Rejection, A Novel

By Meagan Bridges

Maggie McKenzie battles overwhelming rejection, raccoon attacks and personal space invading coworkers with only random facts and a growing sense of adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meagan Bridges
• Release date: May 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476443584

Meagan Bridges

Meagan Bridges' constant misadventures and hilarious heartbreaks led her to write her first novel, Rejection. She currently lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Interesting fact about love: it’s not actually an emotion. It’s a drive. It’s like your sex drive but far more intense, which makes sense because with sex, you can be denied at night and roll over to it in the morning. But love—love is much harder to find. So when you’ve been heart-wrenchingly and brutally rejected and you’re sitting at home daydreaming of all the ways that destiny will propel you back together—that’s not you being sad, alone and desperate. That’s your brain faking you out so it can have its love drive fulfilled.

I reminded myself of this whenever I started thinking about all the ways Connor would come crawling desperately back. The amazing speeches he would give. The grand romantic gestures he’d make. The reuniting kisses. I had to force myself to stop, remember it was just my brain messing with me.

I know that little fact about how your brain handles rejection because I work as a researcher for Take Films, a documentary company. I get to uncover interesting stories and purely random facts that prove just how weird and wonderful our little world is. I love the work, but every job has its drawbacks. This kind of environment brings in all kinds of people. Some are cool nerds with incredible passion, and some are just flat-out crazy.

My boss, Sarah Fleming, is an example of the latter. She is incredibly pretentious: she can’t give an assignment without describing in vivid detail every possible metaphor and artistic interpretation. She also has a tendency to stand too close and engage in physical contact for awkwardly long durations.

I walked into her office, where she sat fiddling with her fountain pen at her desk. Sarah always seemed to work hard at constantly sounding intellectual and appearing elegant and poised. She put down the pen, adjusted the pale yellow silk scarf around her neck and smoothed down a few strands of light grey hair that were escaping from her otherwise neat, high bun.

She had called me in about Ireland and bananas. We were doing a documentary called Not all the Oil in Your Food is Fat, about how much crude oil is used in the food production process.

Maggie, I’d like you to look into international trade statistics, specifically the amount of bananas Ireland exports each year, Sarah requested, putting on black square-framed reading glasses and examining the pile of papers neatly stacked on her desk.

Shouldn’t be a problem, I’m fairly sure they are the number one European exporter of bananas, I said, marking down the task in my notebook.

Strange, you always associate Ireland with potatoes, but they aren’t in the top 10 countries that produce, export or import. China actually is the number one producer. I think Ireland should really reposition themselves. Bananas are so virile and phallic, they represent energy and vitality. Alternatively potatoes represent….

I zoned out as Sarah continued to digress, my mind wondering back to Connor.

Maggie McKenzie. Can we focus on the task at hand? Sarah’s sharp tone snapped me back.

Ireland, bananas, very phallic, exporting stat coming right up, Sarah.

I walked out of Sarah’s office and proceeded to the kitchen. It’s more of a walk-in closet, with a fridge and kettle, than an actual kitchen. Though on the plus side it has an espresso machine, tea and cookies. I put the kettle on, waited patiently for the water to boil. Looking through the various tea options, I read through the invigorating, soothing, stimulating descriptions but settled on the classic Earl Grey. Finally the water boiled, and I made a cup of tea, grabbed a couple of ginger snaps and went back to my desk. I sat down and sneaked a peek at my cell phone, but the little red light remained dormant. I put the phone down and sighed, then started doing some digging on bananas.

I was in the middle of reading about the Fyffees Company, which exports the entire Belize banana crop, when a whiny voice broke my focus.

My speakers aren't working and I was wondering if you could come and have a look.

Melissa hovered over my desk with a slight pout. She's another researcher at Take, but she isn’t given much responsibility. I have a theory that Melissa started playing dumb in school in order to win over the affections of male classmates, but the act took over and became her reality. I get the impression she thinks she’s being endearing when she tells the story of buying what she thought was smoked salmon but, upon unwrapping the package, discovered it to be a piece of cedar to grill salmon on.

