My thumb swipes the notification away before I’ve consciously decided to, and I lock the screen and set the phone back in my lap face-down. The movement takes less than a second. It’s practiced now. Automatic. I’ve been doing it for a week, swiping away messages from numbers I don’t recognize but know thesource of, blocking them, deleting them, pretending they don’t exist.
Alexei’s eyes are on the road.
He didn’t see.
Good.
The office is different now, my relationship to it shifting in ways that still catch me off guard. I’m no longer the quiet girl on the fourteenth floor who eats onigiri at her desk. I’m the Prince of Atlantis’s wife, which means doors are held and greetings are warmer and the colleagues who once whispered about “the human on the design team” now smile at me with a brightness that I’m choosing to believe is genuine.
Kirsten treats me exactly the same, which I love her for.
Trish texts me seventeen times before noon, which I also love her for.
Trish: Did he do the collar thing again this morning
Me: How do you know about the collar thing
Trish: You told me about it on Tuesday and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The man adjusts your COLLAR Zia. That’s peak husband behavior. My man sends me anonymous bento boxes which is also very romantic but he has never adjusted my collar and now I need him to
Me: I’m sure if you asked...
Trish: You can’t ASK someone to adjust your collar. It has to be ORGANIC
And then, between Trish’s collar analysis and a notification from the design team Slack channel, a text from Maryah:
Maryah: Quick question. Does Alexei do the thing where he stands in a doorway and just watches you for an uncomfortable amount of time without saying anything?
Me: ...yes?
Maryah: Nicolo does it too. I think it’s an alpha male preter thing. They just stand there and OBSERVE you like you’re a nature documentary. You get used to it. Kind of.
I’m smiling at my screen when a notification slides down from the top.
Different number. Same area code.
I know you’re blocking me. I understand. But please, Zia. Just one conversation. That’s all I’m asking.
The smile fades.
I block the number. I delete the message. I go back to Trish’s texts and type something about collar etiquette that makes her send back a string of capital letters.
The shadow passes.
At 11:45 my phone lights up with a name that still makes my heart flip, even after a week of seeing it: Alexei.
Just seeing it there, his name, on my phone, calling me, is surreal in a way I don’t think will ever fully normalize. Seven weeks ago this man was a cryptid sighting. Four glimpses in three months. A chest-flip I shut down so hard I gave myselfemotional whiplash. And now his name is on my phone and he’s calling to ask what I want for lunch.
“Hi,” I say, and my voice does that embarrassing soft thing it does when I answer his calls, the one Trish has described as “disgusting and I need you to do it louder so I can record it.”
“Come upstairs.”
Two words. Low. The particular register of his voice that I’m learning means he’s not asking about lunch.
I go upstairs.
His study door closes behind me, and his hands are on my waist before I’ve finished saying hello, and he lifts me onto the edge of his desk with a fluidity that should not be possible but is, and the sound I make when his mouth finds my neck is not appropriate for a professional environment.
“We’re at work,” I whisper.
