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“As long as you don’t put on the news.” She dropped her attention back to her laptop. “I want to do my pixel farming without a dose of anxiety from the morbid over exaggerations of the national news reporters these days.”
I chuckled. “There’s the Chloe I know.”
“You say that like there are two sides of me.”
“There are. I can’t imagine you playing Stardew Valley in the office, for example. You even said yourself that you’d punish me if I told anyone you play it.”
She paused. “I don’t think I said I’d punish you.”
“Putting salt in my coffee is punishment. You said it in a roundabout way.”
“I still never explicitly said that I’d punish you.” She coughed, reaching for her wine. “And don’t put it like that in front of anyone else. They’ll get the wrong idea.”
“Well, if it’sthatkind of punishment…”
She flung out her arm, balling her hand into a fist, only to freeze before making contact with me. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” she said, quickly drawing her arm back to her side. “That didn’t happen.”
“You can punch me if you want.” I rested my elbow on the arm of the sofa and propped my head up on my hand, smirking over at her. “What I said was worthy of a punch.”
“Punch-worthy or not, you’re still my boss. I can’t hit you.”
“But you can blush when I get close to you?”
Her cheeks reddened. “I did nothing of the sort!”
“And you were the one who added a sexual connotation to the notion of me being punished.”
“Other people! For. Other. People! Other people might think that’s how I meant it,” she rambled, waving her hands. “Some people might consider the thought of me punishing you something like that, that’s all.”
“What kind of people do you know that would jump to that conclusion?”
She stilled, then tilted her head slightly to the side, staring somewhere over my shoulder. “That… is a very fair question, and now I’m questioning about twenty years of friendship.”
I laughed. “It really isn’t that deep, Chloe.”
“Mm. Anyway, please get your mind out of the gutter, or I’m going to revert to calling you ‘sir’ out of office hours.”
“And here I thought we were finally friends.” I sighed, shaking my head.
“We… We’re friends?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Did you not think so?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever thought to put a label on our relationship past our professional one as boss and subordinate,” she replied, bringing her thumb to her mouth and biting down on her nail.
That was exactly what I suspected she’d say.
“What about now? Would you say we’re friends?” My lips tugged up on one side into a smile that almost felt sly.
Chloe opened her mouth, pausing for a moment, then tucked her hair behind her ear and dipped her chin towards her chest. “I… suppose it’s hard to deny such a thing, yes.”
“So formal.”
“Oh, leave me alone,” she muttered, glancing over at me. “I don’t think many people are friends with their boss, certainly not when their boss is… Well, you.”
“I don’t know what that means, and in the spirit of our newfound friendship, I don’t think I’ll ask,” I said.
“That’s probably for the best. I’m not responsible for what I say when I’ve had as much wine as I have.”
