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She turns her face toward me and gives me a warm smile. It’s dark out, and the soft lighting of her desk lamp gives her face an otherworldly glow.
I’ve missed her. After coming up with a plan at the meeting, we all went our separate ways and have been working tirelessly all day. If we’re going to have the app ready in time, there are going to be more long nights ahead of us like this.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Tired,” I say, and she smiles.
What I want to do is walk over to her desk and grab her and kiss her, but we—well actually, Mila—made the decision on the flight back that we’d keep things at work … work. And so, kissing her and holding her and everything else I want to do with her will have to be outside of work. Which makes sense, because we both have so much to do, and it’s not a good look to find your boss making out with the project manager, as enticing as it sounds to me.
I get her reasoning, and I also agree with it. But that doesn’t stop me from hating it.
The problem is, my time is all work right now, even when I’m not here, and it probably will be until September. I have basically zero nonwork time. Which feels like a hard thing with this burgeoning relationship. Like it’s a big roadblock.
“The meeting went well today,” she says.
“I think so,” I respond. “It went better than I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
I shrug. “Some yelling. Vik quitting. Jason possibly smashing a chair.”
She laughs. She also knows I’m joking. Vik is much too loyal. And for as irritating as Jason can be, that doesn’t seem like something he’d do.
She nods. “Speaking of Jason—I bought him some kombucha today.”
I chuckle. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I put it on his desk when he was meeting with his team and ran.”
I shake my head, but I’ve got a smile on my face. It’s so strange to miss someone who’s been right down the hall all day. “I want to kiss you,” I say in an almost whisper.
Her eyes go wide as she tilts her head to look around me, outside her door. There are a lot of us still here, but no one around that can hear me. Her assistant, Britain, who sits closest to her office, has already left for the day.
She lowers her chin, but her eyes are on me. “I thought we agreed—”
“I know,” I say, running a hand down my face. “It’s just that I’m going to be working constantly until September.”
“Me too, remember?”
“I know,” I say. “We’ll find a way to squeeze some nonworking time in, okay?” I feel like I’m saying this more to reassure myself. I know what we have to do, what’s ahead of us to get everything ready by September, and I know I need Mila in my life, and not just at work. It seems almost impossible right now to have both. But I’m not willing to compromise any of it. I’m committed to figuring out a way to do it if she is.
She nods. “Okay. Now, you’re distracting me, so I need you to go back to your office.”
“I’m distracting you, am I?” I give her what I’m hoping is a flirtatious smile. I love that she thinks I’m the distraction. If anyone is the distraction around here, it’s Mila. A distraction I honestly don’t have time for. I know that, and I also don’t care. I just hope she’s willing to hang on—that I’m important enough to her, too.
We didn’t really discuss how things will go, aside from keeping work and whatever is going on between us separate. I think I’ve made it perfectly clear how I feel and I’m pretty sure I know where she stands, even if definitions haven’t exactly been spelled out.
“Yes,” she says. “You’re keeping me from my work.” She looks around me again and then lowers her voice. “Looking so handsome like you do right now.”
That’s it, I’m kissing her. I walk inside her office.
“No way, mister,” she says, holding out a hand. “I’ve got too much to do right now, and so do you.”
I let out a breath. “Okay, fine,” I tell her. “How about lunch tomorrow?”
“Can’t,” she says. “I need to take a working lunch because I’m meeting with TestPulse for the user testing at one.”
“Oh, right.” The stress that’s been keeping a low, steady pace running through my body amps up. We aren’t ready for user testing, and we need to be. It’s enough to snap me back to reality.
