Chapter 3
Lina was the worst kind of morning person. She flipped on lights, banged pots and pans around, sang. She didn’t understand the importance of savoring every last minute before one’s alarm clock rang.
Ashley put out a zombie-like arm and felt around for her cell phone. Sure enough, it was only five-forty-five. Her alarm wouldn’t go off until six. She groaned and got up anyway. If she didn’t love Lina so much, she’d never put up with this kind of time-abuse.
After Ashley’s sister, Paige, married, Ashley never thought she’d want another roommate. But being alone was expensive. And lonely. So when Lina offered her extra bedroom, Ashley took her up on it. They barely knew each other. Lina was Paige’s friend and a strange one at that. Besides the whole morning person thing, Lina was fearless. She’d say or try anything. She was a person with boundless energy and ideas.
The only thing Ashley and Lina had in common was their terrible taste in men. Which was why they’d be roommates forever, both doomed to be single, for all eternity.
“Hey, don’t frown. It’s bad for your soul.” Lina grinned at her from the kitchen stove. She was already dressed in her pink scrubs, looking way too fabulous to spend all day cleaning people’s teeth.
Ashley raised an eyebrow. “You know what else is bad for your soul? Lack of sleep.”
Lina twirled around her and ducked into the pantry, her short dark bob bouncing like something out of a Pantene commercial. “Go shower until you’ve washed off all the grumpy. I’ll have breakfast ready when you get out.”
Ashley didn’t have to be told twice. She took a long shower and dressed for work. Lina’s breakfast spread was amazing. She didn’t go to this much effort all the time, but whenever strawberries went on sale, she’d buy a bunch and make crepes to go with them.
They sat down together and didn’t hold back on the whipped cream. Ashley would have no excuses about exercising after work.
“I met a guy,” Lina admitted, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Oh, yeah? Who?” This was nothing new. Lina was gorgeous. Guys fell over themselves trying to come up and talk to her.
Lina picked up her plate and rinsed it in the sink. “He was in line behind me at the tire shop. We chatted while they rotated my tires, and he’s taking me out on Friday night.” Lina took in Ashley’s worried expression. “If you’re that concerned, you should get a date and come with us.”
“I’m not ready.”
“It’s been over a year. It’s time, Ash.”
Ashley put the lid on the whipped cream can and brought it to the fridge. “When I’m ready, I’ll know.”
***
The knowledge that their department was a failed experiment, weeks away from elimination, changed the way Chase felt about every task he used to take pride in. He still worked just as hard on the print ads and the articles for their last issue ofAutoBest Cares, but his heart wasn’t in it. This was why Mr. Davidson made him promise not to tell anyone else. Their productivity would dwindle to nothing.
He’d stayed up too late looking at job openings, but so far, nothing stood out as a great opportunity.
“Coffee’s ready,” Ashley announced before sitting at her desk. Chase didn’t normally like coffee, but anything to keep his eyelids open at this point would be a good thing. He got up after emailing Mr. Davidson the charts he’d asked for and headed to the back counter.
He began filling a Styrofoam cup with the black steaming liquid and jumped when a little bit spilled down the side of the cup. Chase grabbed a napkin from a nearby stack and bent down to clean up the drips on the linoleum floor.
A gold bracelet caught his eye and he picked it out of the dust bunny graveyard they had going on under the counter. Ashley wore it all the time. The clasp must have come undone while she was making coffee.
He headed back, leaving the coffee by his computer, and brought the bracelet to her desk. Ashley was nowhere in sight. He grabbed a sticky note off her pad and quickly wrote in small, generic block letters, “Found this. I believe it’s missing the company of your lovely arm,” then placed it above her keyboard.
He walked away, resisting the urge to go crinkle the note. What had he done that for? He was never spontaneous. It was all he could do not to rewrite it and agonize over it until he came up with something perfect or abandoned it altogether. Instead, he forced himself back to work. After ten minutes, he couldn’t resist peeking around his screen.
Ashley was at her desk, busy working on something, but every once in a while she’d pick up the sticky note and smile at it. The bracelet was back on her arm. He dropped his gaze when she glanced up. He usually wrote in messy cursive, but it wasn’t a perfect disguise of his handwriting. Would she know it was him?
At lunchtime he stayed at his desk, contemplating more reckless stupidity. Every minute sitting here, while she sat over there, was like a ticking time bomb of lost opportunity. He would never get the courage to talk to her the way he wanted to. To tell her he was in love with her. It didn’t matter that he had nothing to lose now. He’d thought it would make a difference, but the fear was still there. Plus, she still thought he had a girlfriend, which meant he needed an imaginary breakup and an imaginary grieving period. Since they were all about to be fired, there wasn’t time for that.
However, anonymous notes didn’t come with the fear of rejection or the possible loss of her friendship. The trick was finding a way to send them to her. Company emails were monitored. So was the in-office messaging system. There were ways of sending anonymous text messages to a phone number, but that was just … creepy. Maybe small gifts would be better.
He went outside during his last ten minutes and picked a pink snapdragon from one of the flower pots in the front of the building, hiding it in his lunch bag on his way in. Ashley had just left for her lunch break. He dropped the flower above her keyboard on his way past her desk.
***
Caution warred with the army of butterflies dancing in her stomach. Ashley picked up the flower again and looked around, wondering who her secret admirer might be. Flynn caught her gaze and smirked. Oh no. Please don’t let it be him. Anyone but him. And not Mr. Davidson, being married, and her boss. Then who?
Both the note and the flower had been such small, kind, romantic little gestures. Nothing flashy. What she’d said to Lina that morning still held. She wasn’t ready for a relationship. But she also wasn’t ready to squelch whatever this was.
As she played around with the boring article text on her screen, making it wrap around the clip art, she mentally went down the list of single guys on her floor. But then again, it didn’t necessarily have to be limited to the first floor. The tech guy had been down today installing new software on everyone’s computers. There was also Kevin, from accounting, who often stopped in to see Mr. Davidson.
But it was better to focus on those she worked closest with, the guys who could see her desk or passed by it on a daily basis. Flynn had this stupid habit of tapping on her desk every time he walked by, which was often. Gordon and Brian had joined typesetting not too long ago, and they were both quiet, unassuming guys. She could see Chase, concentrating on whatever he was working on. But he had a girlfriend.
Who else? Oh, who was she kidding? Her desk was parked in a busy intersection, smack dab in the middle of the floor. The copiers were to her left and the water coolers right behind her. The only thing not close to her desk was the coffee maker on the counter against the wall. Anyone could walk right by, dozens of times a day, and not stand out.
She left for their weekly planning meeting in Mr. Davidson’s office and couldn’t help holding her breath as she walked to her desk after. Nothing new had been left for her.
