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“I don’t have an official start date yet because HR needs to clear it. Whatever.” I gesture with my free hand. “Helena did steal my work in a meeting this afternoon, though.”

Flora’s head turns. “Again?”

“Sort of. She presented my forecast adjustment without saying it was mine, and normally I would’ve sat there getting progressively angrier while also convincing myself there was no graceful way to correct her but also that we are a team and it doesn’t matter who does the actual job, you know?”

“But you did.”

“I did.” I can feel myself smiling again. “I said, ‘That’s the adjustment I sent over Friday.’ Just like that. In front of everybody.”

Flora’s eyes widen, and I feel her hand squeeze mine where our fingers are intertwined. “Good girl.”

Oh.

I turn my head toward her.

Flora keeps walking for another step before the resistance of my hand stops her. She looks back at me, then at our joined hands, and finally at my face.

“What happened?” She bites her lip and cocks her head in confusion, and I watch the realization arrive.

A flush starts high on her cheeks, which is particularly satisfying considering she’s the one who just made my brain glitch in the middle of a perfectly wholesome conversation about workplace boundaries.

“I was being supportive,” she says, darting her eyes.

“And you were doing an excellent job.” I step closer, enough that the space between us disappears and she has to tip her face up slightly to look at me. “Do you think you could be even more supportive later?”

“Merry.”

I love the way she says my name when she’s trying not to smile.

“What? I had a big day.”

She shakes her head, but her free hand finds my waist, settling there easily beneath the open edge of my coat. “We should probably keep walking, then.”

Flora kisses me instead.

It’s brief, more promise than anything else, but when she pulls away her hand stays right at the waistline of my pants where my sweater has lifted a little for another second before she takes mine again.

We keep walking to my house, but we make it perhaps twenty feet. Then we pass the narrow gap between two buildings, and I stop.

“What—”

“Come here.”

I tug her around the corner with me. It’s barely an alley, more like an architectural oversight between a restaurant and whatever is next to it, shadowed from the sidewalk but still close enough that I can hear people passing a few feet away.

Flora looks from me to the street. Then I feel her gaze burning into my face.

“Merryweather.”

I love when she uses my entire name like I’ve done something she intends to hold against me.

“What?” I ask, pulling her slowly to me. The wall behind my back gets momentarily illuminated by a car passing by, but after a few moments, we are back in partial darkness. “Am I not being a good girl?”

Her mouth curves, but I don’t give her time to answer before I catch the front of her coat and pull her into me.

Flora makes a surprised sound against my mouth, and then her hands are at my waist once more, pulling me closer. My back finds the brick wall, and her body follows, fitting against mine until there’s absolutely no room left between us.

The cold of the building presses through my coat, but everything else is warm.