Affinity

December 29th, 2024

"Hey Linds, before I go, is there anything I can bring for Sunday?" I asked, leaning against the thin plastic divider between Lindsey's cubicle and mine. She looked up at me from where she was sitting, not too quick to answer, but still with a pensive smile on her face. How she always had a smile on her face is beyond me, but it always ends up putting one on mine too, so I can't completely complain. She pursed her lips to one side and leaned back back in her chair. She tapped her feet around until she came to an answer.

"Hmm, you know, I honestly think we've kind of got everything covered- obviously whatever you want to drink- but I think that's honestly all I can think of," she started. "Let's see; Danielle is bringing some dips she found on Facebook or whatever thing she uses. Jess is bringing some desserts. Karl is bringing some drinks. Oh! I know!" she said excitedly. I couldn't help but chuckle at her excitement. "It might be a lot to ask so you can totally say no and I'll just run out and grab it, but we ordered a couple of pizzas from that one shop- um, Paulie's or whatever it's called?"

"Oh! Yeah, that's right down the street from my house! I could grab it on my way? You don't need to go running around the world when you're already hosting everybody," I offered. She immediately cocked her head and smiled, looking at me through her eye lashes. She sat back up in her chair.

"You wouldn't mind? It's totally okay if you do. Jack said that he might be able to, but I never really know what's going on with him, so he could be home after the ball drops for all I know," she sighed. I couldn't tell whether or not it was the other-thinker in me, but it seemed that what she had just said was bothering her more than even she had expected.

"I absolutely wouldn't mind in the slightest," I told her, shifting my weight off of the cubicle divider. I suddenly became just slightly more aware of my body, and could feel my cheeks turning a rosy shade of pink.

"I don't have cash on me now, but I can give you the money for it on Saturday if that's okay? If not I can maybe try to call the place to see if they'd let me pay over the phone or n-"

"It's okay-" I interrupted her. "I definitely don't mind picking up the pizzas, and I definitely don't mind paying for them. You do absolutely too much, and it's the least that I could do for you, love," I told her, trying to calm her down about the situation. A soft smile returned to her face. She nodded, and we shared a second together in that moment before Tom, one of the newer analysts called my name from the other side of the office. I semi-jokingly rolled my eyes and watched Lindsey giggle before I let out a sigh.

My hand lingered on the divider before I made my way over to where Tom was standing by the printer on the other side of the office. He always seemed to be fiddling around with the printer in some way, and I was never exactly sure what he was meant to be doing. When I had reached him, he was knelt down next to the printer, trying to take the side panel off of it.

Without saying anything, I took the panel from his hand and put it back on the printer. I stood back up again, pressing a couple of buttons that reset the printer's cue, and told him to press print again. He did so, and within seconds, you could hear the paper moving through the machine, and finally appearing in front of us.

"Thanks-" she said quickly and timidly. He tended to get quite anxious when asking for help with something that he didn't understand, which made him all the more awkward than he already was. "Are you alright?" he then asked quietly, which brought me to recognize my spaciness that was clearly more noticeable to him than it was to me. I fought the smile that was trying to return to my face and looked up at him, as he was a few inches taller than me.

"Oh, um, yeah, I'm good," I told him. He cocked his eyebrow at me, clearly not believing what I was saying, and sat back down at his desk. I gently shook my head before making my way back to my desk. Lindsey smiled at me from through the clear plastic at the top of the dividers as I came back over to my desk. I think she had probably been laughing about the things that Tom was saying and I wasn't responding to while I was fixing the printer.

I stopped by Grant's office before I left for the day. We were required to do daily check-outs with him at the end of every day to keep track of what we were doing and how things were going, which was sometimes helpful and sometimes completely useless. It was really only nice when you had a problem that needed his attention, but it was typically more annoying than it was helpful. Since we all had to go talk to him before the end of the day, we usually couldn't leave when we were meant to. And if you had to get out of the building pretty quickly for whatever reason at the end of the day, but someone else was in there, you wouldn't know how long that was going to take before they were done. He also really likes to go on tangents about everything that was going on in his work and home life which I really wouldn't mind listening to any other time than as I'm actively trying to leave the building.

I finally made my way out of the building. The sky was pitch black, which was normal for the end of December, but nonetheless still pretty depressing. Going to work while it was dark and leaving while it was dark was not a great way to live. Not to mention, our building has little to no windows, so you really don't see the light of day while you're in the building. Everybody always wonders why I am just constantly doing something outside on the weekends, but it's my only time to see the sun.

Tonight the wind chill made it feel like -12 degrees outside, which wasn't particularly enjoyable. No amount of Carhartt was going to get you through this amount of weather. Well, maybe a certain amount, but my hoodie and jacket certainly weren't going to cut it.

I looked up at the sky, seeing nothing short of thick clouds. Not even the picturesque ones either. And what I could swear was the moon, but maybe also this one building that had a really tall bit with a light on the top of it. On nights with low visibility like this one, the two looked almost identical.

I sat in my truck as I waited for it to warm up, and started at the gray brick wall in front of me. I thought about this weekend, and about how although I was interested to see what celebrating New Year's Eve with my department was going to be like, I had a creeping suspicion that it was going to require a little more mental preparedness than I had previously imagined. From stories that Jess and Taylor have shared with me, it seemed like they had a lot of fun last year. And, considering I had no plans apart from this as an option, I was going to try to make the best of the situation.

The hour's worth of traffic for my normally 15 minute commute left a lot of space for my mind to wander. And somehow, I always found it wandering back to Lindsey. And, embarrassingly, I couldn't explain why. I just found that I could never get rid of her smile that was always in the back of my head. I definitely felt pathetic, especially knowing that I had been kind of crushing hard on a married woman at my work, but in the hour-long car ride, it left me no choice. It's gone in ways, surely, my feelings for here. I went from really not knowing her in the spring, to getting rather close with her over the summer, for us to them kind of drift a bit apart come the fall, and now the two of us have definitely had an interesting few weeks.

She's charming, and I can't particularly put a finger on the way that she makes me feel. Good, I mean, is one way to put it. She has a way of making you feel safe, no matter what. She always has a small one-liner in her pocket to cheer you up when she thinks you need it. She is the first to notice if someone's mood is off, and the first to lend her hand. She's reassuring and sensitive, and so incredibly goofy, and probably one of the smartest people that I know. I still think back to when I first met her, and how I definitely thought she was a total weirdo, but we've moved on from that now.

She was the other person in my interview with Grant when I was going through the hiring process, and I kid you not, she spoke maybe two or three sentences the entire time. On my first day, I barely even remembered who she was because she left my interview half way through to go finish her testing, which now, looking back at it, makes so much sense for her. But, at the time, I just remember being so wildly confused by her.

I still am... wildly confused by her. She's somehow the world's greatest mystery to me, Lindsey Wilder was.