The pounding in her head was not
making it easier to concentrate. It was becoming a yearly tradition, one that
she knew she was too old to continue indulging in, but which she indulged in
all the same.
Last night had been the eve of
Valentine’s Day and with her greatest prospect being a date with Darren on
Sunday, it had seemed like the best way to celebrate the eve of having to
endure the pain of falsified declarations of love was with a drink. Or however
many drinks were contained in a bottle. When the desire to let a tear escape had
started, Bonnie had dragged herself off to bed and passed out in a drunken
stupor.
Dressed in a black peplum and
fitted skirt, she stared at the whiteboard, analysing it.
‘Are you ever going to tell me
what that code is?’ The bald man suffering from middle-aged spread who sat at
the desk across her divider rarely spoke to her. For the most part Bonnie
scared him. She came in dressed like a high-class lawyer, oozing the attitude
and pout of Victoria Beckham, and hating on everything that the job had to offer.
At 55 and with two teenage daughters damaging his sleeping patterns, Richard
had no idea how to handle a woman like Bonnie who clearly knew exactly how to
handle men.
‘No.’ Bonnie continued staring,
but a flutter in the back of her brain made her rethink her position. ‘Yes,
actually.’ She turned her head towards Richard. ‘It’s my lifeline. Once it’s
gone, so am I.’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’
Richard swallowed nervously and began to fidget, now uncomfortable that he’d
been engaged in her stare. ‘Should I call someone?’
‘Do you need to call someone?’ she
asked dryly. This was bordering on conversation for the sake of conversation
and that never ended well. Bonnie heard herself though and felt something that
closely resembled guilt. She didn’t have the most pleasant tone, at times she
irked herself. It wasn’t that she wanted people to be terrified of interacting
with her, more so that she needed them to give her some space and only talk
about the things she wanted to talk about, and only talk about them when she
wanted to talk about them.
‘Um, no, but I thought maybe you
were feeling down. I don’t know. Do you even have that emotion?’ A row of sweat
beads had formed on Richard’s top lip, just above where the quiver had started
and his eyes widened as his brain comprehended what he’d just said to her. The
sight made Bonnie giggle like a schoolgirl.
‘Calm down, Richard. I promise
not to eat your heart out while it’s still beating in your chest.’
She actually saw the way he
released his breathe, like for a second he had literally been fearing for his
life. ‘I’m sorry you’re alone on Valentines Day, Bonnie.’
The smile disappeared and her
voice developed a crisp edge. ‘I’m perfectly lonely, okay? I’m alone because I
choose to be alone. People can throw all the roses around that they want on one
day of the year, pretending that they’re more loved up than I am, but the truth
my friend is that they are every bit as alone as I am. The difference is that I
choose to be, whilst they have to lie next to the same person each and every
night pretending that they can’t feel that emptiness inside that stems only
from either choosing the wrong person or from falling out of love. So thank
you, Richard, but let me assure you that there is nothing wrong with being
alone.’
Turning back to her computer her
fingers smashed at the keyboard with a ferocity that threatened to send a few keys flying.
‘Well, anyway, my wife made some
Valentine’s Day cupcakes for me and the kids and she thought you might want
one. Just a bit of fun really, what with where we work. She told me to share them with my work friends, but really, you’re the
only person who talks to me.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘You don’t have to have it if you
don’t want to.’ Richard's face dropped in shame.
‘It’s a cupcake, Richard. Of
course I want it. I mean are you serious that no one else talks to you?’
He didn’t need to speak. The
crestfallen look spoke for him. Richard had always struck her as the type who
would’ve been bullied extensively during his formative years for being a little
too shy, a little too soft. His wife, every bit as gentle, had always struck
Bonnie as someone who oozed all the nicety of a country comfort magazine. Standing
tall, she took two long strides to cover the distance
between her desk and his. She reached out and smiled with all the warmth that
her cold heart could muster. ‘Thank you for the cupcake, Richard. I hope you
and your wife enjoy some time together this evening. And these people?’ she
gestured with a dismissive, backward wave of her hand. ‘Fuck them. You’re
better than them. There’s a reason you’re the only person in this place that I
let talk to me.’
Bonnie didn’t see it because
she’d turned to walk away, but with those simple words she drew the first smile
from Richard that had crossed his face in the four years since he’d been doing
time in that office. And once she was out of his gaze Bonnie smiled too.
Richard and his wife had just given her her first Valentines present in six
years. Licking icing off her fingers she smiled devilishly and devoured the
entire thing in two bites.
Bonnie Martin was nothing if not complex.
