Page 13 of Sexting His Assistant

“No,” he says. “I’m asking a simple question.”

“Then here is a simple answer,” I say. “An old mistake with good hair and no imagination.”

Luka’s quiet for a second.

Then he says, “And you’re encouraging him?”

I glance at him. “Do you object?”

His hands stay steady on the wheel. “Should I?”

There are a hundred ways to answer that, and every one of them feels dangerous. So I say the safest thing I can think of, which is not very safe at all.

“Why would you?”

Luka doesn’t answer.

The silence that follows is not comfortable. It’s not neutral. It stretches between us, taut and strange, filled with everything from the office that never got said properly and everything from the hallway outside my apartment that got noticed anyway.

I look down at my hands.

That one glance at the door should not have mattered. Men look at women all the time. It means nothing. It means even less with Luka, who’s used to beauty the way other people are used to weather. He never dates someone who doesn’t look like they just stepped straight off the Victoria’s Secret runway.

Women who are nothing like me.

I’m not polished. I’m not effortless. I get annoyed too quickly, speak too much, and keep a secret diary of his dates because apparently the universe has a sick sense of humor. The conversation in his office today was not flirting. It was just tension and proximity and my imagination working overtime because he looked at me for too long and said one or two things in that low voice of his.

That’s all.

Deep down, I know the truth.

Luka Kazan might notice me. He might even enjoy pushing me.

But men like him don’t want women like me. Not really. Not in any way that matters.

Maybe that is why I unlock my phone again. Maybe that’s why I answer Daniil. Maybe I just need something ordinary to hold onto before I spend the evening watching Luka turn his attention on another woman and pretend it doesn’t scrape me hollow.

I type: Tell me something interesting, for once.

Daniil replies after a moment.

That’s unfair. I’m deeply interesting.

I smile despite myself.

Beside me, Luka says, “If he’s making you smile that much, perhaps he’s less boring than you think.”

I turn my head slowly.

He keeps his eyes on the road.

His voice gives nothing away.

“That almost sounds like approval,” I say.

“It almost is.”

I study his profile. “You disapprove of most things.”