Crazy in Love (Matt & Anna Book 1) Read online

  Crazy in Love

  a novel by

  Annabelle Costa

  Crazy in Love

  © 2017 by Annabelle Costa. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors’ imagination, and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Table of Contents

  Year One

  Chapter 1: Anna

  Chapter 2: Matt

  Chapter 3: Anna

  Chapter 4: Matt

  Chapter 5: Anna

  Chapter 6: Matt

  Chapter 7: Anna

  Chapter 8: Matt

  Chapter 9: Anna

  Chapter 10: Matt

  Chapter 11: Anna

  Chapter 12: Matt

  Chapter 13: Anna

  Chapter 14: Matt

  Year Two

  Chapter 15: Matt

  Chapter 16: Anna

  Chapter 17: Matt

  Chapter 18: Anna

  Chapter 19: Matt

  Chapter 20: Anna

  Chapter 21: Matt

  Chapter 22: Anna

  Year Three

  Chapter 23: Matt

  Chapter 24: Anna

  Chapter 25: Matt

  Chapter 26: Anna

  Chapter 27: Matt

  Chapter 28: Anna

  Chapter 29: Matt

  Chapter 30: Anna

  Chapter 31: Matt

  Chapter 32: Anna

  Chapter 33: Matt

  Chapter 34: Anna

  Chapter 35: Matt

  Chapter 36: Matt

  Chapter 37: Anna

  Chapter 38: Matt

  Chapter 39: Anna

  Chapter 40: Matt

  Chapter 41: Anna

  Year Four

  Chapter 42: Matt

  Chapter 43: Anna

  Chapter 44: Matt

  Chapter 45: Anna

  Chapter 46: Matt

  Chapter 47: Anna

  Chapter 48: Matt

  Chapter 49: Anna

  Chapter 50: Matt

  Chapter 51: Anna

  Chapter 52: Matt

  Chapter 53: Anna

  Year Five

  Chapter 54: Matt

  Chapter 55: Anna

  Chapter 56: Matt

  Chapter 57: Anna

  Chapter 58: Matt

  Chapter 59: Anna

  Chapter 60: Matt

  Chapter 61: Anna

  Chapter 62: Matt

  Chapter 63: Anna

  Chapter 64: Matt

  Chapter 65: Anna

  Chapter 66: Matt

  Chapter 67: Anna

  Chapter 68: Matt

  Year Six: Matt

  Acknowledgements

  Year One

  Chapter 1: Anna

  “Anna, this is completely unacceptable!”

  My boss, Peter Glassman, is yelling at me. This is status quo. I’ve worked at my current job for six years, and it’s hard to recall a day when Peter hasn’t yelled at me for something. I’m used to the sight of him with his brown eyes wide, his face slightly pink, and all the veins standing out in his neck. One day, Peter will be yelling at me and drop dead of a heart attack. He will be screaming the word “unacceptable,” and somewhere between the “un” and the “able,” he will clutch his chest, his beady eyes will roll up in his head, and that will be it. He will be dead.

  I will have killed Peter Glassman.

  Right now, Peter is maybe in his late forties. I figure at the rate his waistline is growing, he’s got maybe another five years before I kill him. Ten if he starts taking medications for his blood pressure or cholesterol, both of which are almost certainly high based on the lunches I’ve seen him consuming in the break room.

  “It’s unacceptable, and furthermore, it’s unprofessional.”

  I know from all the previous times that Peter has yelled at me that I just need to wait it out. At some point, his voice will start getting tired or he’ll grow hungry or he’ll be late for a meeting. Then I’ll be off the hook. Even though I actually haven’t done anything wrong. As usual.

  You might be wondering why my boss is screaming at me, and I wouldn’t blame you. The reason this time is because of the can collection that I keep in my cubicle.

  I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself: Okay, Anna, I was with you until you said you collected cans. Yes, I know it’s not the usual thing to collect cans. I’m aware of that. But my retort is: Why not? What do normal people collect? Stamps? Matchboxes? Coins? Why are cans worse than any of that?

  When I’m at the grocery store shopping, sometimes I see a can and it looks special to me in some way. I can’t say why. But I know it’s something I want to have and keep. So I add that can to my collection.

  Right now I’ve got twenty-one cans in my cubicle. It isn’t that many. They’re neatly stacked. Honestly, my cubicle is far more organized and cleaner than the vast majority of my coworkers’ cubicles. But somehow, nobody can wrap their head around my cans.

  I had zoned out on the conversation when I recognize Peter has asked me a question and is waiting for a response. I grasp at the recording thread in my brain, trying to rewind the last few seconds and remember what he asked me. I can’t. It’s been deleted, or else, it was never recorded in the first place. But he’s staring at me, so I recognize that I have to say something.

  “This wouldn’t be a problem if I had an office,” I finally blurt out.

  Peter just gapes at me. His teeth are bad too. I know he drinks lots of soda, which is awful for the teeth. Every time I come into his office, he has a can of Coca Cola open on his desk. Somehow that’s acceptable but my collection of closed, clean cans is not.

