“Mm,” Anna agrees, bobbing her head. “You know who else is like that?” She doesn’t bother to wait for me to answer. “Blake.”
“Blake?” My top lip pulls up in confusion. “Our Blake? Serial-killer-eyes Blake?”
She rolls her eyes and waves me off. “He doesn’t have serial killer eyes, Lennon. He’s just very, very sensitive, that’s all.”
I search her face for traces of taking the piss, and find none. Instead, I find a pair of baby blues that are slightly widened and notice a slight tension in her fingers as she clamps them together.
Jesus.She’s serious, and not only that, she’s plagued by the nerves and self-doubt that typically accompany a crush on a nonhomicidal person.
“I can’t believe this,” I splutter. “How long have you felt like this?”
“Oh.” She rests her chin dreamily on her knuckles. “I saw him come in for his interview, and that was it. That black cat energy hit me like a ton of bricks. IbeggedBev to hire him.”
It’s one of the most insane things I’ve heard. Even if you take murderous tendencies out of the equation, Blake is a confirmed geek and Anna is a borderline jock who is light-years out of his league. “Does he know how you feel?”
“No.” She sighs with the dejected longing of a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. “I don’t think so. I’ve tried dropping hints, but…”
“Hints? You’ve tried dropping hints?” That’s not like Anna at all. In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never known her to drop a hint. She’s one of those people who tells everyone exactly what she wants, all the time, and thus, usually gets it. She calls this particular brand of self-advocacy Girl Power. Often. I’ve heard her talking about it more times than I can count. “But, but what about Girl Power?”
“I know, I know. Ordinarily, if I want a guy, I approach him… But the problem is, Ireallylike Blake, and I don’t want to ask him out unless I’m sure he likes me back. I know I come across super confident, and I am, but I’m notthatconfident, you know?”
I bob my head encouragingly, trying to think how best to advise her. I’m shocked by what she’s told me. It’s one hell of a conundrum because the only thing either of us can be absolutely positive Blake likes is true-crime documentaries. Still, Anna has shown herself to be a good friend, so it’s only fair for me to have her back.
“Look, I’m going to level with you,” I say. “You’re so far out of Blake’s league, you’re going to have to be direct if you want him because there’s no waythatman out there”—I point emphatically through the wall in the direction of Blake’s desk—“thinks he has a chance with you.”
Her jaw drops. “D’you think not?”
“I’m about a hundred percent sure he doesn’t.”
It’s not often one gets to experience being a hundred percent sure about anything, especially not me. Especially not when I’ve been the way I’ve been for the last while.
It feels good. Really good. Nice and uplifting.
Anna adjourns our meeting with a promise to check in with me again early next week, and I head back to my desk.
I can’t tell if I’m simply more aware of Blake, given the conversation I just had, or if he seems unusually interested in what Anna and I were doing in the small break room. His shoulders rise microscopically, and though he keeps his head facing forward, I notice the glint of an inky black pupil glaring at me.
He seems prickly today, but again, it’s hard to say if it’s his baseline level of prickliness or if there’s something more to it.
“You good?” he asks, tapping at his keyboard in an unnerving way that doesn’t require him to look down at his hands.
“Yup,” I reply.
“I’m good too,” Anna interjects pleasantly. “I’msohappy it’s Friday.”
It’s not a question, but it sounds like one. Not only that, there’s a whole part of the sentence that she didn’t say aloud, but now that I know it’s there, I can’t help hearing it. It goes something like:Are you doing anything nice this weekend, Blake? No? Me neither. Gosh, I wonder if we should do something together?
How the hell did I miss this? It’s so obvious.
I used to be pretty good at this shit. What the hell happened to me?
Oh.
Yeah.
That’s right. Connor happened, and shocked the shit out of my brain. He lobotomized me with a current of electricity he sent through my computer screen. That’s what happened. He did itagain with the notice he put up in Crema, and again the first time we met.
He did it in the apartment, in the bar, and on the roof when we kissed. And he did it last night when he took me apart.
