January, 2017

Ingrid poured the hot coffee into her bamboo travel mug, added two teaspoons of sugar, a splash of cold milk and a dash of whiskey, then stirred until the dark brown smoothened into café au lait. She licked the spoon clean before she dropped it into the sink on her way to the fridge. Her lunch sat on the middle shelf, packed late last night, just before she turned in for the day. She took it out, replaced the milk and left her lunch on the table.

With her whiskey latte steaming on the kitchen countertop, Ingrid went out in the hallway to put her shoes on and slipped into her coat. Then she remembered there was someone still sleeping in her bed. Grabbing her house keys, she tiptoed into the bedroom and leaned over the young man sprawled on her sheets.

"Dale," she whispered, brushing her knuckles on his cheek. "Hey, Dale."

He moved and mumbled, curling up towards her.

"I've gotta go. Here." She dangled the keys.

He frowned. It made her smile.

"Nightstand," she said and dropped the keys by his phone. "You might want to get up and lock the front door after me."

Dale opened his eyes. "I'll do that in five."

Ingrid chuckled. "Yeah, right." She checked her watch. "Shit, I have to run. See ya."

Dale gave a sleepy smile. "Take care, baby. Love you."

Ingrid shuddered and grimaced as she passed out of Dale's sight through the hallway. In the kitchen, she screwed the cap on her mug, hoisted her handbag and bolted. With a bit of luck, she might still catch the last train capable of getting her to work in time.

She hurried as much as her coffee and the traffic allowed her to. The station was just across the street, but cars and cyclists had a particular talent for getting in the way specifically when she was in a rush. As she climbed the stairs to the platform, realisation hit her hard and fast, like the approaching train.

"Fuck," she muttered under her breath and heaved a sigh of defeat. She could visualise her lunchbox sitting on her kitchen table as she took a hearty swig from her liquored coffee. It burned her tongue and throat and she cursed herself again.

If only Dale hadn't slept over on a weekday. He'd ruined her whole routine.

She had to squeeze into the packed train, feet firmly planted into the ground. Her free hand managed to grab a pole for support, but her bag hung heavy from her elbow. She took half a step forward in the crowd.

Her leg touched the knee of the tall fellow in the seat. He looked up from his smartphone. His lips fought to suppress a grin, but Ingrid had seen that expression one too many times. She smiled down at him. All of a sudden, his smartphone was no longer that interesting.

The train slowed down and came to a rough stop. Ingrid's foot accidentally slipped between his legs. She held her hot mug to her chest and made a surprised face when she nearly tripped into his lap.

"Oh, entschuldigen Sie, bitte," she apologised.

He smiled and stood up. "Kein Thema."

She found herself within the range of his body heat and did not step away.

"Bitte," he pointed to his seat.

"Oh, vielen Dank!" she thanked him and sat down.

Another gulp of coffee and her loose shirt collar became simply unbearable. She undid the first two buttons and gathered all her hair back, revealing her bare neck and providing the kind stranger with a generous glimpse into her cleavage.

Flashes of imagined possibilities blossomed in her mind. Her eyes scanned his long fingers, comfortably fitting a massive smartphone. His hair, grown out, ash brown locks fluttering on his forehead. His suit, tidy but not too tight.

His face wasn't much to look at, but she would have dug her nails into those broad shoulders. She saw those fingers tugging at her lingerie, her fingers grabbing fistfuls of his hair.

The train came to a stop. People got off and people got on. The person next to her got up. The tall man sat back down. She felt diminutive beside him. Longed to feel diminutive beneath him. If she hadn't been running late, she would have tempted him somewhere. As it was, she probably wouldn't even have time to finish her coffee.

"Next stop's mine," he said out of the blue.

Ingrid had a temporary shock. Her brain had turned on German settings as soon as she left her apartment. Words in English threw her off.

She cleared her throat. "I've got a few more."

"Do you think we could meet tonight?"

Ingrid hesitated long enough not to give her fantasies away. "Nine o'clock, The Secret Keeper?"

The man chuckled. "You do this a lot, don't you?"

"Every now and then," she conceded.

He put out his hand. "Dennis."

"Ingrid." His grip started out shaky, but settled into firmness.

"Nice to meet you, Ingrid." The train came to a halt. "See you tonight."

Ingrid saw him off with a smile. The coffee was now lukewarm in her mug, but the whiskey still gave her hot flushes with every gulp. Or maybe it wasn't the whiskey.

*

Ingrid walked into the office building at three minutes to nine and dumped her empty mug in the sink of the office kitchen at three minutes past. Ten minutes later, her phone buzzed with texts from Dale, which she ignored.

Then half an hour later, he was calling her.

"What the hell?" she exclaimed to herself and rejected the call. A text followed right after.

I've got your lunch. Can you come down for a bit?

She could not believe her eyes.

Come down where?

She glanced towards the window. It didn't look out to the main street where the entrance was.

Lobby.

"Can I just take five?" Ingrid called out in the meeting room. "I'll be right back."

"Sure, no worries," her team leader granted permission.

"Thanks."

She found Dale sunk in a sofa, scrolling on his phone. "Hey."

His face brightened up when he heard her. "Hey! You left in such a hurry this morning, you forgot your lunch."

Ingrid took the paper bag from him. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

Dale avoided her gaze. "I'll get there. Eventually."

"Dale-"

"It's fine, really. I've got a perfect track record. Oh, here." He fished her house keys from the back pocket of his jeans.

Ingrid stepped back when he tried to swoop in for a hug. "Dale, you'd better go to school now. Don't you dare miss class on my account."