I’ve tried to explain to Melissa that I am not IT, but once she gets an idea in her head it appears to be impossible to edit it. Because I wowed her once with my ability to auto sum in Excel and can program my email address into the scanner, she assumes I'll fix all of her tech issues. I resignedly followed to see if I could quickly spot the problem.

The actual IT department for our office consists of my friend Fred, who loathes Melissa, and I didn’t want to sic her on him unless completely necessary. I sat down at her desk and as I suspected, quickly spotted the problem. In the bottom right-hand corner of her desktop, the speaker icon was crossed out with a red slash, indicating her speakers were on mute. Melissa looked at me as if I were a computer goddess.

Show me how you did that! she said in awe.

Several walk-throughs later, I felt confident that she finally got the whole mute / unmute thing. On the downside I’d just reaffirmed in her mind that I am a certified IT professional.

Melissa has a tendency to make any situation as socially awkward as possible. A year ago, Sarah made all nine of the ladies who work at Take go out for a female empowerment and unification lunch. At said lunch, Sarah asked us each to share our backgrounds in order to demonstrate the power of the diversity of our experiences. She started at the other end of the table, so I settled in patiently to listen to the others explain where they went to school; an overview of their previous jobs; and what led them to working at Take.

All pretty standard stuff, until it was Melissa’s turn to speak. Her epic tale started twenty years ago, when she was eight, and took a half hour to complete. She wept when she recounted how her parents told her she couldn’t be an astronaut (which although not supportive, I think was a pretty accurate statement for them to make, given her tech abilities). The story went on and on and she continued to cry intermittently. She told us how she never liked the boys her parents set her up with, how she found the man for her in Spain. They’d fallen in love and he moved here for her, and they had lived together until he had left her two years ago to return to Spain and his ex-girlfriend. She talked with a quickly disintegrating tissue in her hands about how she had then set out on her own and found her job at Take.

When she was finished, it took a moment for everyone to realize that she had stopped talking. With glazed expressions, we watched her finally take a bite of her lunch. All of our plates had already been cleared and coffee brought out to us.

Sarah gave a quick nod to Natalie, from our Sales and Distribution team, to give us her story. Natalie smiled confidently, and pushed a few of her chestnut curls away from her face. She began to swiftly tell us the standard facts about her background.

I grew up in Toronto, I’ve always loved this city. I studied Marketing in University. I actually went to U of T with Maggie! We shared a nostalgic look. We had been friends since first year, when we’d met at the U of T film club. I was actually really lucky, while still in university I was able to get an internship with the National Film Board. It was an amazing experience and it opened the door for my position here at Take.

I felt a pang of jealousy at Nat's ability to speak with such ease in front of any sized crowd. She demanded attention, while I tended to shy away from it. She was tall, curvy, constantly confident and style conscious. She had blue-green eyes and a small dimple on her right cheek when she smiled.

When it was finally my turn to speak, I cleared my throat nervously.

"Hi, I’m Maggie McKenzie. Let’s see… I’m from Halifax. Came here to go to school at the University of Toronto and got my BA in English. After that I moved to Banff to have a bit of an adventure. I decided to come back to Toronto, finding a place at The Victorian. It’s a small monthly publication, which mostly looks into the female side of history. Natalie actually persuaded me to apply to a position at Take just over three years ago. I really enjoy the work, and what I get to be a part of."

Sarah smiled, oblivious to the wave of relief cascading across the table: this very long and awkward lunch was now over and we could all retreat to our own little personal spaces back in the office.

A space I retreated to once again now, away from Melissa and her speaker issues. As I approached my desk I saw the little red light on my phone was flashing. I took a moment, then read the waiting text message.

Can I come by and pick up my stuff tonight.

