“Love is all around in Advertorial!” Morgan singsongs, knocking her shoulder against Sarah’s.
“The rizzler strikes again!” Al exclaims as he walks by, and Sarah hoots so loud, you can probably hear it across the office.
“Did I get it that time?” he asks, beaming while he waters a yellowing snake plant. Erica assigned him to plant care duty this week.
“Nailed it,” Sarah says with pride.
At the far end of the floor, the elevator doors ding open, and Greg walks in—probably here for Sarah. He’s carrying a to-go cup of coffee in either hand, and sure enough, he delivers one to her, and she reaches for it appreciatively.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath in.I am the picture of serenity. I am a grown woman with a rich inner life who does not need anything from him.
“Ruby.” Greg’s voice is too close suddenly, and I open my eyes with a start. He’s standing in front of my cubicle, holding the other coffee cup out to me.
“Since you worked late,” he says, lowering it onto my desk when I don’t reach for it.
“Oh, thanks!” My hands close around the paper cup. “You didn’t have to.”
I push the tote with the shoes deeper under my desk with my foot.
“Are you still working on that thing for Erica?”
“Yeah.” I do a raspberry. “Pivot tables.”
“Oh, I love pivot tables.” Before I can protest, he’s already coming around to the inside of the cubicle. “Let me help.”
The elevator doors ding again, and I glimpse Erica’s signature red hair. She looks over here, andoh fuck, I need more time! I have to hide!
And Greg is standing there behind me—if she sees him standing suspiciously alone in my cubicle, she’ll definitely walk over. In a panic, I grab a fistful of Greg’s shirt and tug him down under the desk with me.
“Uh—”
I put a hand over his mouth.
“Shh,” I whisper. “We’re hiding.”
I can feel his smile forming under my palm. He’s always been game for a ridiculous situation.
I withdraw my hand, and Greg mouths,Erica?I nod, and that’s all he needs—he shifts around so he’s shoulder to shoulder with me, our backs leaned against the inside of my desk.
It reminds me of a time in eleventh grade when I spotted someone I was avoiding in the high school parking lot. And I noticed Greg nearby, sitting behind the wheel of his Acura, so I slipped into the passenger seat, sliding down low so no one would see me.
“I’m hiding,” I said in response to his questioning look.
So Greg slid way down, too, legs folded into the footwell. “Okay, then I’ll hide with you.”
“Ruby?” Erica calls from the direction of her office. “Is Ruby here?”
Greg shakes with a silent laugh, and he presses a hand against the side of my head, bringing it in to rest on his shoulder. He’s patting my head in athere, therekind of way, still part of the joke. But his warm palm on my ear, and that familiar lemon scent—it brings me right back to the first time we kissed.
If it had happened only once, I might have thought it was afluke. We’d been friends a long time, we had too much history. Anytime someone asked if we were a thing, we said,Oh God no, we know each other way too well for that!
We were at the movies with a group of friends, sitting next to each other, and I leaned on him, more sleep-deprived than flirty. He pressed a hand to the side of my head, as if to say,Get comfortable, stay awhile.So I nestled in, cheek against his shoulder.
The music swelled just right at an emotional moment, and I turned my head toward him, at an awkward angle. It was dark, but he was already staring at me. There was something intense about it, like I caught him watching me sleep. The inches between us ached. And then our mouths brushed, his bottom lip pillowing between both of mine.
It was the briefest contact, but I felt it everywhere, a full-body unclenching. Like all my molecules sighed out the revelation:Oh, this is what you’ve been missing.
Then one of our friends made a joke, and I panicked and straightened up. We pretended to go back to watching the movie and acted like nothing happened for the rest of the night.
