I scoot my chair to give her better access to the keyboard.
She moves her chair closer to see the screen.
Now we're shoulder to shoulder.
She's scrolling through the slide deck, picking up where she left off.
I look at my tablet.
"The transition copy on slide eleven is too long," she says.
"Cut the second sentence. The image carries it."
She highlights, deletes. "Better?"
I lean slightly to read the slide. "Yeah."
She keeps typing.
I pull up the image file to check the harbor shot placement and there it is — the connectivity shot from the week we started. The one I waited three days to capture because the afternoon light hit that specific angle for exactly thirty-five minutes.
I turn the tablet so she can see where it sits in the sequence.
"This is still my favorite," I say.
She stops typing. Looks at the frame.
"Mine too." Her voice is quieter than it's been all night. "I didn't see it until you showed me."
She’s looking at the frame.
I look at the frame for another second.
"You see a lot more than you think you do," I say softly.
The pulse in her neck beats steadily. The stray piece of hair that came loose hours ago, rests against her jaw. My fingers twitch with the urge to tuck it behind her ear.
Focus, Tom.
I force my gaze down to the table. My left hand is resting on the wood, barely two inches from hers. Heat radiates from her shoulder. She smells like something incredibly clean. Not perfume. Just soap and warm skin.
She turns her head toward me to say something else.
The words never happen.
My eyes drop.
Her mouth.
Half a second—less—and then I'm looking at her eyes again. But her eyes haven't moved. She isn't looking at the screen anymore. She is looking right at me.
The room is suffocatingly quiet.
Neither of us moves. Neither of us takes a breath.
Six inches.
If I leaned forward just six inches, I could kiss her.
