“To make Evan jealous,” she says carefully.
“Well, the thing about that is it’s amorphous, hard to define, and open to lots of interpretation,” I tell her. “I can’t read minds. I don’t know what he’s thinking. We can say make him jealous until the cows come home, but when do I get to say mission accomplished?”
Kat locks eyes with me and frowns, thinking.
“When he leaves here in a bad mood?” she says.
“You gotta do better than that,” I tell her. “Go big. Pie in the sky. Tell me what to push for.”
“You’re really taking this seriously.”
“I’m very mission-oriented,” I say, and she nods. There’s more silence, her eyes on mine. Her lips part by a few millimeters, but in the stillness, I notice. I can’t help but notice.
“I want him to beg for me back,” she finally says, so low it’s nearly covered by the rush of the air conditioning in the building.
Oh.
“I want him to break up with her—or not, I honestly don’t care—and beg for me to take him back. I want him on his knees. Losing his mind. So consumed by jealousy that he can’t eat or sleep or think straight, and I want him to plead and shout and fucking beg for me to take him back.”
I’m motionless. Waiting, drinking in the onslaught of her words: beg. Plead. Knees. I’m quiet until I’m sure she’s finished.
“Is that all?” I ask, and she smiles.
“You said go big,” she reminds me, pushing a hand through her bangs, shrugging, the intensity deflected. “He doesn’t really need to get on his—”
“You think we can’t make him beg?” I ask, the words out of my mouth before I can consider them.
“I think he’s not the begging type.”
“All the better.”
“Is it?”
“You said knees,” I tell her, with more vehemence than I mean to. “I’ll get you knees, Kat. I’ll get him squirming on his belly if you want.”
I offer a smile that I don’t quite feel and that she doesn’t return.
“Knees would be enough,” she says, after a moment. “If you think you can—”
She falls silent at the sound of the main door opening.
“—Cash only,” Meckler’s voice says, cutting across the rows of desks in the open-plan office space. “When was the last time you saw that? I’m pretty sure half the hillbillies here keep their savings account under their mattresses.”
Kat’s eyes meet mine, wide with surprise and something else.
“It’s—”
“On your desk.”
She doesn’t move. I push myself to standing and put my printout of the rules facedown behind her on the desk, our bodies briefly a few inches apart. She’s gone rigid again, like she’s bracing for something.
“You’re gonna sit on your desk and I’m gonna kiss you,” I tell her. Adrenaline pricks through my veins, jolts my brain alive, spins out a plan without me even having to try. “We’re gonna touch each other in pre-approved ways and we’re gonna look like we do it all the time. You ready?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, giving me a nod I feel more than see, as Meckler keeps talking, voice coming closer.
“Probably four,” he’s saying. “A little less if I’m lucky, but their staffing situation is such a…”
Kat hops up onto her desk, while he goes on, back straight and stiff as a broadsword. I think she swallows. When I step up to her she parts her knees and I stand between them. My hands go to her hips. Hers go to my shoulders. I feel like a mannequin being posed: hand goes here and head tilts this way and stand like this and lean like this, except my fingers sink into her hips where I’m holding her. Except her knees are on the outsides of my thighs, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was pressing us together.