Kev emerges with the biscuit tin and blinks at me. “Inventory. He’s been in love with that sheet all evening. Honestly, Pip, keep up.”
AJ’s face is a masterpiece of restraint.
I am going to die.
Not professionally.
Personally.
“In that case,” AJ says, “I’ll return to the paperwork that truly understands me.”
“Good lad,” Kev says.
AJ leaves, and he does not look back.
Which is wise.
Because if he did, I would either laugh, panic or commit a serious breach of workplace conduct beside the emergency biscuit tin.
Kev watches him go, then looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Kev.”
“You seem twitchy.”
“I am not twitchy.”
“You’re a bit twitchy.”
“I am considering whether to assign you to restock the entire prevention cupboard alphabetically.”
He points a biscuit at me. “That would be abuse of power.”
“It would be leadership.”
He grins. “Good to have you back, boss.”
“I never left.”
The words leave my mouth before I understand them.
Kev, mercifully, does not hear anything in them.
He just bites into his biscuit and wanders out.
I stand alone in the kitchen for a moment, clipboard in hand, door half-open, heart behaving like it has been given bad instructions.
I never left.
No.
But something has shifted.
Something I cannot put back where it was before AJ touched the corner of my mouth in a bakery and everything that happened afterwards became inevitable.
