E-Beth Ch. 02

"She's 25, almost 26. She'd *better* start thinking about it," Audrey countered.

"But there's no way *he's* interested in anything like that," Paula stated with conviction. "When guys are thinking of finding a girlfriend, they're looking for perfection. They want to believe the girl they're interested in is virginal, sober, and adorably cute. They blind themselves to anything else, and only realize a girl is *human* well after they've started dating."

Paula then pointed a finger right at me. "You, girlfriend, were falling-down drunk and bitchy that night. Now that he knows what you're capable of, he's not going to be looking for anything serious. A roll in the hay, maybe; you ARE gorgeous. But nothing committed."

"I think that's *exactly* why he's interested," Stella argued. "Clearly, Teddy's already seen E-Beth at her worst, and he's still approaching her and talking to her. In fact, I think he's contacting her even *more* lately."

I shook my head in disagreement. "He sees me as a friend, nothing else. Case in point: he used to stare at my tits ALL the time. Now, I'm just another coworker. He's not ogling me anymore."

Paula winced apologetically, but looked triumphant. "There. He doesn't see you as a sex object anymore. He's seen past the hot babe to the drunken bitch, and he's lost physical interest. There's no recovering from that."

"Hey! Maybe he's found a more *mature* appreciation for her!" Audrey insisted and then looked straight at me. "Yeah, before he got to know you, he just saw a hot body and great boobs. But now that he knows you, he's appreciating you as a person. He sees you as MORE than a sex object, and he won't degrade you by just ogling your tits."

"Why don't we just ask him?" Stella interrupted everybody.

"What?" I furrowed my eyebrows.

Stella glanced over my shoulder toward the front door and then looked right into my eyes with a little smirk on her face. "Teddy's *here*."

*Ah, hell.*

I cowered in my chair, my head dipping about an inch as I hunched over and hoped Teddy didn't notice me. This was ridiculous, of course. Even if he couldn't see my face, Stella was sitting directly across from me and he'd recognize her. I watched my blonde friend smile and cant her head and go into full flirt mode, which told me that Teddy was approaching the table. So with a resigned sigh, I put a smile on my face and turned around.

Turns out, Teddy wasn't alone. There were three guys with him, only two of whom I recognized. One of them was a lab tech. The other was from IT. I'd seen both guys at the bar before. The four of them approached, and Darren, the guy from IT took the lead while greeting, "Heyyy, girls."

Stella giggled and smiled back. "Hey, Darren! I never thanked you for fixing my computer. I still don't know what went wrong, but it's running much faster now!"

The guy with spiky hair and frameless-eyeglasses just grinned. "Just cleaned out a bunch of malware that you somehow got on there. You looking at porn while at work, Stella?"

"Ah!" Stella's jaw dropped and she looked positively scandalized, albeit with a big smile on her face at the same time. She giggled and nodded to the empty table beside us.

The four guys looked ready to sit down, but before they could, Gary, the lab tech, rather deliberately pulled out the chair Teddy was about to sit in and nudged him over to the chair closest to me.

Blushing, Teddy smiled at me in lieu of a verbal hello. And then he took his seat right beside me. And all of a sudden, all eight people at the two tables were *very* quiet.

And six pairs of eyes were trying, unsuccessfully, to be inconspicuous about staring right at the two of us.

I just closed my eyes and wished this nightmare would end.

Teddy was a little more proactive about it. He cleared his throat and stated firmly, "Okay guys, this was the most pathetic setup I've ever seen."

"What are you talking about?" Darren blurted a little too quickly.

Teddy rolled his eyes and parroted, "'Oh hey, Teddy! Wanna go down to the bar with us? Just a couple of brewskies to relax before the weekend. Oh, hey, aren't those girls from Argen? Let's go say 'hi'. And oops, I wanted that seat. Why don't you sit next to E-Beth?'" At the last, Teddy lowered his eyelids and semi-glared at Gary.

I was looking at Teddy as he went through this little rant about being manipulated. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught Stella fidgeting nervously as well. I turned on my friend and glared at her in disbelief. "*You too?*"

"I'm just trying to help," she stammered.

"Help what?" I wheezed in exasperation.

Teddy summed it up, glaring at the boys. "Real subtle, guys. Thanks a lot. Even if I *wanted* to go out with her, this kind of blatant obviousness would be *sure* to magically get her to fall in love with me. No wonder you three are single."

