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“You… honestly,” and this was quite humiliating, it wasn’t that bad, “thought that… would work.”
“It’s not that funny.”
Eva took a shaky breath, one last giggle escaping as she brushed the corners of her eyes.
Honestly. The tears were a bit much.
ChapterSix
SOPHIE
“Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy…” Mitch said to his inbox like it had personally disappointed him.
Sophie smiled to herself as she gently extracted the paper that had clogged the scanner. Mitch did that. Talked to himself. Filled the silence.
She should hate it, the invasion of chatter when she typically enjoyed being alone with her thoughts, but it was… nice, actually. Comforting, although she’d never tell him that.
She’d let herself forget — forced herself to, really — how much she liked workingwithsomeone. Sharing the load. Splitting the difficult stuff. Being entertained when a big job came through that would consist of nothing but her, a thimble, and four hours of deciphering handwritten forms before she discovered that what she was looking for had probably gotten lost in the eighties.
In the six months since Meg left, Sophie had been content to curl up against the wall with her lukewarm sludge and her headphones between the hours of seven and five, with only her thoughts and her filing to keep her company. And Levi, when he winked into existence.
She’d grown to like the faintly wet smell of the air, like asphalt after the rain, the rhythmic croaking of the air filtration system that kept the damp from touching the files, and the warm yellow glow of hastily installed fluorescent lighting.
Of course, the room wasn’t vented, and even the electricity was new, cords were stuck along walls, dangling from corners, hooked over shelves. It was an OSHA nightmare. Not that complaints were ever made. This was a financial institution; it wasn’t polite.
Behind their office space was a larger archive hall. Here the walls were an arm’s length thick, and while the acoustics were rich once enclosed inside each room, the outside world ceased to exist.
If only her feelings for Mitch could cease to exist.
“Is it so hard to believe that I want to be friends?”
Sophie turned her head. Easier to hide her smile that way. Did he have to be so… charming?
Of courseit was hard to believe. There was an ocean of difference betweennodding as we pass in the hallwayandtell me your deepest secrets. Icebergs could form in the space between those worlds. Big ones.
And Sophie had made that mistake before.
“We’re coworkers, not friends.”
The last time she crossed that plateau, she’d found herself stranded in the arctic by the one person she thought she could trust. So when people thought her cold for not letting them in, she didn’t challenge their assumptions. Technically, they weren’t wrong.
Sophie was cold. Her heart had frozen over. And now here was Mitch freaking Langford, chipping away at it with his stupidly endearing awkwardness and scruffy good looks.
Jesus, every time she saw him flip his ball cap backward, she swore she thawed just a little, and it pissed her off.
Because she knew what would happen if she let another person in.
And she refused to be stranded twice.
“Come on,” she heard over her shoulder, then a paper airplane landed perfectly by her elbow. On its wing, a little stick figure holding a sunflower and the wordPlease?
Fuck. She needed to cut this off now. Had to get Mitch off the friendship field and stick him in exes ditch, or whatever. It was impossible to think clearly with that adorable stick figure staring up at her.
Sophie threw the airplane into her top drawer and slammed it shut. “You don’t know anything about me, Mitch. Don’t come in here with your holier-than-thou attitude and pretend you’re better than me just because you like aggressively friending people.”
“Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s start with this: you’re right; I don’t know anything about you. But have you thought about why that is? That no one knows you because you won’t let them?” he asked from behind her. “I might be aggressively friendly— and shit, I don’t actually mean to be aggressive, so yeah, I’ll work on that— but you are angrily defensive. Getting near you is like walking across hot coals. One wrong step, and it’s straight to the hospital.”
Well.
