“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked a bit more seriously this time.
Releasing a breath between my lips, I admitted, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Do you have an assessment coming up?”
“Next Monday.”
Contentedly, he rapped his knuckles at the top of the divider. “Well, that will do it.”
He sat back down on his chair, and through that one clear spot, I watched him lean back, close his eyes, and stretch up his arms, his white shirt untucking a little from the waistband of his trousers. Usually, he wore one of his elegant merino sweaters or a vest and a tie over his shirts, but not today. Today, he’d overslept and had left the apartment in a hurry, I’d heard him say to James from accounting earlier, so his shirt was left open at the collar, and the sleeves were rolled carelessly around his elbows.
The image of him like that, all tousled and exposed, I found oddly sensual. Strange thing to think about. And yet I kept thinking it, kept staring at his bare forearms and open neck and sleepy-eyed expression until his eyes darted toward the divider again and he looked back.
For a heart-dropping moment, we both froze, holding each other’s gaze. His lips parted; his throat bobbed. There was a question in his eyes I didn’t know how to answer. I felt caught, defenseless, having silently admitted something to him that I had yet to admit to myself. That he was not the only one who noticed. That I noticed too. Perhaps a little too much. Perhaps him alone.
The tips of my ears started to burn, the outline of my body evanescing until I was nothing but pulse and heat and breath.
But then, as if to spare me from the embarrassment of being the first one to look away, he made a show of checking the time on his wristwatch. “I’m going for a smoke. Wanna come?”
I shook my head, although I was dying for a cigarette.
Without offering any more of his quiet searching looks, he turned off his computer, shrugged on his jacket, and walked away.
I watched his tall, solid silhouette shrink until it disappeared within the steely cage of the elevator, then, finally, I let myself exhale.
No, Kai and I were not friends, not even rivals. But we were whateverthiswas. This half-conscious interplay of our personalities. My instinctual detachment and cool indifference, his resplendent desirability and unveiled attentiveness, my carefully structured life, and his slow but formidable effort to infiltrate it. Complicated little game. One I didn’t know how to play anyway.
As everyone started scattering for lunch, I remained glued to my seat, entranced by the bluish glow of the computer, the cursor silently blinking at me. Betty and the newest member of RAM, Sophie, came over and asked if we should go out for lunch now that the rain had let up. And indeed, all the windows around the office were glowing dimly yellow, but I claimed I was too busy finishing up my piece and didn’t get up to eat or smoke or even to refill my water bottle. I just sat there, fatigued, feeling cut off not only from myself but from everything and everyone around me, as though I was suddenly forced to observe the world from a great distance.
Even my reflection on the computer screen as it blackened seemed odd, my features pulling away, cutting off ties from each other until I no longer recognized myself.
Nostalgia,the word kept reverberating in my ears like the lyrics of a song I used to love but hadn’t heard in years.
As noon progressed the entire floor emptied. In the abrupt silence, a bizarre melancholy permeated me, which I hesitated to call sorrow, for what right did I have to feel sorrow?
I wondered if Betty ever felt like this, if behind her merry smiles and girlish sense of humor hid a person as conflicted and confused as I was. I wondered if Kai, for whom the world seemed to part and bend in ways that would never do for me, was ever troubled by his own existence. Was he as happy with himself and his life as he appeared to be? And what was happiness anyway? Was it just the absence of unhappiness, an unsophisticated sense of comfort and security that had nothing to do with you as an individual and everything to do with the environment that birthed you, or was it something tangible? A precious thing you could hold in your hand. The person who slept next to you at night.
I had no answer, only the same feeling of strangeness, enveloping me like a veil and separating me from the rest of the world.
Nostalgia: the sentimental longing for something of the past. Something you’re missing. Something you can never get back.
Perhaps the thing I was missing was the feeling itself. Perhaps the reason for all my sudden disquiet was my lack of something worth missing in the first place.
???
Half an hour later, Kai pranced over to my desk and dropped a little carton of orange juice and a clear, single-use lunchbox before me.
Frowning, I glanced up at him. “What is this?”
“Hm,” he hummed in mock thoughtfulness, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning with his hip against the far edge of my desk, the distracting physicality of his body hovering at an appropriate enough distance. “Let me see,” he continued, picking up the box to examine its contents. “Various raw greens combined with an assortment of nutrient-dense vegetables, topped with a little bit of protein and some citrusy goodness. Oh, yes. I believe that is asalad.”
“Very clever,” I deadpanned.
“Well, I tried being mind-numbingly dull, but it wasn’t getting your attention,” he retorted.
I let out a frustrated exhalation. “Why did you bring me this, Kai?”
“Because, Anya, it isn’t healthy for young women to skip meals. Don’t you ever read my column?”
