotten all quarter. "Oh my gosh, that's so cute. Okay, well, this works out, because I was about to do the break schedule and now I can just put you two in the same slot. Eleven-fifteen, break room two, and you can catch up."

And she was gone, off toward the cube farm with its flickering fluorescents and its rows of headsets, leaving me standing there holding a watering can and a lie the size of a water heater.

"Nice save," Dan said, low, once she was out of earshot.

"Your fault," I hissed. "You played along. Why did you play along?"

He leaned against the bench and crossed his arms. "Because you looked like a raccoon caught in a porch light, and it was funny. Also, my mom keeps asking why I'm single and this gets her off my back for a while. We're even."

"We are not even. I water plants for Timothy, that's my whole connection to this building, and now I'm fake dating my ex in a plumbing supply call center."

"Hey, some people meet at kickball. We did." He said it kind of quiet, and for a second it almost sounded like a real memory, which was dangerous, because we did meet over a kickball league two years ago when I was twenty-six, and we dated six months, and it ended badly-ish, meaning politely but with crying on my end. "Come on. Water your plants. Tell me about the pothos. I've got twelve minutes."

So I did what any reasonable person would do, which was flee to the second floor with the watering can. Timothy's desk is in the corner by the window, and his plants are honestly a menace, six of them crammed on one desk like a tiny jungle. The pothos had a yellow leaf. The succulent was in a mug for some reason. I did my rounds and tried very hard not to think about the fact that in one hour I had to sit in a small break room with a man I once let see me cry over a hamster.

(His name was Waffles. This is not relevant but I feel like you should know.)

* * *

Break room two is beige, like everything in this building. There's a table, four chairs, a microwave that smells like popcorn forever, and a corkboard of coupons nobody uses. I got there first and arranged my face into a casual expression, which I practiced twice in the window reflection. Dan came in carrying two vending machine coffees and put one in front of me.

"You take it with the creamer still," he said. "So I remembered that."

"You remembered or you guessed?"

"Remembered." He sat down across from me, boots stretched out under the table. "So. If we're dating, and Veronica asks, I should know stuff. When's our anniversary?"

"This is a disaster."

"It's a work in progress. When's our anniversary?"

"I don't know. Last Tuesday? It was last Tuesday, apparently."

"Last Tuesday," he repeated, and pulled out his phone to put it in his calendar, and I swear to you he actually typed it in with a little heart emoji, and I laughed so hard I had to put my coffee down. "There. Committed. Okay, next question. What do I get you for it?"

"Dan."

"What? I'm being thorough."

"You are enjoying this way too much is what you're doing." But I was smiling, and I hated it, and I kept doing it anyway. "Flowers. Tulips. Not roses, roses are a cliché."

"Tulips, noted." He was writing it down too! On his phone! "Okay, and what's the story on how it happened? Because Veronica's going to ask, and Timothy's going to ask, and that guy Harv who thinks he's a detective, he's definitely going to ask."

I stirred my coffee even though it didn't need stirring. "I don't know. You came by the lobby. We talked. Something just clicked again."

"That's a terrible story."

"It's a placeholder story. We'll workshop it."

He looked at me across the table, and for a second the grin dropped and something else was there, something I couldn't quite read, and he said, "You know, for a liar, you're not very good at this."

"Excuse me?"

"Your ears go red when you fib. Always did. It's how I knew you were lying about liking my roommate's cooking."

"That lasagna was a war crime and you know it." My ears were burning right then, I could feel them. "Fine. Yes, I panicked. Yes, this was stupid. Are you in or out, Dan? Because if you're out, I need to go tell Veronica the truth and then never show my face here again, and Timothy's plants will suffer."

Dan leaned back and put his hands behind his head, considering. Somewhere down the hall a phone rang and rang, the whole floor full of people ignoring it the way night shift does.

"I'm in," he said. "But we're doing this properly. If I'm your fake boyfriend, you owe me details. Why'd you tell Veronica you're seeing someone in the first place?"

Because I wanted to sound experienced, is the true answer, because my ex was sitting in the lobby looking good in a reflective vest and I wanted him to think I'd moved on and leveled up. But I said, "It just came out."

"Uh huh." He checked the clock on the wall. "I get an hour for meal break, Connie. Clock's running. Start talking."

And that is how, at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night, I found myself inventing a relationship with my own ex in a beige break room, while somewhere upstairs a pothos lived another day because of me. The hot water bottle thing hadn't even happened yet. God, I didn't know what was coming.

So there I was, deep in fake relationship lore, when I spotted it. Under the table. A pink hot water bottle, just sitting there against the wall like it had wandered in from 1987.

"Whose is that?" I asked.

Dan glanced down. "No idea. Wasn't there when I came in."

And here is where my mouth, which has never once consulted my brain, said: "Oh. That's mine."

"Yours."

"It's for a cat." My ears were already heating up, I could feel it. "I'm fostering a stray. Sick one. The vet at my clinic, well, me, I'm the vet, I recommended heat therapy for her, so I bring the bottle in and refill it during my break. For the cat. Whom I'm fostering."

Dan stared at me. He stirred his coffee. He took a sip. Then he said, "What's the cat's name?"

"Um. Bottle."

"You named the cat Bottle."

"Because of the bottle. It's, it's a whole thing, it's funny if you know the story." I was digging this hole with an excavator and I knew it and I could not stop. "She's a gray tabby. Kidney thing. Very delicate."

"Where do you keep her?"

"At my place. Obviously. That's why the bottle travels."

Dan put his coffee down and pressed both fists on the table like he was praying. "Bottle," he said again, softer, like a man at a funeral. "Okay. Sure. Bottle the cat."

"You're not going to tell anyone."

"Oh, I'm absolutely telling no one, because if Veronica hears this story she'll believe it, and then you'll have to produce a cat."

"I could produce a cat."

"You'd steal a stray from the parking lot."

"I'd foster it responsibly."

He laughed, this big stupid laugh that used to make me laugh back when we were actual real items, and I laughed too, and that's when the door opened.

Timothy stood there holding his lunchbox. Timothy is twenty-six, works the phones on the second floor, and has six plants crammed on his desk like it was a hostage situation. He looked at us. He looked at our two coffees. He looked back