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And from this new vantage point, I started to suspect that Aiden wasn’t thinking of me just as his best friend’s kid or his newest employee anymore. It was hard to define exactly, but there was something vital and vibrant between us. It sparked in our conversation on the way back, but it was there even in the quiet moments, too. A humming vibration that made it impossible to feel awkward with him.
When we went our separate ways at the office–me to my cubicle and him to his office on the half-level up, my heart was beating pleasantly fast. I felt dreamy and a little dazed as I sat back down to finish my onboarding. Somewhere, far below the cloud I was floating on, the alarm bells and warning sirens were still going off, but they were distant. Unimportant. The sound of Aiden’s laughter floating out of his office or the pattern of his footsteps easily drowned it out. And when I felt his eyes on me, I couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears as my heart picked up speed again.
I could always tell when he was looking at me. It was a tell-tale prickle up the back of my spine. A warm, giddy feeling that I didn’t understand until I looked up in time to catch him looking away. It was intoxicating. I wanted to drink in the attention he was trying to hide, sneak off and call Liv, doodle his name in my notebook like I was back in high school again.
But I wasn’t in high school anymore and I had a job to do.
With monumental effort, I blocked out the giddy voice in my head that was chantingAiden Crossseesyouand finished the onboarding process. Then I went to my first meeting with the team and met Joe, Gloria, and the rest. I’d been worried about being the new girl–in my old job, that designation had lingered for over a year and was basically code forcoffee bitch. Even though getting Maureen coffee had been my first act at my new job, I could tell right away that it was a real team. For one thing, Maureen was actually grateful.
“I know it’s a lot,” she said, referring to her diabetes-inducing order. “Sugar is what keeps me running though. It’s a vehicle for the caffeine. If I could just order a cup of sugar with two caffeines, I would.”
I liked her right away. Her energy was frenetic and tense and fun all at the same time. She set the tone of the meeting, freeing everyone from the constraint of typical meeting protocol. Everyone seemed comfortable putting their ideas on the table and yelling at each other and reaching over to pat each other condescendingly on the head. In some ways, they reminded me of my family. They criticized and talked over each other, but affection padded the jabs.
They took me out to lunch at one of their favorite places and it felt like a lighthearted test of sorts. No one said anything, but they watched me out of the corner of their eyes. I made sure to eat every bite and tell them it was delicious. Which it was.
“I think she’ll be a good fit,” Gloria pronounced when my plate was clean.
I left at the end of the day feeling more comfortable than I’d ever felt at my old company in LA. Even after two years, my manager slipped and called me Lila at least once a week. Eventually, she stopped apologizing, and I stopped correcting her.
“We’re going to happy hour on Thursday,” Joe told me as we walked out together. “The whole company goes about once a month.”
“The whole company?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“From the CEO to security. First drink is on the company.”
I tried to hide how impressed I was. I was used to hierarchies in LA. There, the happy hour invitees had been divvied up by rank. Only upper management this time, or maybe this team is invited, but not those two newest members. Or sometimes it was about who was willing to be on camera when they were going to a place that was filming a reality show. Never ever had the whole company been invited, and I doubted they even knew the names of the tangential workers like security and janitorial.
Of course, Aiden was different. He’d never been impressed by rank or privilege. From my dad’s stories, he actively disdained it. My dad had first noticed him when another professor pointed him out and said, “That kid is going nowhere fast, and he’s doing it with an attitude.”
“And he was right,” Aiden chimed in when my dad told the story.
“You were always going somewhere,” my dad disagreed. “You just needed help finding which direction to start in.”
“Yeah, because I was headed straight for jail.”
He’d been joking, but there had been a grim note in his voice and a faraway look in his eye that lent his laughter a false note. My dad hadn’t laughed at all, just shook his head. “No. You were always going somewhere great.”
I felt like I was heading somewhere pretty great, too, as I headed home. The day was beautiful—even better than LA, in my opinion—and I was filled with a sense of being in the right place at the right time. I’d never felt that way in California. I knew I must have felt something like this when Christian and I first started dating, but that was so long ago, and it had gotten so muddled in the end that I could hardly remember.
Thinking about Christian and the way it ended still tugged at my heart, pulling down at the edges of it, but even that memory couldn’t dim my happiness. The glow stayed with me all the way home, and when Liv got a look at me, she said, “Wow.”
I grinned self-consciously and tugged a heavy lock of hair over my face, trying to hide it. “What?” I asked through the dark strands.
“I just have never seen anyone look so happy after a first day at work. Did they promote you already or something?”
I let my hair drop. “No, my coworkers are just really nice and accepting of my ideas.”
Liv studied me and then shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Nice coworkers are great and all, but they don't make people glow.”
“I’m not glowing.” I headed back to my room to change. My feet were used to wearing high heels all day—my old job would have accepted nothing less—but it was still nice to change. I padded back into the living room in my shorts, t-shirt, and slippers just as Bran let himself in the front door.
“Hi Bran,” Liv said, not looking up from her computer. “Your sister had a weirdly good first day at work, but she won’t tell me why.”
Bran dropped down onto the loveseat beside her, his leg smashed right up against hers, his weight folding the cushion so that her shoulder tipped into his. I waited for Liv to scoot away, but to my surprise, she didn’t seem to mind.
Interesting.
I sat down on the long couch that had plenty of room and studied them.
