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"Celibacy. May it rest in peace," she replied, finishing the sentence she was typing before looking up at him.
"On the first date?" he said, dropping into the chair in front of her. "I'm surprised."
"Yeah, so was he," she sighed, saving the file she was working on. "What do you want, Thad?"
"I have come for the pages, darling. You promised me the rewrites by two," he said, tapping his watch.
"Liar. I’ll send Josie out with them when they’re ready. What do you actually want?"
"I wanted to find out how things went with Kline last night."
"Ah. Ulterior motive," she said, pulling a small sheaf of papers from a folder on her desk. "Things went fine. As you can see, he sent me flowers."
"Are you seeing him again?"
"Wednesday," she said. "Dinner. Now, if you want to know any more details, you will have to ask him."
"I did," he replied, wrinkling his nose. "He told me to fuck off."
"Well, I would tell you the same thing, but I like my job."
"I wouldn't fire you if I deserved it."
Rhiannon raised her eyebrows and stared at him for a long moment. “You can’t fire me, you moron.”
"Alright, I'm going," he said, unfolding himself from the chair and heading for the door. He paused and looked back at her. "I would have sent you roses."
"You should anyway. Ratings are up," she replied, now focused on the computer again.
Thad blinked at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Touché. So, about that date…"
"Not in this lifetime."
The smile disappeared in a sigh of exasperation as he pulled the door closed and walked away.
Rhiannon couldn't help but laugh. Thad was a fair match for wit, and he didn't hold it against her when she was a little rough with the teasing. It really was part of her personality. Her mother called it a defense mechanism and was sure that her bright, beautiful daughter was going to die alone because she kept scaring all the men away.
It was true that some men didn't know how to take her, and some were even threatened by her, especially when she made it very clear that she wasn't some moony-eyed female just waiting for a man to come along and make her life worth living. She gave as good as she got, and sometimes better, and for the most part, she ended up on her own because men either couldn't keep up with her, or didn't want to try.
There had been a few contenders. One had lasted the better part of year, in fact. They'd lived together in that flat in Greenwich while she was interning. He wanted to be an actor, but he was terrible at it. No presence. Rhiannon tried to be supportive and instead ended up his harshest critic. She was honest, but not brutal. Everyone else was too nice to him. They all led him to believe that he was better than he was, and he was setting himself up for disaster.
When his classes didn't go well, he blamed her. When he didn't land the parts he auditioned for, which was most of the time, he blamed her. He had come home drunk after a particularly bad audition and threatened to crack her skull open. She went to stay with some friends and never went back, except to collect her things while he was in class.
After that, she went through a dry spell. More self-imposed than anything. There was interest. Always. She just didn't reciprocate. She focused on the work and dallied with a few casual acquaintances. A fling with a professor at NYU. A stage manager at the late-night show. A hot bartender from that club down the street.
Rhiannon looked at the creamy white fluted flowers that Kline had sent her and puzzled over them. What did lilies mean? They weren't really romantic if you weren't in a church, and even then. Tigers and Callas were pretty and exotic, but white Easter lilies were a bit funereal. It was a lovely gesture, of course. She hadn't expected flowers. In fact, she half expected him to ghost her. Rhiannon who? That was his reputation after all.
She'd lain in bed after Kline left, thinking through the evening, analyzing it more than she knew she should. It was a habit, and completely unavoidable considering that the man in question had been inhabiting her fantasies for almost a decade. It was all still a bit too surreal to have the poster on her wall come to life in her bed. The date had gone well, she thought, aside from the sex, which was pretty hot. They seemed to click. He seemed to really like her. But he pretended to be in love for a living, so what could she really go by?
And he did get up and leave pretty fast after bedding her. She knew he had a son, and his kid should be a priority. She firmly believed that. It just seemed odd that Kline hadn't been too worried about getting home before they did the deed. All the talk was about being together in the morning. She'd had men make excuses and run on her before, once they'd scored.
Rhiannon sighed. She was going to have to be careful with this one. He was dangerous. It would be easy for him to get close and do some damage. Better to be casual and not expect too much. Better to wait on his next move and see how things played out. If he didn't cancel Wednesday, that would be a good sign.
She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and turned back to her work, finishing the last page and printing it off before heading into the staff meeting to go over plans for May sweeps.
She’d been laser-focused for hours when her phone rang twice before she answered, and Kline said hello.
"Wow--somehow I expected not to hear from you ‘til Wednesday," she said after he'd spoken.
