Rumors and Romance at the Office

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My new boss had me pinned to the wall, his mouth an inch from mine.

You've never even tried me, he said, low and unhurried. So how would you know I'm just average?

Twelve hours earlier, a coworker had cornered me by the coffee machine, dying for details about the night the two of us got locked in the office. Just him. Just me. All night.

"So?" she'd whispered. "How was it?"

I shrugged. "Average, I guess."

What I didn't tell her:

That man is not some stranger who wandered in with a corner office. I sat next to him for three years of high school. I spent most of them pretending I hadn't memorized the exact line of his jaw. Then he vanished across an ocean, and I told myself that was that.

Now he signs my paychecks. And he looks at me like he can hear every lie before it reaches my mouth.

Average. Right.

Let him hear me call him average.

Chapter 1

The new boss walked into the Monday meeting, and half the room forgot how to breathe.

I didn't. I already knew that face. I'd spent three years of high school sitting next to it.

His name was Adrian Li. Master's from overseas, back stateside, and somehow standing at the head of my conference room like he owned the building. Which, as I'd learn, he basically did.

He gave a short, smooth introduction. The compliments started before he finished.

"So handsome."

"He's got that whole quiet-power thing."

"Young and already running the place. Goals."

I raised my hand. Everyone turned, hopeful.

"Personally," I said, "I just really admire his commitment to being employed."

The room made a sound like a tire going flat.

Adrian's eyes found me. Only me. Like the other thirty people were furniture.

"And your name?" he asked.

As if he didn't know it. As if he hadn't sat close enough to copy off my homework for three straight years.

"Josie," I said. "Vance. Two syllables. Easy to fit on a lawsuit."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "Josie. Stay after."

The girl beside me was wheezing.

After the room cleared, he asked if I was a morning person.

"Huge fan," I said. "Love the feeling of a coffin lid coming off at dawn."

"Good. Six a.m. tomorrow."

Somewhere deep in my soul, something started screaming. Did this man not run on human sarcasm? Did they filter it out at customs on the way home?

Six a.m. The next morning.

He showed up in workout gear, all posture and cheekbones, and every auntie hauling grocery bags slowed down to look. Please. So performative.

He didn't say a word, just steered me into the diner under the office and watched me order half the menu. Eggs, hash browns, a stack of pancakes, a breakfast burrito, coffee. Then he reached over and took a bite of each one, slow, like he had nowhere to be.

"From now on," he said, "six a.m. You eat breakfast with me."

I set down my coffee and looked him dead in the eye. "Corporate drones don't eat breakfast."

"Two grand more a month. Call it overtime."

I had the diner's loyalty card out of my wallet fast enough to leave a scorch mark. "Morning, sir. The usual, and keep it coming."

Adrian raised an eyebrow. "Thought drones didn't eat breakfast."

"..."

God, he talks a lot.

By the time we reached the office, only the cleaning crew had beaten us in. As if normal hours weren't punishment enough, now I had a dawn shift too.

I sat down at my desk and began, immediately, to do nothing. If you're not slacking on the clock, are you even alive.

I coasted so hard the whole day just evaporated. Around quitting time, Chloe finally cracked.

"Josie." She leaned over the divider. "What is going on with you lately? You've completely checked out."

"You check out, I check out, and the boss's caviar turns into cold fried rice." I nodded at the delivery bag a courier had just set outside his door. Actual caviar. On ice. I felt my soul leave my body. He eats like that. I eat like a vending machine had a bad day.

New plan: I would simply stop working. If I didn't try, he couldn't have the life he wanted.

A knuckle rapped down on the top of my skull.

I yelped.

"Daydreaming again?" The voice came from above, low and unbothered. Adrian, holding a file, looking personally wronged by my existence.

"Josie." He dropped the file on my desk. "You're staying late tonight. Everyone else goes home on time."

Then he walked off.

I saw red.

The consolation started right away.

"Just let it go."

"He's probably having a rough day."

"Josie, sweetie. Look at his face. Forgive him for the face."

My hands were shaking. I unclenched my jaw one word at a time. "Pep talks won't fix this. If I'm not going home, neither is he."

I grabbed the file and marched straight for the corner office.

Behind me, someone whispered, "Legend." The whole floor peeled off their chairs and crept toward the door to listen, every last one of them dying to watch me take on the boss.

