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The Near Promotion
She’d texted me all day, out of her mind excited about the fact that her boss was finally retiring and she was going to be interviewed to be the replacement. It was crazy impressive that she could be a VP at a midsize company before hitting thirty, but not surprising when you knew her.
In addition to being a hard worker, she had this hyper-focused, methodical mentality, where every decision she made at work was guided by a type ofhow would I proceed if I owned the business?ideology. She was exactly what I would want in a VP, if I were running the business, and she deserved the recognition.
Of course, the near promotion had her all in on taking some pushing-the-envelope social media photos, and the entire night had been a giant photo shoot.
Until she’d gotten distracted by the cigars.
I lifted my phone and took a black-and-white shot of her smirking at me with one eyebrow raised. “Holy shit, this is it.”
“Shut up,” she said, finally putting out the cigar in our makeshift beer glass ashtray.
“Seriously.” The picture perfectly captured the way I saw her. She looked professional—smooth, wavy hair; glasses; black dress with blazer—but her expression was sexy and cute and so fucking charming that I knew I’d save it. “Look.”
I held it out, and she did a double take.
“Oh, my God, how’d you do that?” she asked, leaning her face a little closer to my phone.
Chanel No. 5 floated over to me in the summer breeze, and I ignored it. “Do what?”
She looked impressed and said, “Manage to take a picture that feels like the camera and the subject are sharing an intimate moment.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, because the photohadmanaged to see her like a lover’s gaze.
My gaze.
I cleared my throat and said, “I’m a talented photographer, I guess.”
But just before I’d said it, she got a tiny crinkle in between her eyebrows.
“So what over-the-top caption should I post?” I said, intent on erasing that question mark of a moment. “How about ‘She makes it move.’ ”
She snorted. “Gross.”
“Hashtag wind beneath my wings?”
“Negatory,” she said, tilting her head. “It needs to be vague but deep, like a subtweet.”
“A subtweet?”
“You know what I mean.”
“How about...” I sat back in my chair and stared into the evening sky. “Sometimes you just know.”
“Sometimes you just know.” She repeated it, then added, “Oh, my God, that isperfect! Will totally be taken as a love confession, even though it’s saying nothing.”
“Right,” I said, “because theliteralmeaning behind it is that sometimes I look at you and just know that you’re going to need ice cream soon.”
“That is uncanny,” she said, dragging a hand through her wavy hair. “Because I was just about to ask you to go with me to Ted and Wally’s before we call it a night.”
“I knew that you were. Let’s go get our ice cream closer.”