I looked over at Teddy and gestured to the girls. "I keep telling them we're just friends."

"Me, too."

"So how do we prove it to them?"

He shrugged. "We don't need to prove *anything*. I'm me. You're you. I know how I feel about you and it doesn't matter to me what these boneheads think." And then turning his head back, he flagged down the waiter so he and the guys could order a round of drinks.

Huh. Teddy had delivered that statement with the calm confidence of a man who really *didn't* care what the other guys thought. He knew what he was about and what he was doing with his life.

As I stared at him, his blue-gray eyes focusing as he ordered his drink and field-marshaled the other guys into ordering theirs, I found myself reexamining my assessment of the man. Maybe he wasn't a loser geek. True, every time I'd run into him the previous year he'd been a blushing, tongue-tied kid who couldn't keep from staring at my tits. But those encounters were always brief and were the only things I had to go on.

Then came the fateful Holiday Party, where he'd shown a surprising maturity and considerateness in taking care of me while (mostly) rebuffing my attempts to throw myself at him. And after he'd given in to my seduction, he showed immediate remorse and a real dedication to righting what he perceived to be a moral mistake.

And now here he was, hanging out with the guys over a few beers, looking calm and relaxed. He wasn't a flirtatious, silver-tongued charmer, but he seemed comfortable in his own skin. He'd fixed my tire -- not rocket science, but still appreciated. And now that we were actually interacting beyond the brief encounters at the stockroom with him ogling my tits, I was starting to realize that there was much more to Teddy than I'd realized.

****

I spent the weekend with a terrible crush on a boy I barely knew. I did that sometimes. In High School, I'd fantasized about making out with various popular and cute guys. Some of them were celebrities. Some of them were other teenagers walking the halls. Nate, the star quarterback was particularly dreamy. I think I spent a full week crushing on him. Then David became my Chemistry lab partner. He was certainly handsome, but I only crushed on him for two days before getting over it. But then, of course, he'd given me the E-Beth nickname and started being much friendlier around me. And the second time I developed a crush on him, it sort of stayed with me for close to two years.

One might have thought those little fantasies would have died out in High School, but I would have new ones all throughout college and beyond. Most of the time, nothing ever came of them. But every now and again, a crush would eventually lead me to actually approaching a guy and seeing if we might be compatible.

This weekend, I crushed on Teddy. It was a dramatic 180 from my December-conception of him as a loser geek who holed himself up in his room playing video games and jerking off to pornographic fantasies of me. Now, in my mind's eye, he was a handsome, sensitive, and confident young man who happened to have a big dick and had once screwed me quite well.

I lay in bed Saturday morning, imagining what it would be like to wake up next to him and then scoot myself over to lay my head on his bare chest while he wrapped his strong arms around me and cuddled. I wondered what kind of wedding we would have, what my dress would be, and what kind of location he'd suggest when we talked of such things. I wondered what our kids would look like, if they would have his nose and eyes because I didn't really like mine. And I pictured slightly older versions of the two of us having a picnic in a park while our two babies toddled around us, playing tag.

I knew these idle fantasies were completely ridiculous, of course. In the back of my head, I knew I was going through this momentary phase like I did with almost every guy I took a serious interest in. Only this time, my little fantasy crush phase was coming a little late. Usually they happened BEFORE I slept with the guy. But the path Teddy and I had taken to come to this point was anything but usual.

Still, despite knowing I was amidst a fleeting crush phase, I was still driven to find out more about him. In both High School and College, that meant chatting with my friends to gossip about certain character traits or past behaviors. Today, it meant Googling his name and browsing other things on the internet. I wasn't a stalker, but I was curious. And if I wanted to convince Stella and the girls that Teddy and I weren't an item or anything, I couldn't exactly call her up to ask what else she knew about the guy.

Internet searches didn't give me much. But I hit the jackpot when I found out he had a MySpace page. There wasn't a whole heck of a lot on it: a few quotes from famous philosophers, Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" as his autoplay profile song, and a generic listing of movies and TV shows that he liked.

I also got a bit of his personal information. A little buzz went through me when I saw that his birthdate was 1/12/1984, which made him a Capricorn. Since I was a Taurus, we were supposed to be very compatible. Then again, David's a Virgo, also compatible, but we weren't meant for each other.

