Word Hunt
Lightning, Parachute, Seashell
Merrill MacIntyre sat at his kitchen table staring at his laptop screen. As he sat there surrounded by sports memorabilia, dirty dishes, and dehydrated plants, he tapped his left hand nervously on the pub-style table’s surface and absentmindedly clicked his mouse with the right. He may as well have been watching paint dry as it would have been just as productive.
His mind was blank and his heart was devoid of inspiration.
Thirty-eight years old and painfully single, he was desperate to find an excuse to spend some time outside of the office and away from coworkers with his workplace crush, Jessie Fagan. Some of the other folks in the office considered her plain but pleasant. To Melville, though, being in her presence felt like capturing lightning in a bottle.
He’d decided to send her a text message to get some chit chat started, but wanted to come up with a few rough conversation ideas before turning to his smart phone.
After several minutes that seemed like hours of sitting there twitching and almost breaking out in a sweat, he still had zero. He felt like he was about to leap from a plane without benefit of a parachute - gravely unprepared.
How many times had he walked by her desk at the office over the last two years? Almost without fail, she would greet him not with a fake uptight teeth-baring grin but with a legitimately warm-hearted, pink-cheeked, hazel eyes-sparkling smile. “Oh, hello there Merrill!”, she’d brightly offer in welcome. “What’s new with you on this stupid work day?” she’d half-chuckle, half-smirk. Sure, they were just words, but she always seemed genuine in her delivery of them. Even if she was only making small talk, she conveyed to Merrill that she cared. He’d routinely respond with a “Oh, you know, same old, same old”. Jessie always left him with a sense of great comfort that when she spoke to him, she was giving him her full attention. She certainly had his!
That’s how it all started and even two years later it remained the sum total of their one-on-one time. For just about all other contact, everyone else was around - group chats, in-person or virtual meetings, lunch time in the office kitchenette, and the very rare but coveted staff happy hours after work.
He wanted more… and he hoped to find out that she did too.
But how?
Because of the group chats, they had one another’s cell phone numbers. He could just send her a casual text message - just between the two of them - and test the waters.
He acknowledged that he was likely overthinking the process, which was perpetuating his feelings of overwhelm and procrastination. But he’d created a rule for himself that only he knew about whereby a text message had to be sent to Jessie from him by 9:00 pm on this very night.
And at this very moment, it was 8:27 pm.
Yet as he stared at the screen before him, he had nothing. He was no farther ahead than he had been two years ago. In fact, this was worse than being stagnant. This was backwards. This was a seashell held against his ear, bereft of the sound of the ocean. This was bullshit.
He raised his hands to his face and gave each cheek a few taps. “Come on, MacIntyre,” he admonished himself aloud. “Pull the pin, launch the grenade, see how this thing explodes once and for all”.
And with that, he got up, grabbed his phone, and walked towards his living room window.
From his vantage point, he noticed two blue jays perched on a limb of the apple tree in his front yard. They weren’t doing anything except sharing a space. They just sat there, quietly, unassuming, looking at each other. To him, it appeared as though they were just being birds, just having a moment, just between the two of them. They were simply… being.
His thumb scrolled through his phone for Jessie’s contact information. He found it, clicked on it, and began to type out this message:
“Hey there Jessie. It’s Merrill. What’s new with you on this stupid Thursday night?”
Then he hit send.
He thought he might puke.
The time was 8:37 pm. He’d met his deadline. Let the chips fall where they may.
At 8:39 pm, his phone dinged.
She’d replied:
“Hey Merrill! I was just thinking about you!”
About the Creator
Shelley Carroll
Ms. Carroll is a 50-something year-old retired public servant and mother of three adult children. She and her partner Hal live in Amherst NS with a sweet, anxiety-ridden rescue dog. Shelley loves reading, running and red wine.
She/Her
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