I pull my phone out and open my email instead.
The draft saves automatically. Subject line first:Thursday Presentation—Final Check. Clean. Professional.
I start with "Hey Sam," then stop. Stare at it for three seconds. Backspace until it's gone.
Straight to bullets.
Confirm slide deck is locked
Review transitions one more time
Arrive 15 min early for tech check
My thumb hovers over the send button. It looks like an email I'd send to a client I've worked with twice. Polite. Distant. Exactly what I need it to be.
I hit send before I can second-guess it.
Her reply comes in five minutes. I'm still on the train, two stops from home.
Received. Thanks.
No emoji. No warmth. No sign of the woman who laughed at my bureaucracy joke last week or sent me a GIF of a cat wearing safety goggles.
I lock my phone and shove it back in my pocket. It stings, but I tell myself it's necessary. Better distant than reckless.
The train pulls into my stop and I get off, climbing the stairs to street level, walking the four blocks to my building without seeing any of it.
Thursday morning I text Sam at seven-fifteen.
Running late, see you at the presentation.
I'm not late. I'm in a coffee shop three blocks from the site office, drinking an americano I don't want, killing time so I don't have to stand next to her in the lobby and pretend we didn't almost kiss two days ago.
We always grab coffee together before Board meetings. It's been our routine since week two—her oat milk latte, my black coffee, ten minutes of low-stakes conversation that settles us both before we walk into the room.
This week I'm sitting alone at a table by the window, watching the clock on my phone tick closer to eight.
The air in the boardroom is stifling. I anchor myself to the edge of the conference table while Sam runs the deck, keeping as much physical distance between us as the room allows.
She cues me halfway through, right where we practiced. She pauses, giving me the opening to explain how the light shifts in the pedestrian corridor.
I stay silent.
She waits. Two seconds. Three. Her hand hovers over the clicker and her eyes flick toward me—confused, maybe annoyed—before she keeps going.
She recovers because she's too good not to, but the rhythm is broken. Aldridge's pen taps against his notebook—tap tap tap.