He smiled, but with a sad expression in his eyes. "I'm not a kid, you know. It's perfectly fine if I don't go to university every once in a while." He nodded to the paper bag. "Enjoy your lunch. I guess I'll see you."

"Bye, Dale."

Ingrid walked to the elevator once he'd left the building and by pure instinct, peeked into her lunch bag. There was something extra on top of the box she'd packed. Doughnuts from her favourite bakery.

"Oh, fuck. Fuck, shit, fuck."

*

After warming up with a couple of tequila shots, Ingrid sat nursing a colourful cocktail at the bar of the Secret Keeper. It was before opening time, but she knew Remi, the barkeep, and he fixed her up whenever she clocked in early. He was wiping and arranging tools and glasses behind the bar as she shared with him the latest developments of her amorous life.

"And then the other day, Clingy Dale brought me my lunch to work instead of going to class."

"Ooh, damn, girl," Remi hissed, "you've got to either take it seriously now or cut him loose. This is getting dangerous. You could break him."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "It's not like I ever want to break them. It just..." She shrugged.

Remi quirked an eyebrow. "It just what?"

"It just...happens."

The bartender laughed. "Bitch, please. You're a fucking predator. You love to break 'em. Before they can break you. Or maybe...maybe that's what you're looking for. Someone to break you."

Ingrid snorted. "Right." She sipped her cocktail. "Yeah, definitely. That's the endgame."

"Yeah, I mean..." He picked up a glass and thoughtfully rubbed at a fingerprint mark. "You're building up on negative karma so that one day it might bite you back in the ass."

"I've mastered the art of self-preservation, Remi. I'm immune to karma."

Remi leaned forward on his elbows. "Baby, no one is immune to karma."

Ingrid could not contain a grimace at the memory of her interaction with Dale that day. "He's taken to calling me baby and says love you on a regular basis."

"Oh, man," Remi laughed, "you're in too deep. You think you can let him down easy?"

Ingrid hesitated. "I don't know, Remi, I...The boy's fragile."

Remi made a confused face. "Since when do you care?"

Ingrid finished her cocktail and reached for a whiskey tumbler behind the bar. She motioned to Remi to fill it up. "Since he's an awkward British boy who had his first proper kiss just last September, not some big-headed American convinced he's a sex guru after screwing his prom date in the car."

Remi gave her a look as he poured whiskey over a handful of ice cubes.

"Present company excluded, of course," she added.

"Thank you," Remi bowed. "And let me guess: you were his first proper kiss?"

Ingrid stared at him as if to say: what do you think?

"Well, tough luck, pussycat. Like I said, in too deep. You care."

"I don't..." Ingrid frowned. "I wouldn't necessarily say that I care...it's just that he's not going home after this. Not for long, anyway."

"What, he's coming back for the second semester?"

"No, not even that. He's going to Russia for half a year or so."

"Wow. Damn!"

"Yeah...I'm not particularly fond of dispatching a broken-hearted kid to Russia for six months."

Remi crossed his arms. "Oh, so it's not the heart-breaking that bothers you, but rather the context within which that heart-breaking will occur because you don't know how he will handle the consequences."

"Exactly."

Remi nodded. "So you've got a conscience but not a heart. Interesting."

"Fuck off," she mumbled into her glass.

"Would if I could, but I'm stuck here with you, babe. Wanna go a round upstairs before everybody else comes in?" He winked and she flipped him off.

"I then stood up a perfectly fuckable specimen," Ingrid said after finishing her drink, "to go check up on the kid because he didn't text all day after the whole lunch thing."

Remi snickered into his rag. "Wow. Way too fucking deep, baby."

Ingrid groaned and shook her empty glass to signal a refill. "Tell me about it."

*

Dale didn't write a word back, not even after she thanked him for the doughnuts. Ingrid checked her phone one last time before going out to meet Dennis. Still nothing.

"Goddamn it. You'd better not be dead."

Her finger hovered above his number as she debated which train to take. Dale or Dennis? The train in Dale's direction came first so she tapped the screen to call him up. He took his time answering.

"Hallo?"

"What the fuck, Dale? It's me."

"Oh, hey." Nonchalance didn't suit him.

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "What's up? You alright?"

"Why? Did you miss me?"

She could hear the sneer in his voice. "I most certainly did not, but it is weird when you're not annoying me with hourly texts. I thought you got run over or something."

He laughed. "Not today, baby. Not today."

Ingrid audibly cringed. "Will you stop calling me that? I'm not your damn baby."

Dale chuckled. "Yeah, sorry about that, Ingrid. I keep forgetting I'm the baby in this relationship."

"Damn right." Despite herself, she smiled.

"Hey, wanna come over?" Dale asked. "My flatmate's out. I've got the whole place to myself, maybe we could order pizza or something."

Ingrid bit her lip, reluctant to admit she was on her way to him already. "Sounds good. I'll grab the beers. That pizza had better be waiting for me when I get there."

"Cheeseburger with extra cheddar?"

"Precisely," she confirmed in a mock-British accent. Dale laughed. There was a twinkle in his laugh, which, although it did not melt her heart, told her brain how young and innocent he really was. "See you later, mkay? Popping in to grab those beers."

"Sure thing, talk later."

Ingrid emerged from the train station in Dale's neighbourhood and took a minute to think. She stood still amidst a whirlpool of people and wondered.

What if she hadn't kissed him?

*

A/N

this is a short story/novella (~16k words long) and functions as an integral prelude to a few other bigger projects which chronicle the details of ingrid's odyssey.

cheers