It’s supposed to be background noise, something to keep my brain from gnawing on itself while I alphabetize the chaos in front of me. Except… it’s not background. It is very much foreground. The narrator’s voice drops and I swear the room temperature climbs five degrees.
“…his hand slides along her hip—firm, claiming—and she tilts toward him like a tide pulled by?—”
Okay, um, wow. I click the speed to 1.3x like that’ll make it suddenly SFW. It does not. I should switch to a podcast about amortization schedules or something, but my hands are full ofthree-hole-punched seduction. I set a neat stack, reach for the next?—
A warm palm lands on my hip.
Every nerve in my body misfires. The book in my ears says hip and my hip gets touched and my hindbrain, that traitorous bitch, responds before the human part can vote. I inhale and—God help me—lean back, ass first. My hips press into firm muscle. A breath catches behind me—his or mine, I don’t know, but I felt it—and heat spikes at the nape of my neck.
Oh.Oh no.
Reality slams in a beat later. I jerk forward so fast a stack of quizzes avalanches, whirling around, heart in my throat, earbuds still droning on, noise canceling still in full effect. Leo is inches away, palm lifted in a uselessoh-hey-don’t-freakgesture, eyes wide like a kid who set off a firecracker in a library.
The slap leaves my hand before I decide to use it.
Crack. Except, still, I don’t hear anything save the foreplay ramping up from two to five chilis super hella fast in my ears.
Leo’s head snaps to the side. A faint red bloom rises on his cheek, slow as a Polaroid. For a split second we are both statues—me with my chest heaving, him with his jaw clenched and his eyes carefullynoton mine.
I yank an earbud out. Silence floods in except for the copier’s steadychunk-chunk, the clack of a paper tray reseating itself. The audiobook, disrespectful little hussy, keeps going in one ear about how she opens for him like?—
This has to stop. Like right the fuck now.
Pulling out the other earbud, I slam it down on the countertop next to its partner.
“I—” My voice comes out shredded. “You cannot—do not—touch me like that.” I’m trying to breathe through it. The adrenaline spike. The shame and heat climbing up my throat. The way my body moved all on its own like I’d been wired to a switch.
Leo lifts both hands now, palms out, fingers spread. Noswagger, no grin—he’s looking at me like I’m a spooked animal, seconds away from fight or flight.
He’s probably not wrong.
“You’re right,” he says, and it’s quiet and immediate, the apology tucked right into the first syllable. “I’m sorry. I thought—” He swallows, recalibrates. “I didn’t think. I saw your earbuds and… I shouldn’t have touched you. That’s on me.”
The thing about anger is that it comes with friends. Embarrassment. Mortification. A slideshow of moments I will replay in my brain at three a.m. night after night for the rest of… forever? Yes, forever.
“Why would you think—” I stop, inhale, try again. “Why would you touch me? At work?!”
“I was trying not to startle you with my voice,” he says, wincing like he hears how stupid that sounds as it exits his mouth. “Which, when said out loud, is dumber than the dumbest option available.” A beat. “I’m sorry.”
The handprint on his cheek is perfectly shaped where it rises above his stubble, finger lines extending toward his cheekbone. Suddenly, I don’t know what to do with my hands. I put them on my hips, then cross them, then aim them at the stapler like that’s a weapon I could use.
“I—” I suck in a breath that shakes. “I leaned back.” Why am I admitting that out loud? No idea.
Leo blinks. The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to acknowledge that sentence. But of course, he does. “You did.”
“Don’t,” I warn, finger up, because if he smirks even an inch I will shove him into the recycling bin and call it a day.
“I won’t,” he says quickly. “I’m not. Tote—Victoria—Tori—I’m serious. I’m sorry.” He points vaguely toward the pod offices beyond the copy room door. “I’m going to give you some space. And get some ice. For your hand or my face or maybe your pride… or mine—whatever needs it most. Probably all of those things.”
He pivots, then hesitates. “Can I— Are you okay? You look… frazzled?”
Am I? My pulse is a drumline. My face is on fire. There’s a dry spot on my tongue that no amount of swallowing fixes. And beneath the humiliation is the whisper of something I don’t want to admit: the way my body said yes before my brain remembered where we are, who we are, how complicated all of this is.
For fuck’s sake—I didn’t even know who had walked up behind me! My body wants to say it knew, instinctively, that Leo was the man touching me. But can I honestly say that? Nope.
The sexy book said he put his hand upon her hip, then the mystery man put his hand upon my hip, and then my body was like, “Mmmm, yes. When I dip, you dip, we dip.”Absolutely mortifying.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because I don’t have a term for this particular flavor of meltdown. “Just… go.”
