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It’s a small thing, but it makes me happy that she thought of me, a feeling of thrill stemming from the simple brown paper sack that’s now sitting on my desk. “Thank you.”
“It’s only a sandwich,” she says flippantly. “Just plain old turkey. Don’t get too excited.”
I chuckle as I reach for the bag. “I will make sure not to read too much into the sandwich.”
“Good,” she says with a grin. “I don’t want you to get any preconceived notions before we go on that date.”
I pause from opening the sack. “Preconceived notions?”
“Yeah,” she says seriously. “Like, that you can get away with just a sandwich or something.”
My eyebrow quirks. “Oh?”
“I’m an expensive date, Noah,” she tells me pointedly. “I’m a five-star kind of gal.”
“Your favorite food is soup,” I remind her.
She waves me off. “Yes, but I’ll be ordering thefanciestsoup,” she assures me. “Gold flakes in the broth, maybe.”
“Right,” I chuff. “Of course.”
She plops down on the edge of my desk. “So how has your day been?”
“My day?”
“Your day,” she echoes. “Haveyoubeen listening to whispers going quiet every time you walk into a room?”
“I’ve been here, mostly,” I tell her truthfully. “I had a lot of procedure notes to document. Playing catch-up.”
She winces. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.” I reach across my desk to place my hand over hers. “Seriously.”
There’s a flush of color at her cheeks when she smiles softly, but she turns her face shortly after so I can’t see. “It does feel weird,” she notes. “Coming back. It felt like we were gone way longer than we were.”
“I know what you mean,” I murmur.
I don’t tell her that I didn’t want to leave, knowing it might be too much, too fast. The last thing I need is to spook her when I’ve just gotten her to agree to considering a real shot at this.
When I open the bag, I notice there is only one sandwich. “Are you not eating with me?”
She shakes her head. “I have to get back. We’re pretty short-staffed today.”
“Well, I appreciate you taking the time to bring me a mediocre sandwich with no meaning attached to it,” I tell her flatly.
Mackenzie barks out a laugh. “Oh my God, sarcasm? I need to write about this in my diary. No one will ever believe it.”
“You’re a bad influence.”
She hops off my desk and circles around it, leaning down with her hand braced against my knee. My lips part in anticipation only a moment before hers touch mine, and I close my eyes as I relish the weight of her kiss, the softness of it still enough to make me want a hell of a lot more than just this.
“You’ll get over it,” she teases when she breaks away.
I swallow. “I have a feeling you might be right.”
She steps away like she hasn’t just made the idea of working that much harder—blowing me another kiss when she stops at the door to my office. “I’ll text you when I get off.”
“All right.”
