“Right back at you, Mr. Blythe.”
He stared into my eyes and the world and sound and everything else stopped and then melted away and we formed our own reality where just the two of us existed. The moment was quick, but it was so powerful it took a few seconds for me to realize we were standing on a sidewalk in Boston with people streaming around us, cabs honking and a man up the street screaming about the end of the world.
Lucah gave me one last kiss before hailing a cab to drive us to work.
~*~*~
I thought about that moment for the rest of the morning. It expanded in my brain, pushing out all the negative thoughts and insecurities and other little nasty things that swirled constantly.
And then an email from Violet popped up my inbox, asking when we could have our lunch date. It sent me crashing right back to earth. Irritated, I typed a quick response that I could do it today. Might as well get it over with so I could stop thinking about it. I really wanted to stop thinking about her. I had too many nice things to think about.
She responded a second later with an acceptance and saying I could pick the restaurant. I decided to go with the burger place Sloane and I had gone to after the spa. It was a bit of a distance from the office, but it was nice and casual, and I knew I could at least get a really decent meal out of it.
I tried to throw myself back into the precious bubble from this morning with Lucah, but Violet’s damn face kept invading. So I tried to stop thinking about that and just fill my head with numbers and math and earnings projections and other things I should have been focusing on.
Lilia came to check on me when she brought me my second cup of coffee mid-morning.
“I don’t need therapy right now, but I probably will this afternoon. I’m having lunch with Violet.” Lilia’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “So. I will fill you in on that when I get back. Or after you get back from lunch. You knew what I meant.” She nodded.
“Oh, and I know you said you were going to cut back on the coffee, so I added half decaf. So you still get a little bit of a jolt, and you still get a full cup.” She was very pleased with herself.
“That’s fantastic, thank you so much. What would I do without you?” I had a bad habit of getting attached to my assistants. This could be a problem. Well, maybe I should stop hiring people that were so good at their jobs. Or people I was attracted to. Or people who fit both descriptions.
“It’s my intention that you never have to find out.”
“Surely you don’t want to be my assistant forever? You could do way more with your life. You, Lilia, are headed for greatness.” I had a test sip of the coffee and I almost couldn’t tell the difference between it and regular coffee. Genius.
“And you are going to make me blush. Oh, I got those files you wanted. It was a pain to find them because they’re still working on scanning and someone had taken them without marking which ones they’d taken. But I found them in the end.” That file scanning project was taking far too long. I had the sneaking suspicion that the interns we had doing some of the work were slacking off. Granted, scanning a million files a day wasn’t the height of fun, but it was their job and we were (not) paying them to do it.
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll do a little whip cracking and see if that can’t move things along and get them a little more organized.” Lilia had become my eyes and ears. She had a knack, like Lucah, of hearing things and seeing things without being noticed.
“Just thought you should know. How’s the coffee?”
“Perfect.”
“That’s what I aim for.” That was obvious. “Oh, and I’m very interested to see how things go with Violet. You can always text me if you want.” I could. That actually wasn’t a bad plan. If only you could text without looking like you were texting. Science needed to get on that.
I tried not to stress out about lunch, and the coffee actually helped. Probably because of the lower caffeine content. The clock ticked down the minutes until my lunch date. I wished it was with Lucah, and not his ex, but you couldn’t have everything you wanted.
~*~*~
“This is nice,” Violet said, looking around the restaurant. It was filled with the lunch crowd, and it was diverse, which I was pleased about.
“Yeah, I’ve come here a few times and I keep coming back.” We both ordered iced tea and then sat with our menus, studying them in silence.
I was waiting for her to make the first move. Or for her to at least tell me what she wanted to talk to me about outside of the office.
“So what do you normally get?” Her eyes scanned the giant menu, skipping everywhere.
“Um, the burgers are really good. That’s what I always get, but I pair it with a salad because then they cancel each other out and I don’t feel so guilty.” She looked up and smiled.
“I like the way you think. Have you ever had the French onion burger?” I hadn’t, but I assured her it was probably fabulous. The waiter came back and she ordered the burger and a salad. I had a cheeseburger and tomato salad. Once the ordering was out of the way, I waited some more. Waiting and seeing . . .
“So I had an ulterior motive for having lunch with you today,” she said, confirming my worst fears.
“And what is that?” I sipped my iced tea and pretended that I wasn’t terrified of what she was about to say. As if her words didn’t have the ability to alter my world, or shift its axis.
“I still feel like there’s some tension between us. I feel like we’re taking our personal lives and bringing them into the office.” Really? This again? I thought we already dealt with this. “I want you to trust me, and I want us to be friends.”