“The point is that you’re wasting time reinventing the wheel when I could teach you the system in an afternoon.”
She considers this. I can see the war happening behind her eyes—pride versus practicality, independence versus common sense. It’s fascinating to watch, even if it is a little maddening.
“If you teach me,” she begins with hesitation, “you actually teach me. You don’t just give me the answers and expect me to memorize them.”
“Agreed.”
“And you don’t hover.”
“I’ll try.”
“And you don’t get condescending when I ask questions.”
“I’m never condescending.”
She snorts. The sound is unladylike and completely genuine. “You’re condescending all the time.”
“Name one instance.”
“Yesterday, when I asked about the filing system, you literally said ‘it’s quite simple, really’ before explaining something that took twenty minutes.”
I wince. She’s right. I did say that. “Fair point. I’ll work on that.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I hold her gaze, refusing to look away first. Finally, she uncrosses her arms and pulls her chair back.
“Fine. Teach me.”
I grab my own chair and roll it over to her desk. The wheels squeak against the hardwood floor. We’re close now, with our knees almost touching. I can see the faint freckles across her nose that she usually covers with makeup. I could count each individual eyelash if I wanted to.
I don’t want to. That would be strange.
Focus.
“Pull up the Westbrook contracts,” I tell her. “Let’s start with the raw data.”
For the next two hours, I walk her through my company’s vendor evaluation framework. I explain the tiered system we use to categorize suppliers—platinum, gold, silver, and bronze, based on volume, reliability, and strategic importance. I show her how to identify overlapping services and calculate potential cost savings, then teach her the questions to ask, the red flags to watch for, the nuances that don’t show up in any manual.
She’s a fast learner. Faster than I expected, and I expected a lot. Her questions are probing and specific, designed to extract maximum information with minimum words. The notes she takes use a shorthand only she can read, but more than once, she makes connections I didn’t anticipate. She links patterns across contracts that even I hadn’t noticed.
Her photographic memory is remarkable. I mention a clause structure once, and she recalls it perfectly forty minutes later when it becomes relevant again. An obscure vendor code I reference offhand gets pulled up without checking her notes.
By noon, she’s tackling contracts on her own. I’ve moved back to my desk, but I keep one eye on her progress. Every thirty minutes or so, she calls me over to check something. Each time, I have to remind myself to keep an appropriate distance. Each time, I fail.
“This vendor has two contracts with conflicting terms,” she announces around one o’clock. “One from Westbrook, one from us. Which takes precedence?”
I lean over her shoulder to look at the screen and brace my hand against the back of her chair while her hair brushes my forearm, soft and carrying that same floral scent.
“Ours,” I manage. My voice sounds normal. Good. “We’re the acquiring company. But flag it anyway—legal should review before we terminate.”
“Got it.”
She makes a note. I don’t move. Neither does she.
The moment stretches. I’m acutely aware of how close we are, how easy it would be to turn my head and—
“Anything else?” I ask, cutting off that dangerous train of thought.
“Not yet.”
