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I explain the weird lobby conversations and the offers of coffee. The fact that Phillip seems to find reasons to stop and talk to me when he sees me. There had been a time when I was nearly convinced they were right, mostly because I couldn’t come up with another explanation for why the CEO of Briarwood Confections kept remembering details about my life.

“Yesterday, he came downstairs specifically looking for me.” I recount his cryptic way of talking and how the entire conversation had been so obviously professional that I’d started feeling delusional for ever wondering if there was something else happening. “And then, right when I finally decided that this is clearly, clearly about work, he tells me the new position would put me closer to him.”

Flora’s mouth twitches.

“Exactly!” I lift my hands up in exasperation.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to. That’s what I mean. He keeps doing that.” I reach for my wine and take a sip. “And honestly, I don’t even know if he’s doing anything. Maybe he’s just naturally charming and nice, and I’ve been walking around assigning meaning to it because my friends got in my head. Which would be humiliating, but certainly not unprecedented.”

Flora is quiet for a second.

“Do you want him to be flirting with you?”

“What? No!”

The answer comes out so quickly—and loudly—that Flora blinks a few times.

I do, too, but I’m too stunned to say anything else. Because apparently that was not a question requiring the careful consideration I thought it might.

“No,” I repeat, quieter this time. “I mean… No.”

Flora’s mouth twitches. “That sounded pretty certain.”

“Yes, very.” Flora is studying my face, and her eyebrows are doing something funny, like she’s trying to decipher exactly what is going on in my brain. “For the record,” I add, “I am very gay.”

“I know.”

“Good. Just making sure we’ve established the relevant facts.”

Flora’s mouth twitches again, but she doesn’t rescue me from the rest of the question, which is unfortunate, because now that she’s asked it, I can see there is something I haven’t been particularly interested in examining.

“I definitely liked the attention,” I admit.

That feels more accurate.

“I’ve been at Briarwood for a few years now. And I’ve worked my ass off there, and most of the time I’m still just somebody’s assistant. I make the spreadsheets and fix everyone else’s fuckups, and then someone else walks into a meeting and talks about it.” I push a piece of pasta around my bowl. “So when the CEO suddenly knew my name? Of course I got a little giddy about it.”

Maybe I’d confused that with something else because I hadn’t had a better explanation for it, and I was one hundred percent in my head with the spell and what my friends were saying.

“But yesterday, he told me my name has been coming up in conversations about work.” I look at Flora. “And I think that’s what I wanted it to be all along.”

Not Phillip wanting me, god no. Someone up there noticing me.

“Anyway, enough work talk.”

I reach for Flora’s bowl before she’s completely finished.

“Hey.”

“You stopped eating.”

“I was thinking.”

“Well, now you can think without dirty dishes in front of you.”

I stack our bowls and carry them to the sink before she can point out that this logic makes no sense. Flora follows me with the wineglasses anyway.