Chapter 2

I was so wound up I forgot to watch my feet. Two steps into his office I hit a slick spot and went straight down, onto my knees, right in front of him.

Fine. I could work with this.

I let the tears come, full snot-and-sobbing, and begged him not to make me stay.

Adrian looked up from his files. "Coworker feedback says you're a career single, and your evenings run about ninety percent video games and reality TV. Consider the overtime a gift. Personal growth."

Which coworker. Which one of you.

My eyes snapped dry. "I actually have a date tonight. My mom set it up. She says if I'm not married by New Year's, she's changing the locks."

Adrian's eyes narrowed, just slightly. He picked up his phone and dialed.

"Hi, it's Ade. Heard Josie's got a big date tonight?"

My stomach dropped through the floor.

Who. Who is he calling.

"Mm. See, the thing is, she's been a little unfocused at work. I'd like to keep her late so she can catch up."

A voice crackled through the speaker. A voice I have known my entire life.

I lunged across the desk and ripped the phone out of his hand.

"You. How do you have my mother's number?"

He tipped his head, dragged a thumb slow along his jaw, and let one corner of his mouth lift. "Guess."

"Do I look twelve? I'm not guessing."

Who does this. What kind of functioning adult boss calls an employee's mother.

"She says you don't have a date tonight." He paused. "She also says"

Says what.

He leaned in, close enough that the warmth of him settled against the side of my face.

"that you've spent the last few years waiting for someone to come home from overseas. And you turn down every date."

His voice was right at my ear. My pulse climbed into my throat. My face went hot.

"It's not you I'm waiting for."

Pride. It just fell out of me.

His eyes creased into a slow, unhurried smile. "I never said it was."

Now my face could've fried an egg.

"Relax," he murmured. "Little deskmate."

He drifted closer, something glinting behind his eyes. I didn't dare breathe. Then I shoved him back and grabbed for higher ground.

"If single people have to work late," I said, "then what does that make you?"

If I'm miserable, you're miserable.

"Correct." He didn't miss a beat. "Which is why tonight it's just the two of us."

Somehow it was past midnight and we were still in his office.

I watched him work. Jaw set, sleeves shoved up, completely at ease. I let out a long breath. The man was using me like an intern on a leash. Any day now my life was going to jump genres, straight from Josie's Promotion Diary to Personal Assistant to the CEO Who Owns Her Soul.

Stress makes me hungry. I ordered fried rice.

When it came, I stared.

Sitting next to my sad little carton of fried rice: caviar. Again.

Does this caviar have a tracking chip. Is it following me.

I gave up. He eats like a yacht. I eat like a gas station at closing time. New strategy: total non-effort. As long as I refused to try, he couldn't have the life he wanted.

A knuckle cracked down on my forehead.

I winced.

"Spacing out again?" The voice landed from above, low and even.

I arranged my face into deep thought. "I'm thinking."

"About."

"The heat death of the universe."

Adrian went quiet. Then he reached over, took my fried rice, and started eating it like it had always been his.

"Eat," he said. "We go home after."

He didn't ask which carton was mine. He didn't ask anything. He just knew. The way he somehow had my mother's number, and the exact shape of every word I wasn't saying.

Chapter 3

He set the caviar down in front of me.

I looked at the caviar, then at my sad little fried rice, and felt something swell in my chest. I thumped my fist against my ribs twice. "Brothers. For life."

"Who's your brother?" Adrian said.

Oh?

Was it possible he still remembered? The us that used to be more than friends and less than something we never got to name?

I looked at him, a whole novel happening behind my eyes.

A knuckle flicked my forehead mid-fantasy.

"What are you dreaming about? I'm just sick of caviar."

Ugh.

The sheer audacity of the wealthy.

By the time we wrapped, it was one in the morning.

We were halfway to the door when I clocked it: the building had auto-locked.

I lost it. "Call the security guard. Get us out of here."

Adrian checked the time and frowned. "He lives twenty miles out. Let the man sleep."

I took three slow breaths and gave him a thumbs-up. "Wow. What a champion of the working class."

He pulled a throw blanket off the couch and draped it over my shoulders. "I'm not some heartless vampire. Taking care of my people is the job."

"Right. So you keep me here until the doors literally lock us in. That's you taking care of me."

I raised a furious fist.

Adrian caught it in one hand. His thumb moved, slow, over my knuckles.

Current shot straight up my arm.

"You're not my people," he said.

