Meet Wally

Now, here I was on a Friday afternoon and the office was in its usual end-of-week purgatory—rows of gray cubicles filled with people aggressively pretending to work. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like tiny fluorescent assholes, and the air smelled like burnt microwave popcorn, cheap cologne, and corporate despair.

I sighed. Loudly.

“Jesus Christ,” Norm muttered from the next cubicle. “I swear, if you sigh one more time, I’m reporting you to HR for being a depressing workplace hazard.”

Norm had been making my life harder since high school—when he convinced me to ask out the homecoming queen ‘as a joke’ and I didn’t realize I was the joke. He’s the kind of friend who will fight for you in a bar fight—but also the reason you’re in one. Married once, now with a girlfriend way too good for him, and somehow still convinced he’s my life coach.

I slumped lower in my chair. “Is it possible to actually die from boredom? Like, medically?”

Norm leaned over the partition, smirking. He always looked like a guy who should be running a sports bar, not working in corporate sales. Broad shoulders, buzzed hair, the smug confidence of a man who had never second-guessed himself a day in his life. “Google it after five.”

I sighed again—purely out of spite.

Somewhere across the room, a phone rang. A muffled voice launched into some nonsense about ‘synergizing vertical markets,’ whatever the hell that meant. Someone in accounting sniffled loudly. That guy was always sick. No one knew why.

I shifted in my chair, stretching my legs under the desk until my knee hit the bottom drawer. A sharp, metallic thud. Probably the sound of my last will to live escaping.

Three minutes.

I glanced toward the hallway just as Jessica walked by.

Jessica “Homely Girl” Whitmore.

Okay, that was mean. She wasn’t actually homely. She was ... practical. Average height, blond hair always in a low bun, glasses. Cardigans. So many cardigans. She smelled faintly like vanilla and drank tea instead of coffee, which I found both suspicious and deeply responsible.

We could be two lonely people together. That was romance, right?

I frequently considered asking her out. It wouldn’t be so bad. She seemed stable. Like the kind of person who had matching dishes, a 401(k), and zero history of making fun of guys like me in high school.

The idea sat there, nagging at me like an unsent text. I rubbed the back of my neck, then cracked my knuckles against my palm—some pointless attempt to psych myself up.

Until now, I had never garnered enough gumption to actually do it.

Ah, what th’ hell. Here goes nothin’.

I opened my mouth—

“Dude. No. Just no.”

I blinked. “What?”

Norm shook his head. “You get this look on your face every time Jessica walks by.”

I frowned.

I do?

“It’s the same look my dog gets when he stares at a bag of chips he knows he’s not getting.”

Before I could argue, Jessica was gone, and I was left questioning every facial expression I’d ever made.

4:59 PM.

Norm stretched. “Happy hour? We could go to Miller’s. Take bets on how many people get blackout drunk before the nachos arrive.”

I pretended to consider it. Maybe = Absolutely not.

Instead, I’d probably just go see a movie alone like a divorced dad. Maybe I’d finally get around to cleaning my apartment.

…Nah.

5:00 PM.

The second hand hit twelve, and I was on my feet.

“Have a wild weekend, Wally,” Norm called as I grabbed my bag.

“Yep. Gonna do something reckless,” I deadpanned.

He snorted. “Liar.”

He was right.

I left the office, having made exactly zero real decisions.