Free Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single by Heather McElhatton

on the toilet and poof! up goes a mushroom cloud of baking soda, right into my eyes and mouth, making me cough and choke. “Are you all right in there?” someone asks, and I say yes and quickly go to flush the toilet, like that’s going to explain anything, when kerplunk! my foot goes right in the water. I return squishing across the studio floor, slightly limping. Brad is nowhere in sight.
    â€œWhat the hell happened to you?” Christopher asks. “You look like an angry powdered sugar doughnut.”
    I spin around right into—who else?—Brad Keller, who’s walking back from the snack table. I try to say something but my heart speeds up and my mouth goes dry. I twist my hands together. He’s holding a muffin. For some reason I focus on this. “Got a muffin there?” I ask him. Is this the stupidest thing anyone ever said to anyone else in the history of the human language? Why yes, I believe it is. Got a muffin there?
    â€œUm, yep,” Brad says, looking at the muffin in his hand.
    Then, rather than drop the subject and/or excuse myself and/or cease being utterly retarded I say, “Poppy seed?”
    Brad looks at the muffin. “I believe it is,” he says. “Do you want it?”
    I stare at him and Christopher clears his throat.
    He holds the muffin out. “It isn’t poisoned or anything.”
    I remain mute.
    â€œAre you afraid of the muffin?” he asks. “Did someone torture you once with a muffin or something?”
    â€œYes, they did!” I blurt. “I did two years’ hard time with the Keebler elves, and let me tell you, the shower scene was not pretty.”
    â€œOh, dear Lord,” Christopher says behind me.
    Brad hands me the muffin. “Let’s start again,” he says. “Hi! I’m Bradford Keller. You can call me Brad.”
    â€œNice to meet you,” I croak. “I’m Jennifer Johnson. You can call me Jen.”
    We shake hands and I think I might be trembling as our palms touch. I feel like I just got plugged into an electrical outlet. “Sorry about the parking lot thing,” I whisper.
    â€œDon’t worry about it.” He shrugs. “I sort of like women who yell.”
    Somebody shouts Brad’s name.
    â€œOkay, then,” Brad says, “see you later.”
    Everything in the room seems set to slow motion. Like we’re all moving through a clear, viscous tar. My face is burning, my mouth dry. He gives me a funny look and walks away, leaving me there holding his muffin. I turn around slowly to face Christopher.
    â€œI don’t even want to know what that was about,” he says, covering his face with his hand. “I really don’t.”
    Back in the office I promise myself I will not visualize what it would be like to be married to Brad Keller.
    I will not.
    It’ll only make me miserable, because I bet his wife would be the happiest girl in the world. I bet she’d have titanium-gold-zinc credit cards and they’d live in a huge house on a lake, even though I don’t need a huge house on a lake; a huge house anywhere would be fine, because I’d probably be out doing my charitable works and giving speeches at junior high schools to young girls who are considering their career opportunities, and I would tell them to always stay true to themselves no matter what, and afterward one or two of the girls would probably even write me letters saying I changed their lives, which I would show Brad and he’d kiss my forehead and say I was the most amazingwoman he’d ever met, and then he would show me the two tickets he bought for us to Tahiti.
    But I’m not going to visualize all that.
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    After work, I drive to my mother’s with Brad’s untouched lemon poppy-seed muffin on my dashboard. I stare at it at stoplights. That muffin represents everything I cannot have. A life of ease and luxury, of prestige and quality bakery items. Who