He leaned in until half his weight was against me. Back when we shared a desk, we got close, but we almost never touched. This was new. My heart slammed hard enough to climb out of my throat.

The air went thick. Our breathing tangled.

"You"

My phone went off at the worst possible second.

My mother, opening fire. "Where in God's name are you? I slept, I woke up, and you're still not home?"

I held the phone away from my head before she gave me a coronary.

Before I could get a word out, Adrian slid the phone from my hand and had her calmed in three sentences flat.

"Be good and listen to your boss," she said, and hung up.

Listen to my boss.

I had no idea why that phrasing rang a bell.

Adrian took off his jacket. The white shirt underneath sat open at the collar, skin pale in the low light. He rolled his sleeves to the middle of his forearms, and the muscle there shifted when he moved.

I swallowed.

Apparently I was staring, because he tipped his head. "What? Big fan of all-nighters?"

"Obsessed. It's like going one-on-one with the Grim Reaper."

He laughed, full and easy, one sharp little canine showing.

"Sleep," he said. "It's almost light out."

He got up and killed the lamp.

I opened a bottle of wine to knock myself out.

"Josie." His voice came out of the dark. "We agreed to go abroad together. Why'd you back out?"

I looked toward him. There was nothing there but black, and his voice moving quietly through it.

"Because that year"

Because that year, my family's company went under. My father went to prison. My mother collapsed.

I couldn't leave. There was no version of that year where I could have left.

Adrian waited in the dark.

My stupid pride wouldn't let me open my mouth.

Chapter 4

I took a hard pull straight from the bottle. "Because that year, I had a change of heart. Turns out I'm a stay-and-rot kind of girl, not a chase-it-across-an-ocean kind. Real heroes don't need passports anyway."

The night air stirred the pale curtains at the window.

Adrian sat back against the couch, the glass behind him, and the look in his eyes was one I couldn't read.

"Josie. You're really something."

His voice had gone cold.

My heart dropped through the floor.

There was a time we stood shoulder to shoulder, close enough that even our teachers said we matched. Now I had to tip my head back just to steal a look at him.

I slept hard, and the dream took me all the way back to the best years I ever had.

Back to the desk I shared with him.

Adrian was a god at math and a tragedy at English. I was the exact reverse. Our homeroom teacher, who was clearly up to something, sat us together. Model student, ruined. Within a month he was getting chewed out daily, right alongside me.

One afternoon, silent quiz, I blanked on how to spell a word. I slid my eyes over to his paper. He'd written his answer out in big, sure letters, and it was so confidently, catastrophically wrong that I lost it. Cackled. In the dead silence of a test.

The teacher threw me out. Then she read his paper, and threw him out too.

After that I trailed him everywhere, trying to make it up to him.

At lunch he vanished into the bathroom and didn't come back out.

"What are you washing in there?" I called. Whatever it was, I'd already decided I would wash it for him.

He said he was washing his hair.

So I shouted, at full volume, into the boys' bathroom: "Just lie down and put your head back, I'll wash it for you!"

Silence.

Then the English teacher walked out.

I will remember the look on his face until the day I die.

Somewhere along the way, the two of us just got used to each other.

There was a class trip. Boys and girls in separate rooms, so I bunked with a girl from my row and he bunked with a boy from his. Our rooms shared a wall.

His roommate dragged him over to ours to play cards. I was sprawled on the bed. He sat stiff on the very edge of it.

Then, out of nowhere, our teacher came knocking.

"Hide!" the other girl hissed.

One boy dove for the bathroom.

Adrian, faster than sound, dove under my covers and pulled them up over both our heads.

Under the blanket, we looked at each other.

It was so quiet. Just the girl at the door stalling the teacher, and two heartbeats going way too fast.

His eyes held mine, hazy at the edges, and I couldn't have looked away if the ceiling had caved in.

I fisted the sheet.

His lips parted. He was saying something, I think.

I couldn't hear it.

I never got to hear it.

The blanket grew heavier. Warmer. And somewhere in there the dream started to come apart, because the warmth was too real, the weight too solid, and my hand had found smooth, bare skin that belonged to no memory at all.

I wasn't dreaming anymore. I couldn't tell if I was awake. My palm was pressed flat to something firm and warm and breathing, and for the life of me I couldn't place whose it was.

A low breath, right against me.

A voice I knew, close in the dark.

"Stop that. Keep touching and my abs are going to catch fire."

Chapter 5