Although I had been expecting the message a wave of vertigo hit me. I still wasn’t accustomed to interacting with him as an ex. After much debate about wording and a few false starts I decided to keep things simple and to the point in my reply.

Sure, I’ll be home after 8.

I called Abby, my best friend since moving to Toronto. We met at a drop-in ballet class. I always wanted to be cool and graceful, instead of my awkward self. I thought that ballet could give me poise; however, when I tried out the class I just ended up falling down a lot and, at one point, I took Abigail with me while attempting a rond de jambe attitude. She was very sweet about it, and we started to talk after class, which lead to a pint, which lead to a great friendship. She’s become the friend who knows me best and always thinks she knows what’s best for me.

He’s coming over tonight, to pick up his stuff, I reported as she soon as she picked up.

Don’t freak out, just be calm and strong. Don’t get ahead of yourself, just take things as they come, she advised. I’m really sorry, I have to go. I have an end-of-day deadline.

No worries, I’ll talk to you later.

Good luck, let me know how it goes!

I sent Sarah what I had on bananas, gathered up my stuff, shut down my computer and ran home to clean up my place and myself.

Chapter 2

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in a converted town house, with an appropriate mix of hand-me-down and IKEA furniture. The walls are decorated with a mix of prints, art I did myself, and two nicely framed movie posters: Rebel without a Cause and The Graduate. It’s usually tidy but there were some dishes in the sink and some clothes scattered on my bedroom floor, and the whole place could have used a vacuum. I threw Dan Mangan’s latest album on the old cracked iPod attached to my stereo, and ran around making the place look tidy. Then I jumped into the shower, conditioned, shaved my legs, jumped out, dried off, picked out a confident-yet-casual outfit (white scoop neck t-shirt and dark jeans) and put on makeup. I was ready, and it was only 7:12.

With forty-five minutes on my hands and an inability to sit still, I decided I needed to do something to calm myself down. I settled on baking focaccia bread. I put on my 1950s apron with a cherry pattern, took out the ingredients, measuring cups and two bowls and got to work. I always find it easier to deal with stress when I’m doing something with my hands, and there is something particularly soothing about making bread.

Connor had ended things almost three weeks earlier. We had been together for a year and then unexpectedly, outside of the subway station at Yonge and Dundas, beside a man break-dancing in a Guy Fawkes mask while hordes of people passed by, he ended it. The plan had been to meet there to go out for dinner and a movie. But when I came up the subway stairs and saw him through the crowd, he greeted me with a forced smile. He looked tired and pensive, and I wrongly assumed that he’d had a bad work day and was trying to decide on a restaurant.

Want to go to that Chinese restaurant down the street? I suggested.

Maggie, I really should be at work, we have this rush study that is going out into field tonight, Connor replied with a sigh.

Do you just want to do dinner, skip the movie and you can go back to the office after you’ve had something to eat?

No. What I mean is I don’t think I’m giving my all to this relationship. I think that you are giving 110% and I’m giving 90% and I don’t think that difference is fair to you. His hand kept brushing through his shaggy blond hair. I have to focus on my career and my job takes a significant amount of my energy and I just don’t feel like I’m able to do it at the level I need to in order to succeed and be in a relationship. This was obviously a pre-rehearsed speech.

I stood there baffled. His work hadn’t come up as an issue before. No issues had. We’d never had a fight or even a looming passive aggressive silence. I didn’t understand. Connor had been my first real relationship, the first time I’d done the meet-the–parents thing, and gone to company parties and weddings as the significant other. Not knowing how to handle the situation, I remained silently standing in shock.

I’m sorry, Connor whispered, looking down at the ground.

I think I’m going to go, I muttered, deciding that this was a solid course of action. I turned from him, and he didn’t react as I moved away.

I felt idiotic with my overnight bag drooping from my shoulder as I trudged home. And just as weeping became bawling, the skies opened up and the rain poured down. Big dollops of rain crashed down on me, making my skirt cling to my thighs while water filled my shoes, wrinkling my toes. I arrived home looking and feeling more pathetic than I would have thought possible.

