051 - so high

"Roger? Hey." It was Mindy, standing at the edge of the entrance to Roger's little cubicle. He knew it was Mindy, through the corners of his vision, as best as he could, he had tracked her motion through the office.

Now she was here. She had come directly here from her little cubicle. This excited Roger for some reason that wasn't even wholly known to himself. Yet he tried to remain nonchalant, as if he had hardly noticed her presence.

The clacking of keys on Roger's keyboard stopped. He turned his head toward her, and caught a glimpse of the face that he tried to not directly stare at all the time.

"Yeah?" he tried to ask as cooly as a middle-aged, balding "associate" in a poorly-fitting suit could.

She came in close to him, and laid a paper on his desk. He had no idea what she thought of him, but she always seemed so kind. Roger imagined that she was like that with everyone, but maybe not. Maybe she felt the same way.

"We've been going over August's finances, and we decided we had to make some revisions for your budgeting, is that all right?" Roger quickly glanced over the form on his desk.

Roger's heart ached. He just wanted to say, "Listen, Mindy, I don't care about August's finances or my budgeting. I just want to tell you, I think you're incredible. If you ever wanted to talk, or watch a movie, or just walk around in the park, I'd be waiting here for you."

But he could never say that to her. He only sort of managed the first part. "I hadn't even taken a look at my budgeting for August yet, so it's no big deal, I'm sure." It was true, but again, for some reason he found himself trying to compensate for his obvious affinity for Mindy by acting overly cool and disinterested.

Mindy didn't really seem to notice. She wasn't disappointed as she nodded her head. "Okay, well, just wanted to let you know."

He knew that he had messed up, though. He felt like he had been way too indifferent and that he had blown an opportunity to converse with her. Perhaps it was too late, but Roger had to try something.

"Yeah. Well, either way, thanks for telling me!" he said honestly and enthusiastically. Roger knew it wasn't much but it was all he could muster. She smiled and again nodded her head in acknowledgement, and backed out of his cubicle.

Mindy was gone. That heavenly smile made Roger lose his thoughts for just a moment. Then he woke up, and realized that his last-ditched effort had produced no results.

"Next time, she probably won't even bother to come tell me," he lamented to himself. He couldn't help but keep thinking about the exchange. It was nothing, he knew that. She probably wasn't even giving it a second thought, he told himself. But that didn't make it better in his mind.

Roger considered just throwing himself out of one of the windows at the end of the office hallway. Four floors down he'd land on the manicured lawn outside of the terrible little office complex that was his life. It would let him escape his most recent faux pas that had ruined everything, again. At least as he saw it.

Roger would never do it. The same lack of impetus that would prevent him from ever being more with Mindy than just a fellow employee at Randcraft Enterprises would also prevent him from leaping through that window and ending it all.

He never accomplished what he wanted. He adjusted the collar of his shirt, breathed in and out a few times, and tried to convince himself to move past it all.

It was impossible. Yet Roger's keystrokes resumed, and he carried on.