  “So if you had an office, you’d stop?” Peter has a furrow between his brows. He seems desperate. Maybe he’s caught a glimpse of his impending coronary in my cubicle. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  I would love an office. That would solve so many of my problems. But I hope he doesn’t think that would mean giving up my can collection. “No, I’m saying that if I had an office, nobody would see. So it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  I hear a loud snort from the cubicle next to mine. That would be Matt. Matt Harper. Matt has occupied the cubicle next to mine for the last three years, four months, five days, six hours, and… well, about seven minutes, give or take a few seconds. It’s hard to be completely precise with these things.

  I’m not what you would call a people person. I don’t like most people. In fact, I would say that I actively dislike the majority of people I meet. But I don’t dislike Matt Harper. He’s a difficult person to dislike. He is approximately five feet eleven inches tall, which makes him just above the average height for a man in this country, which is tall enough that he commands respect but not so tall as to be intimidating. He also has brown eyes, which is the most common eye color in this country, and he always looks me straight in my own eyes when he speaks to me. He has brown hair that is trimmed short, in a professional manner. His solid, athletic build indicates that he clearly takes good care of himself, which is verified by his white teeth. There is nothing I respect more than good oral hygiene.

  Even more importantly, I believe that Matt Harper is a genuinely nice person. Which is not something I can say about many of my other coworkers.

  Matt is friends with most people who work in our office. He and I are not frien
ds—I will not delude myself that he considers me a friend, despite the fact that he invited me to a New Year’s Eve party at his house last year. (I did not attend.) He and I are friendly. He smiles at me when we exchange pleasantries. He doesn’t make fun of me within earshot, which is more than I can say for most people who work here.

  “Look, Anna,” Peter says to me, his face close enough to mine that I instinctively take a step back. I can smell his breath. He ate something with pickles for lunch—likely a cheeseburger. “I mean, doesn’t it bother you that everyone is making fun of these cans? You know what people call you, don’t you?”

  Yes. I know what they call me.

  They call me Crazy Anna.

  Chapter 2: Matt

  “Anna, this is completely unacceptable!”

  I hear the voice of my boss Peter Glassman coming from the cubicle next to mine. He sounds angry, which isn’t a surprise. He’s always a little angry, but especially when he’s talking to the occupant of the cubicle next to mine.

  “It’s unacceptable, and furthermore, it’s unprofessional.”

  I give up on getting any actual coding work done and just listen. Okay, I admit it, I wasn’t coding. I was playing solitaire on my computer. When Peter comes in here and tells me I’m being unacceptable, it’s because I’m playing solitaire. In Peter’s eyes, we’re a bunch of unacceptable young whippersnappers. If only I had an office—then I could play FreeCell and go on Facebook until I’m blue in the face. Except I must have done something wrong in a previous life, because it doesn’t seem like I’m getting out of this cube any time in the near future. I’ll probably die here. Slowly and painfully.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Anna?” Peter says.

  The voice of the girl who has had the cubicle next to mine for the last three years floats over the thin divider between us: “This wouldn’t be a problem if I had an office.”

  I grin to myself. Yeah, Anna. You gun for that office, girlie. See what good it does you.

  Peter is quiet for a minute. Holy crap, he’s not actually considering this, is he? “So if you had an office, you’d stop? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No,” Anna says slowly. “I’m saying that if I had an office, nobody would see. So it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Okay, that was hilarious. I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from busting out laughing. It doesn’t entirely work. A snort escapes but I don’t think Peter hears it. He’s got his hands full anyway.

  In the time Anna Flint has worked here, which is about a year longer than I have, she’s done more “unacceptable” things than any of us. Only she doesn’t do those things to piss off Peter or out of mind-blowing boredom, like the rest of us. She does it because she’s out of her mind. She’s completely batshit crazy. Really.

  For example, right now Peter is yelling at her because of her can collection.

  I get why people collect things. I used to have a baseball card collection when I was a kid, and I used to be really into trading cards and organizing the cards I already had. I haven’t collected anything in years, but I get it. It’s not weird to collect something.

  But Anna collects cans. Like tin cans of food. From the grocery store.

  Tell me that’s not nuts.

  It started about maybe a year ago. I noticed she had a couple of cans of food on the floor of her office. Over the last year, it’s turned into a tower. The girl has a tower of cans in her cubicle. And they’re not exciting cans, although I’m not sure what an exciting can would be exactly. But these are, I swear to God, cans of green beans or creamed corn. Her cubicle looks like aisle three of the grocery store. And because of that, people have been complaining.

  One person in particular.

  “Look, Anna,” Peter says to her, dropping his usually booming voice a few notches. “I mean, doesn’t it bother you that everyone is making fun of these cans? You know what people call you, don’t you?”

  I wince. Last year, my buddy Calvin was talking to a bunch of other people around the office at the local bar after work, and they got to joking about the cans. “Well, what do you expect from Crazy Anna?” he said. Crazy Anna. It wasn’t even particularly catchy or creative, but it stuck. Nobody says Anna’s name anymore without modifying it with “Crazy.”