Three weeks had passed and it still didn’t make sense to me. My friends all swore he would come running back in just a matter of days. They said he was just scared but soon would realize what he had done and would want to get back together. I had played out variations of this scenario obsessively in my head but none had come to pass. He’d called to see how I was doing. He’d sent me a message saying a band I loved was going to be in town. But he hadn’t come crawling back. I wondered if getting his stuff was just a ruse to come over. I had put his things in a pile, and none of it was really worth coming over for: an old undershirt, a Weekend at Bernie’s DVD and a travel backgammon board.

At 7:30, the dough had been kneaded and was sitting in a covered bowl so it could rise. With nothing else to do, I paced around my small apartment, going over all possible versions of the evening ahead. I prepped myself with cool reactions. I didn’t want him to know just how cliché and pitiable I’d been these last few weeks.

I first met Connor at his birthday party. Natalie, from my office, had gone to high school with him and thought we would really hit it off. So she invited me to join her and Fred from IT at the now-closed Havers pub.

That’s Connor! Natalie exclaimed almost as soon as we entered the pub. I looked over to see a tall man, at least six foot two, with shaggy blond hair and light blue eyes, muscular build, with his tongue sticking out while doing a little bobbly shuffly dance.

We worked our way through the crowd and found an empty table. Fred threw his jacket on a stool and volunteered to brave the line to get the first round. I watched as he weaved through the crowd towards the bar. Fred looks the part of a stereotypical IT guy. His ironic t-shirts bulge over his ever-so-slightly growing tummy and his short hair is messy. Probably from chronically holding his head in frustration. But his glasses frame kind brown eyes that glance at Natalie at every available opportunity.

Fred and I had quickly become friends after my first day at Take. Setting me up on the network was more problematic than expected. It took the entire day for him to work it out, and I had nothing to do but hang out at my desk chatting with him.

Natalie slid out of her short black trench coat, folding it neatly on top of Fred’s jacket. She adjusted her grey knit dress as she sat down on the stool and repositioned one of her wavy curls. Once seated she made eye contact with Connor and waved him over, and he obligingly moved through the crowd to our table.

Connor, meet— Natalie began to introduce me but was cut off by someone shouting CONNOR! A group of guys came in and hailed the birthday boy, who turned around and quickly joined the new arrivals.

Natalie gave me an encouraging look, raising her eyebrows, grinning, darting her eyes between me and him and asking yeah? over and over again. I looked back, perplexed.

Really? That guy? I said, sounding ruder than I had intended.

He’s incredibly kind. He’s funny. He’s successful and he’s a great friend, Natalie explained as she flung her hands around with each point.

I looked over at him again. He seemed extroverted and boisterous. I had always seen myself with someone shy, sweet, nerdy. An avid reader, someone who loved to learn something new and who appreciated my dorky sense of humour. Connor did, however, have something undeniably magnetic about him.

Well, it is his birthday and I'm crashing his party, I thought. And since Natalie wouldn’t stop looking at me with a creepy grin and excitedly arched brows, I decided to get him a drink.

I managed to squirm my way to the bar, where I ordered and then worked my way back, this time with the added hazard of balancing two pints. I found Connor, presented the beer and said Happy Bir— but I got cut off by yet another cry of CONNOR!! The latest arrivals launched into a round of massive birthday hugs and manly handshakes, so I headed back to my seat.

But Connor followed me. He gave Natalie a hug and said hi to Fred before moving their jackets to another table and taking the stool beside mine.

Thank you for the drink, Connor said with a wide smile.

Fred and Natalie stood up. We are going to go and play darts! Natalie announced.

I ignored her entirely. You're welcome for the drink. Happy Birthday, are you having a good one?

"I am! I got season tickets to the Jays, and Bill Bryson’s At Home. His