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She was my boss. And somehow, through years of impossibly close proximity, a strange friendship was born. A friendship, I reminded myself, where she could kiss me in front of her mother and pretend like it meant nothing. All while it still haunted my dreams.
Every fucking night.
“I’d do the same if I could,” I said, the words a little more rehearsed than genuine.
Because what the hell could I ever do for someone who already had everything they wanted?
With that awful tension finally diffused, we ate in a comfortable kind of silence, sharing a grin here and there to let the other know their food was good.
Once the plates had been cleared and the bill was taken care of, Reid winked at me. “Shall we get back to kicking ass?”
“Here are those final reports you asked for, Mia.”
I looked up from my computer. Clara stood in front of my desk, holding a few manila files out for me to take.
“Thanks,” I said, setting them down on my desk and flipping through them. “Do these include the quarter financial year’s repor-”
“Is that a wedding ring?”
My stomach turned to ice. There was no way I’d been stupid enough to forget to take the damn thing off this morning. No way in hell…
A single glance at my left hand informed me that I had, in fact, been stupid enough to forget.
“Oh, this? I laughed nervously. “No, this is just a, uh, family heirloom.”
“I’ve never seen it before,” Clara said, her eyes wide with wonder. She grabbed my hand to inspect the ring and I swallowed thickly. “So this is from Brazil?”
“Mhm, my mother’s-”
“Mia, are those reports ready?”
I groaned under my breath as Reid walked in.
Another glance told me she’d forgotten about her ring, the twin to my own, as well.
“Oh my God,” Clara said, her eyes darting between my hand and Reid’s. “You’re both wearing matching rings!”
Reid choked on her own tongue and turned her goggle-eyed stare at me.
“No!” I half shrieked, jumping to my feet. “No, Reid just so happened to get hers from Brazil the last time she was there. Every now and then we wear them at the same time, it’s kind of a funny inside joke.”
I laughed, and it was so obviously riddled with discomfort that it was a wonder Clara didn’t call me out on my bullshit.
“Oh,” she said, slowly, nodding a little. “That’s really funny, I guess.”
Without another word, she smiled at both of us before walking back to her and Rae’s office.
The moment she was out of earshot, a massive, shaky breath wheedled out of my lungs. “Jesus, that was too close,” I breathed. I put a hand to my chest, my heart thrashing beneath my palm.
“I can’t believe I forgot to take this off,” Reid said, staring down at her hand like it was a separate entity from her. “Would it be more suspicious to take it off now?”
“I don’t care,” I said, slipping the ring off my finger and chucking it into my purse. “We were lucky it was Clara who said something, and not someone else.”
“True,” Reid murmured. She took her ring off and put it in her pocket, and we stared at each other for a moment. “Let’s get going.”
We packed up and left together, cautiously avoiding the busier parts of the building to make sure no one asked why we were leaving at the same time.
“We’ll have to start coming in at different times again,” I said as I got into the passenger seat.