  Okay, even I’ve called her Crazy Anna. But never within earshot.

  “Yes,” Anna says softly. “I know.”

  Shit.

  “Do you like that?” Peter presses her. “Do you want everyone calling you nuts?”

  What the hell is wrong with Peter? How could he talk to her that way? Doesn’t he realize what an asshole he’s being?

  I can’t sit here and listen to this.

  I stand up, pushing back my rolly chair to come face to face with Peter, who slumps the way I’m sure I will after another twenty years of working on computers. In the time I’ve worked here, Peter has become increasingly bald. I swear, if I ever get bald enough that I feel like I’ve got to do a combover, I’m shaving my head. No hesitation. I’m not that attached to my hair anyway.

  “Hey, Peter!” I say loudly as I fling an arm over the edge of my cubicle.

  Peter blinks a few times. He probably didn’t realize or care that I could hear every word of what he was saying to Anna. We all can. That’s the thing with cubicles—not a whole lot of privacy.

  “Hello, Matt,” he says slowly. “What’s wrong?”

  I jerk a thumb in the direction of my monitor. “This code I’ve been working on won’t compile. I’ve tried everything.”

  Peter scratches his balding skull, which makes his combover stand up straight. Never. I will never have a combover. “What language you using?”

  “Perl.” (Peter’s favorite.)

  He nods. “All right. Send it to me. I’ll take a look.”

  Peter heads back to his office without saying anything more to Anna. Lucky thing he doesn’t look in my cubicle because I’ve still got Spider Solitaire on the screen. In the time I’ve worked here, I must have played ten billion games of solitaire. No exaggeration. Peter keeps having it deleted from my computer and I keep figuring out a way to circumvent the restrictions and download it again. I could just play it on my phone but it’s more fun to play it on the computer. It’s sad that I devote more brain power to figuring out ways to goof off than to my actual job.

  Anna is still sitting in her cubicle. She’s staring at me with those big blue eyes of hers. “Thank you,” she says.

  “Hey, no problem.” I shrug and smile. “We code monkeys gotta watch out for each other, right?”

  Except I probably wouldn’t watch out for Anna so much if she weren’t so cute. Not that there aren’t lots of cute girls out there, but there’s something about Anna. I don’t know what it is exactly. Something about that straight white-blond hair that she always keeps precisely tucked behind her ears, something about those blouses she always keeps buttoned up to her white throat—she’s got the sexy librarian thing going big time. In the time I’ve shared a cubicle wall with her, I’ve developed what’s probably a really unhealthy crush on her. Unhealthy because, like I said, Anna is batshit crazy. But she still does it for me. If that makes any sense.

  Nothing will ever happen between Anna and me. Never. Ever. For so many reasons. But I still fantasize.

  Anna taps her foot against the floor. She’s always tapping over there. Tapping against the floor, tapping on the walls of her cubicle, tapping on her desk—it’s like a goddamn tap dancing competition in there. One of these days, I’m going to say to her, Anna, what is the deal with all the tapping? Except I probably don’t want to know.

  “Let me give you this,” Anna says.

  She starts rifling through the top drawer of her desk. I already know where this is going. Anna can be very predictable sometimes. And sure enough, after a minute, she pulls out… a bottle of hand sanitizer.

  There’s a reason they call her Crazy Anna.

  “Um, actually,” I say. “I already�
�� I mean, thank you but… I still have the hand sanitizer you gave me a few weeks ago.”

  Anna saw me eating a turkey sandwich at my desk and completely flipped her shit. She gifted me the hand sanitizer and would not take her eyes off me till I used it. She’s done this probably a dozen times in the last year.

  “Oh,” she says. She’s still holding out the bottle to me.

  So I take it. Whatever. You can’t have too much hand sanitizer, I guess.

  Chapter 3: Anna

  On the rare occasion that I must make photocopies, I am extremely careful. I recognize that the machine is used by multiple persons every day, so I try to touch it as little as possible and sanitize my hands immediately after.

  Today I approach the copy machine with four pages that require duplication. The machine is about five feet away from the office water cooler, where I often see my coworkers congregating during their breaks to gossip and drink water. I have very little interest in gossip, and even less interest in drinking water from a water cooler.

  You probably are not aware that one in four water coolers are contaminated with bacteria that is likely to cause illness. One tenth of samples obtained from coolers contained staphylococcus aureus bacteria, a dangerous source of illness. And up to one quarter contained coliform bacteria, which is often found in fecal matter. Water coolers should be cleaned and sterilized at least once per year, but I suspect that this water cooler has not been cleaned once in the entire time I’ve worked here. It is quite literally a cesspool of bacteria.

  There are three female receptionists chatting at the water cooler when I approach the copy machine. They glance at me briefly, but then carry on talking as if I don’t exist. I avoid looking at them, determined to make my copies as quickly as possible. Hopefully, the machine won’t jam.

  “So which one would you rather have sex with?” the tallest and most buxom of the receptionists asks the other two. I believe her name is Lindsay, but I have yet to have a conversation with her. Our exchanges have been limited to necessary and vital information.