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“Exactly.”
I stood up. “In that case, I better go tell him.”
“Not yet!” Michelle said. “Again, you can’t look so eager. You have to find a way to tell him which sounds like it’s no big deal. Try to run into him in the hallway, and when you do, just make up some excuse for why you can’t stay late tonight. Say you have plans you forgot about and then study his face.”
“What am I looking for exactly?”
“Signs of disappointment,” she said. “Or casual indifference. Spoiler alert, you want the latter one.”
“I want him to feel indifferent towards me?”
“If you want a no-drama office fling, then yeah, sorta. You want him to be so unattached that everything you two do together or don’t do together is just no big deal. It’s allchill.”
This made me think for a second. Was there not a way to have a no-drama office fling while also genuinely liking a person? If not, that meant I was headed for trouble… But then again, Michelle wasn’t right about everything. Sure, she knew more about this stuff than I did, but that didn’t mean her word was law. Relationships come in all different shapes and sizes, and I had no reason to think that David and I couldn’t make something work for the both of us.
Something between indifferent sex and a passionate love affair.
But first, I knew she was right about one thing. I needed to cancel my plans with him that night. I couldn’t betooavailable. I’d bent over backward to make Bret happy, did everything he wanted me to when he wanted me to, and I was not going to repeat that mistake. I thanked Michelle for her time, then hung up the phone and sat down at my desk, spending the rest of the afternoon ignoring my work and wondering what I was going to tell David and how I could run into him purposefully but in a way that seemed organic.
ChapterFourteen
DAVID
As five o’clock approached, I felt my excitement growing, and I found myself watching like a hawk as everyone else in the offices packed up their stuff and left.
Lily and I would need to wait until every last one of them was gone before we could start our ‘overtime’ work, which was why I was getting annoyed with all the laggers. Why weren’t they more eager to get out of here? It was a Monday after all, didn’t everyone hate being at work on Mondays?
I decided to get up and go make myself some coffee as a distraction, and on my way to the break-room, I ran into none other than Lily herself. She smiled and stopped me on my way. “Oh hey, I was going to come look for you. I gotta tell you something.”
“I was going to come looking for you too,” I said. “You ready to get started on that paperwork?”
She made a face. “Right, about that, so it turns out I have plans tonight that I had completely forgotten about.” She tapped the side of her head. “Sometimes, I swear, my memory is fading. I’m too young to be forgetting stuff like this, and yet, it happens all the time. But anyway, the paperwork will just have to wait until another day. Sorry.”
“Oh—uh. All right. Yeah, that’s fine.” I tried to hide my disappointment, but I wasn’t sure how good of a job I was doing. “Shall we say tomorrow night?”
“Oh, that’s not good either.” She looked down at her watch. “I really do have to get going, but I’ll look at my schedule for later this week and get back to you. Have a nice evening!” She started to walk past me but I could tell something was off, so I followed her to the elevators. She saw the sign and remembered she had to take the stairs instead, and I went with her into the stairwell.
“Is everything okay?” I asked her. “You seem flustered.”
“Flustered?” She frowned and went down the first flight of stairs. “No, I’m not flustered. I’m just late. For my… plans.”
“All right then. You know—I had plans too.” I made a point to put an edge on my voice. I wasn’t mad at her, but as the CEO of a major company, I didn’t like it when someone didn’t seem to respect my time. Especially considering I had a lot of my own work that I set aside that evening, and I canceled a family dinner that I was supposed to go to. “But I moved everything around to make tonight work.”
I saw something like sadness, or perhaps regret, flash across her face. Then she looked forward and ran down another flight of stairs. “Well, I’m sorry that you moved things around. I hadn’t realized you were so busy tonight when I asked you to help me with all the paperwork, but you should’ve said something before. I would’ve been fine staying late another night, alone, and doing all the work myself.”
I groaned with frustration and followed her down to the next level. “Lily, what is going on? I thought you and I were on the same page.”
“We are!” she said cheerily, continuing on her merry way. “I just forgot I had plans. Am I not allowed to forget something?”
“No, you are.” At this point, we were down on the lobby level, and she opened the door leading out of the stairwell and walked confidently and speedily towards the front doors of the building. “But I get the distinct impression that there is more to the story here, and all I’m asking is that you explain to me what’s going on. I swear, I won’t be mad I just—”
“Nothing is going on, David,” she said. “Seriously, we’re good. Everything is chill.”
Chill?
She walked out the door and then I was left with a choice. Did I continue to follow this woman, who I was pretty sure had just snubbed me, and beg her for answers? Or, did I keep some semblance of dignity and let her walk away without chasing after her like a love-sick puppy? I chose the latter and was going to stick to that decision, but then I saw Lily look back over her shoulder at me just before crossing the street and she smiled. It was a flirty smile—a ‘aren’t you coming?’ sort of smile—and so, I took off running and caught up with her just as her foot touched down on the sidewalk on the other side of the street.
“Here’s what I think is going on,” I said, a little out of breath at this point. “I think you are getting cold feet. And I get it, this whole thing is wild. Not to mention, I’m in a position of power and you’re not, and those things have to be taken into consideration in a modern-day arrangement such as ours.”
