"Through discussion. Mediation. Compromise." She counts off each option on her fingers, her manicured nails catching the fluorescent light.
I wrinkle my nose. "Boring."
"Effective!" she snaps back, jabbing one finger toward me for emphasis.
We stare at each other across the small breakroom table. Her chest rises and falls rapidly. My breathing remains steady, calm. I could sit here all day, watching the fire build in her eyes, but I suspect she is calculating how many workplace violations she could charge me with if she gave in to the urge to throw that binder at my head.
Her pulse is visible at her throat, a rapid flutter beneath pale skin. Her hands grip the binder so tightly her knuckles have gone white. She is vibrating with contained fury, and I realize with sudden, perfect clarity that this woman does not lose control often.
But I have pushed her to the edge of something she cannot calculate or predict or defend against with protocol and procedure.
And I find that I like it very much indeed.
"You are very beautiful when you are angry," I tell her. It is a simple observation. A truth.
She freezes completely. Every muscle locks. Even her breathing stops for a heartbeat. "What?"
"Your face gets color. Your eyes get brighter. You look alive instead of like a...what is the word? Statue."
"That is the most inappropriate thing you could possibly say right now," she hisses, her voice dropping to something dangerous and low. The color hasn't left her cheeks—if anything, it's deepened, spreading down her neck in blotches that I find oddly fascinating.
"Why?" I ask, genuinely curious. It seems like a reasonable observation to me.
"Because we are talking about you breaking workplace rules!" She gestures emphatically with the binder, nearly smacking it against the table. "We are in the middle of discussing your complete disregard for professional conduct, and you—you?—"
She seems to run out of words, which is unusual for her. She always has words, usually very sharp ones delivered with surgical precision.
"I have not broken anything," I point out reasonably, leaning back in my chair. The plastic creaks under my weight. "Steve is still breathing. I checked."
"He's unconscious!" Her voice climbs an octave, edging toward that pitch that means she's truly losing her grip on her carefully maintained composure.
"Temporarily," I clarify, because this seems like an important distinction. "He will wake up. Probably with a headache, but humans are resilient. He'll be fine by lunch."
Orla makes a sound that might be a growl. She flips the binder to another page. "Section Seven. Theft of personal property."
"I did not steal," I say, crossing my arms over my chest. The suit jacket pulls tight across my shoulders, I hear a small thread pop. "I conquered."
"THAT'S WORSE!" Orla's voice erupts from her throat with such force that I'm momentarily impressed. For someone so small, she can produce remarkable volume when sufficiently provoked.
Her voice echoes off the breakroom walls, bouncing between the motivational posters about "teamwork" and "synergy" that I still don't fully understand. The fluorescent lights seem to flicker in sympathy with her outburst.
Silence falls in the wake of her shout, heavy and expectant.
On the floor beside the vending machine, Steve groans softly and shifts his weight, his fingers twitching against the cheap linoleum. But his eyes remain closed. He doesn't wake.
Orla looks down at him, her chest still heaving from the force of her yell. Then she looks at me, her eyes narrowed behind those sharp-edged glasses that somehow make her look even more dangerous. Then she looks at the binder in her hands, that massive tome of rules and regulations that she wields like a holy text.
Then she does something I don't expect.
She laughs.
Not a polite laugh. Not one of those controlled, corporate laughs I've heard her use with the Chieftain—the CEO—during meetings. Not the kind that sounds like it's been practiced in front of a mirror and deployed strategically.
A real one.
Short, sharp, almost painful sounding, like it's been dragged out of her against her will. Like her body has staged a rebellion against her usual iron control and wrested this sound from somewhere deep in her chest where she normally keeps all her genuine reactions locked away.
She covers her mouth with one hand, the one not gripping the binder, but I can see her shoulders shaking. Her eyes squeeze shut behind her glasses.
