NEW SECTION:  Just for Giggles and Grins at the Office

I ate your yogurt
By:  Persephone Wells

I ate your yogurt in the office fridge. I ate it without your permission. The sticky note you had attached had slipped to the side, but it was still leaning on it. It was not a mistake. I wasn’t even that hungry. I ate it anyway.

I ate your yogurt and I don’t even like peach flavoring. I ate it while hovering over the trashcan with my back to the door, ready to drop and run. I didn’t even finish the cup completely. Like I said, I really wasn’t all that hungry.

You probably would have given it to me if I had asked. It’s written into some code of politeness that you give people things like that if they ask you, even if you don’t want to. I knew you would have said yes and I knew where to find you and I did it anyway.

Across the office, I watched you search the fridge for you peachy escape. I watched you search places that you knew you had not put it. I watched you ask uninterested kitchen associates and I watched them apologize for their lack of seeing, knowing, or caring about it at all.

Then, right when you seemed to have just given up, I watched your eyes flick over at the trashcan and on top of the dirty plastic flap of my crime. Your head tilted slightly. You went to touch it but quickly stopped yourself. Your brows furrowed together and you saw me seeing you.

It’s funny how I could silently see you accuse me from across the room. The yogurt in my small intestine creaked lower into my gut despite my nausea as you walked towards me with a feigned face of confusion. You did that out of courtesy- trying to show me I was innocent until proven guilty- like a good American.

You put one hand flat on my desk and the other on your hip as you crossed your legs while standing. Your eyes were reading my monitor while your mouth asked me “Kind of a crazy question, but did you happen to eat my yogurt that I left in the fridge?”.

I could say no. Deny it.  I could do that and we could forget about the incident after a couple of awkward years until the only time you mentioned it was when you were describing me to new people.  You, adding office theft to the list of reasons you “are so fed up with this place.”

This all flashed through my mind as you waited for my admission of bystander innocence perched on the side of my desk and noticing I had 423 unread emails. I started to apologize to you when you stopped me mid platitude and leaned in closer. Your face hovered there, in front of my ear. I halfheartedly leaned backward and wiped my palms on my slacks. Yogurt residue left a track mark mixed with sweat. You then glanced at my lunch box. My lunch box with a filthy white spoon on top. You smiled a smile that convinced me I wasn’t the only crazy person in this relationship.

Then, you hiccuped a laugh, reaching across me to the spoon as if that had been your intention the whole time. You wiped it off with a tissue as you told me.

“…because I had accidentally left it in my car outside for like a week.”

I liked peach less and less for approximately 14 hours that next day.