Chapter 2: More Than Meets The Eye

The next day things seemed a bit better in the office. It wasn't as if some dramatic changes occurred suddenly and the office was this bright, cheerful place, but Beth was clearly making an effort to control herself. When I saw her in the morning she smiled and said hello to me and when she saw other people that we worked with she said hello in a way that seemed less forced and maybe even without the hostility that she seemed to be carrying around before our talk.

I actually saw her talking about things that were unrelated to work with different staff members during the day. I hoped that she would continue to make the effort to be nice to people in the office because it was a much less stressful day than the day before had been.

I had a few meetings and the usual fires to put out, but it was nice to end the day without feeling like I had a headache that wouldn't go away. I was just about to shut down my computer for the day when Beth stopped into my office.

"David?"

"Hey, Beth. What's up?"

"I wanted to see if I could buy you a drink after work and finish our conversation from last night."

I didn't know that the conversation wasn't over, but I figured I better not rock the boat since we clearly had made some progress already. "Ah, sure. I can do that."

"Good," she said with a smile. "Meet me by the elevator."

As we were walking to the same bar we went to the night before we started to talk about non work-related things. I discovered that she was almost as big a Maryland Terrapin fan as I was. I never realized that we both went to Maryland for our undergraduate degrees. I had season tickets to both the football and basketball games, so we talked about the upcoming basketball season and what we thought of this year's team. This was the first time that I really knew anything about her that wasn't work related.

Once we got inside the pub we ordered a round of beers and sat at the same table as the previous night.

"Thanks for coming out again tonight, David. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than deal with me."

"It's no problem, Beth. Having a beer with you is certainly better than a lot of things that I could be doing now."

"This isn't going to cause any friction with your girlfriend is it?"

"It probably would, but since I don't have a girlfriend right now it should be okay."

"Oh. I thought you have been seeing... what was her name... Judy... for quite a while."

"Nope. She and I broke up three or four months ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. She and I were not meant to be together long term and we both knew it. How about you? Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No. I haven't been seeing anyone for a while. I'm either too busy with work and stuff or I just don't meet the right kind of people. I guess my ultra easy-going personality really helps too."

I had to laugh. She really did know what she was like and had the sense of humor to laugh at herself.

"Ultra easy-going. I like that."

"I'm glad you find me amusing, David."

"Amusing isn't one of the words that I would use to describe you, but that description of yourself really was funny."

"How would you describe me?"

"I don't know. Certainly not amusing. If I was going to describe your personality I would have to say that you are kind of rigid. Maybe a bit high strung."

"I think you are trying to be nice. I doubt that a description of my personality based on what you see of me at work would be that bland."

"You might be right, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't know you that well. You're right, though. All I see is what you do at work. Until today I didn't know anything about you at all. We've been working in the same department for several years and I never knew a thing about you. I probably couldn't say the same thing about anyone else in the whole department. Why is that?"

"Well, you never asked."

I just gave her that look that says, yeah right.

"Okay, I admit it. I haven't exactly given you or anyone else an invitation to get to know me."

"Why?"

"This is going to sound strange, but the truth is that I am kind of shy. Don't laugh at me. Okay, maybe shy isn't the word. Untrusting might be more accurate. I haven't found too many men in my experience that were trustworthy. They all seemed to be after something or were just plain liars. I'm trusting you just by telling you this stuff. I'm just not good at approaching people on a personal level. I really don't have any friends left from high school and the girls that I met in college all seemed to treat me as competition rather than just a friend. I think they all thought I would try to steal their boyfriends or something, but I'm not like that."

"You certainly don't act shy."

"Not at work. No. That's why I wanted to talk to you some more after you brought me over here last night. I realized after we talked last night that most of the way that I treat people at the office has to do with my lack of self-confidence. I'm very self-assured when it comes to my skills at work. I have no issues there. The problem is my lack of experience and trust in personal matters."

"I don't get it. Why? You're a beautiful woman. You shouldn't have any problem attracting interested men."

"Thank you," she said while blushing. "That is the problem, though. Men have always been interested in me because they like the way I look. I have never had to try hard to look the way I do. I like to workout and I take care of myself, but that's about it. I don't want to meet someone just because they want to get in my pants. My last boyfriend imagined himself to be some stud. He didn't care about what I thought or what I wanted to do. He just wanted to have sex and show me off to his buddies. The sad part was he wasn't even good at sex!"

"I'm sorry to hear that he treated you like that. A girl like you at least deserves some good sex."

"Shut up, David. I'm serious here."

"Okay, okay. I was just joking. Seriously though, if you want people to like you for more than the way you look then you have to give them something else to like. You really haven't done that at work."

"I know. That's part of what I realized after we talked yesterday. I have put up a wall at work so that I could keep the predators away and keep my career advancing the way I always wanted it to. The problem was it kept any possibility of friendship away too."

"You can change that. You just have to take it slow. People aren't going to believe that you changed into a different person overnight. You should also be careful. I'm not saying that people aren't trustworthy, but not everyone is nice and there are always people that will use you if they get the chance. Try to get to know people around the office a bit at a time and let them into your life a little bit at a time. I'm sure you'll find at least one or two real friends."

"I'm going to try. It's hard for me to change my attitude, though. I've acted that way at work for so long that I really have to try hard to snap myself out of that role."

"I'm sure you'll be fine. You're a smart girl. You'll figure it out."

We sat and talked for quite a while. We had two or three beers that night and had to cut ourselves off and stay for a while to make sure that we could both safely drive home.

I didn't know what to make of the whole thing. After years of thinking one thing about Beth, I had to admit that she was not at all what I expected. She warmed up to me because of our talks when we had drinks and she even called me at home at least every other day over the next couple of weeks just to talk. We spent hours on the phone just talking about everyday things as well as things that we hoped to do in the future and what we liked and didn't like. It was nice because we really talked about anything and everything except work. We left that at the office for the most part.

I had to admit that once I got to know her and I could see beyond the bitchy attitude that she usually showed at work, I really liked her. She was strong willed and smart and didn't let anyone push her around and I like that in a woman. I guess you could say that we were fast becoming friends.

Other than the fact that we talked all the time, nothing of any real significance really happened for a while. On the weekend a few weeks after our fist conversation I was surprised to find that while I was out with some friends on a Saturday night I was wondering what Beth was up to. Did she go out? Did she stay in? It was not really something I had expected to give any thought to and it made me wonder why I hadn't asked her if she wanted to come out with me. We didn't have anything going on other than being friends, but I guess I thought it might be weird if I asked her to go out with the guys and their girlfriends or wives.

Things in the office were definitely going smoother and everyone seemed happy, or at least happy enough not have any arguments. On Tuesday night of that week Beth called me at home.