I also found out that Teddy did indeed graduate in 2006 from Harvard with a B.S. in Chemistry, at least according to his self-edited MySpace. He didn't smoke, but drank occasionally. He wanted children "someday", and was heterosexual. He also had a surprising number of friends, and not in that MySpacey accumulate-as-many-friends-as-possible way. There were about a hundred, many of them seeming to be from college. And from the frequent comments they would make on his page, and the collections of photos he had with both guys and girls, he seemed to be a popular guy. Maybe he was still a nerd, but at least he was a social nerd.

And maybe he wanted to be my nerd.

I didn't know. Maybe Teddy'd had a crush on me before, but that was probably gone now. He'd certainly accepted us being "just friends" and had made no further attempts to pursue me. And with the way he carried himself both around me and around our co-workers, he seemed pretty comfortable just being friends.

Maybe I was too late. Maybe I should just let this idle crush run its course and in another week, I'd be completely back to normal.

But maybe not.

****

*-- FEBRUARY 2007 --*

"4 milliliters."

"Got it." Steve twisted the stopcock, carefully letting out exactly 4 milliliters of the solution out of the burette. When he closed it again, the bespectacled, slightly-balding man looked up at me and remarked off-hand. "So rumor has it Teddy Harrison came to your rescue when your car broke down a few weeks ago."

I was pouring out an Erlenmeyer flask, and without even flinching I finished up what I was doing and set the empty flask back down with a steady hand. Steady hands are a good thing, you understand, when dealing with potentially toxic fluids. "Uh-huh."

"Should I be reading anything into that?" Steve inquired.

I shrugged as I set up the row of four vials into the centrifuge and then turned it on to send the device spinning. "Read what you want. He was just there at the right time. Lots of Argen people were coming back from lunch. I'm surprised you hadn't heard about it sooner."

"Oh, well, I did..." Steve admitted, a wry grin on his face. "But you haven't had a round of tests in the last few weeks, so this was the first time I could ask you about it. Unless you'd prefer I come straight to your office, knock on the door, and ask point blank about your love life."

I looked up through my protective plastic lab glasses and rolled my eyes. I was done with this phase of the setup so I sat up straight and pushed my lab glasses up onto my forehead while fixing Steve with a withering glare. "THIS is why I'll never again date a co-worker. I've had different boyfriends for three years, but it wasn't until Grant and now Teddy that *you* started playing 20 questions with me."

Steve chuckled and arched an eyebrow. "So Teddy IS counted in there, is he?"

"Wait, I didn't say that," I flustered.

"Then what ARE you saying?"

I sighed and bit my lip nervously. I looked at the lab equipment in front of me, not really seeing it. A few weeks ago, I'd spent two days straight pining for Teddy and fantasizing about what our lives would be like together. But then come Monday, I didn't have any labs or any reasons to go to that end of the building. And I couldn't think of any rational excuses for approaching him. So sitting in my office, staring at my monitor, I simultaneously cursed myself for acting like a chickenshit High Schooler and praised myself for not letting my emotions go to my head.

Monday turned to Tuesday and then Wednesday and on. And I didn't see Teddy except for a passing "hello" in the hallway on Thursday. That was two weeks ago.

And now I was over my crush. Teddy was a nice guy. But we'd moved on. He was a friend, but it just made too much rational sense to not start anything with him. He was a co-worker, for one, and Steve's inquisition was proving again why I shouldn't go there. And I just didn't really know the guy. Putting that one anomalous night aside, we hadn't talked much. Best just to let that situation settle itself, and to look for love outside my workplace.

"Look, Steve," I sighed. "I thought about it. Briefly, I thought about it. Teddy was really sweet to me when I got drunk at that Holiday Party and in getting me home. He kept me from making a fool of myself. You said it yourself, he's a nice kid. And he bailed me out with the tire thing. But that's it. People don't build relationships on changing out tires."

"I've seen relationships built on less." Steve smiled. "Carrie and I met in a supermarket when she dropped an orange and I picked it up for her."

I smiled back at him. "Lucky you. But this isn't a supermarket. Teddy's a co-worker, and I just don't want to get into all that."

"Fair enough."

I exhaled slowly. "So okay? Enough with the interrogation?"

