Lila
“Your shop is nice,”I said, stepping into the cramped office Harrison led me to. The walls were covered with tattoo sketches, framed art, and shelves holding everything from ink bottles to strange knickknacks. His desk looked more like an artist’s den than a place to handle business. Organized chaos, much like Harrison himself.
“It’s a mess. You don’t have to be nice.” He brushed past me to sit at the small, battered metal table in the corner of the room. It looked like it had been dragged out of a thrift store; one leg was shorter than the others, a book wedged underneath to compensate.
“Is this it?” I eyed the ancient desktop that sat atop the table. It looked like the prototype Steve Jobs himself created.
Harrison ran a hand along his jaw and stared at it. “I have a laptop at home. I just didn’t want to leave a nice computer in here. There was a break-in down the block a few months back. Nothing serious, but I don’t want to deal with replacing anything expensive.”
The monitor came to life with a loud whirring sound.
“That’s what insurance is for. Besides, this thing is ancient. You should probably upgrade to something from this century.” I tapped the top of the machine. The heat caught me off guard and I snatched my hand away. “This thing is more likely to catch fire and burn your shop to the ground than it is to send an email in a timely fashion.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up and I felt a surge of pride that I’dalmostmade him smile.
“I’ll look into it,” was all he said.
“May I?” I gestured to the chair in front of the computer.
“Be my guest.” He pulled out the chair and I slid into the worn seat.
A loud buzzing sound rang from the computer while it booted up. I eyed Harrison when the vibrations grew so intense that the metal desk began to rattle.
“I’ll look into it,” he repeated, rubbing the back of his neck. His chin-length dark hair fell forward. He often wore it pulled back into a small bun, but I liked it down. It made him look less intense, somehow. Or maybe his new hint of approachableness was a result of the uncertainty behind his eyes. Harrison never looked uncertain.
When the browser finally loaded, the site used to host his website was already pulled up. An angry red error message popped up. I clicked into it to investigate.
“Yeah, it’s been doing that all week. I tried chatting with the support team, but it was useless.”
“It looks easy enough,” I said, clicking around.
“Really? Because it’s been giving me a hell of a time.” His voice held a hint of doubt, but it was overshadowed by his obvious hope.
I typed something into a box before copying and pasting a new link. Harrison braced his hands on the edge of the metal table, leaning closer to the screen to get a better look at what Iwas doing. Tension coiled in my stomach and my heart rate shot up. I made a few typos, rushing to delete them and correct my mistakes.
“One of your page references was broken,” I said, purposefully steadying my voice. “That’s all the error was saying. I just reconnected it and refreshed the page. Let me just hit publish and... there.” I pointed to the screen. “It’s back up.”
“Seriously?” He looked from the screen to me. “Damn, that was fast.”
Pride coursed through my veins.
“Told you I could help.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved off my comment, but he maintained eye contact, and not in that menacing way he usually did.
“Thank you,” he said.
The sincerity in his voice melted right into my chest. It made me want to lean in even closer. Damn. Why was him saying the bare minimum so ridiculously attractive? And what did it say about me that I had a crush on a guy who made me work so hard for the tiniest scrap of approval?
Not a crush,I reminded myself for the hundredth time. I’d have to bring this up in therapy.
“You’re welcome.” My voice came out like a squeak, and I tried not to wince when he tilted his head in amusement.
One of those old swivel stools sat untouched in the back corner of the room. Harrison went over to grab it before scooching it right up next to me and straddling the seat.
“What do you think of the rest of the site?” he asked with his eyes trained on the website that I was now scrolling through.
“Honestly?”