"I was never interrogating you." Steve looked hurt. "Besides, I just wanted to hear what you had to say for yourself before Teddy arrived."

I frowned. "Huh?"

"We need an electron microscope today, right?" Steve smirked. "The one in this lab broke last week and Teddy's bringing a new one over."

Just then, the door opened and a large pushcart with a semi-phallic white object came trundling in. The sudden sound, plus my momentary shock at realizing that Teddy would be coming in, made me whirl around in my seat to look.

I whirled around a little *too* fast. My hand knocked into a beaker, sending the glass cylinder flying across the room and the fluid inside to splash outward. Fortunately, I'd been wearing gloves, so my hands weren't at risk at all.

Unfortunately, my protective lab glasses were still perched on my forehead. And all of a sudden, my eyes were BURNING.

"EEEK!" I shrieked in a high-pitched, panicked voice. I jerked back away from the burning sensation, which toppled me right off my lab stool.

"AAAH!" I yelled in a deeper voice, the impact of my butt against the linoleum floor sending a dull, but shooting, pain all the way up my back. And then I was flat on my back screaming and thrashing while the burning pain worked its way deeper into my retinas.

"Open your eyes!" a sharp order came while I felt a cool solution being poured over my face.

"WHAT?" I yelled.

"Open your eyes!!!" I cracked the lids open, just a millimeter, and almost instantly the pain was gone. I started blinking rapidly and then soon I felt my gloves being jerked off my hands as well. A few seconds later, it was all over. A towel was then put on my face, mopping up all the excess fluids. Once I was dry enough, the towel was pulled away and I looked up to see Teddy leaning over me, a look of intense concern on his face as he delicately dabbed at the remaining droplets of moisture.

And as I stared into his handsome face, losing myself in the warmth of his blue-gray eyes, I simply asked the first thing that popped into my head. "Will you go out to dinner with me?"

****

My rational brain wondered why I had to go to all this trouble. Not only had Teddy just seen me hours earlier in my dressed-down lab getup, but he'd also seen me with smeared makeup and wet hair after pouring the neutralizing solution into my eyes to rescue me. If he'd agreed to go out with me while I'd looked like that, he likely wouldn't really care how I looked for tonight's dinner date.

But *I* cared. Even though he'd seen me sans makeup, with my hair in a ponytail, and dressed in an unflattering lab coat, I wanted to look *good*. I wanted Teddy to know under no uncertain terms that I indeed considered this a date. And it wasn't just a thank you for the rescue.

Well, the rescue had something to do with it. If nothing else, the act swept away my last serious objections to Teddy as a potential boyfriend: that I needed my man to be a *man*. He'd started to correct my misconception of him when he changed my tire. He'd done a further job when he didn't put up with his friends' manipulations at Monahan's. And he cemented his status in the lab. Really, the number one criteria I'd always had for a guy was how I physically felt around him. And lying there on the floor of my own lab, blinking the moisture out of my eyes and staring up at the handsome man who had rescued me... well, what can I say? I started getting wet, and I don't mean from the aqueous solution.

I hadn't thought about it before asking him to dinner tonight. I just went with my instincts. And I didn't even ask to wait two more days until Friday or something like that. I'd asked Teddy to dinner, and when he'd responded positively by asking when, I threw all caution to the wind and replied, "Tonight." I didn't want to stop and discuss the situation with the girls. I didn't want another couple of nights to think it over. I'd finally figured out that despite all the little things I didn't know or understand about him, Teddy was a catch. He'd once had a thing for me. And if I didn't act fast, I might lose this opportunity forever.

But it wasn't too late yet. I'd asked, and he'd agreed. There were no arguments from him about how we were supposed to just be friends. I got the impression that he'd agreed to do so only because I'd stated that was what I'd wanted. And the speed of his affirmative answer to go out tonight led me to believe that he still had some of the same feelings for me I'd read in him back during the Holiday Party. And he was a smart enough guy not to blow this chance by asking pointless questions.

So here I was, sitting in front of my vanity, painstakingly putting on each layer of cosmetics that would transform me from plain Jane into the alluring sex bomb I knew I could be. I even had Amber's little blurbs of advice sounding off in my head:

*Just a little thicker on the eyeliner. It's a date. You want him to *feel* your smoldering sensuality.*