Chapter Eleven
Eliza
The next morning, I hurried into work. I chose the highest heels I owned.
Patent navy, pointy as a threat. My dress was a calculated gray, severe enough to erase the sleepless hollows under my eyes.
I’d worn my hair in a stricter bun than yesterday’s, so the effect was, in control, unassailable, absolutely not thinking about the thing I refused to name.
My body disagreed. The muscle at the base of my skull pulsed in revolt. My hands had a faint shake, which I managed by squeezing my coffee cup from my favorite little place so hard the lid kept popping off. I told myself to focus. There was nothing to see here. There had never been anything to see.
I took the east stairs to avoid the risk of running into him at the elevators. At my desk, I powered up, pulled my reports, made a show of attacking the unread emails from last night. I let my screen shield me. I’d survived worse.
Work would keep me occupied. I barely looked up until an echo of his laugh, low, almost polite, threaded through the thin wall separating the project bullpen from the executive offices. I froze, hands mid-hover, the cursor blinking at me.
I could see him through the glass partition.
He wasn’t laughing at me, or even looking in my direction.
He was standing next to the conference table with a group of developers, making some point with that infuriatingly gentle voice that people mistook for kindness.
When he gestured, the cuff of his shirt rode up just enough to reveal the wristwatch he always wore.
He was smiling, but there was a tension to it that I’d never noticed before.
It looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.
He caught me staring. Not direct, just a flick of his eyes, a quick acknowledgment and then away. It landed like a slap. My face went hot. I buried myself in a spreadsheet, re-sorting columns just to have something to do.
The rest of the morning was a blur of non-encounters.
I mapped his trajectory with the precision of a satellite, adjusting my own orbits to avoid crossing paths.
In the break room, I lingered behind a guy microwaving salmon just to dodge a possible collision in the hallway.
When I needed the color printer, I sent the job from my laptop and then ghosted it for an hour, so I could pick up the pages when the coast was clear.
But every time I dared a glance through the glass, he was there.
Always in the background, always immaculate, always acting like nothing had happened.
He moved through the building with this eerie calm, talking to everyone but never lingering.
The developers loved him. The admin staff loved him.
Even security loved him; last week, I’d seen him defuse a standoff between two rival delivery guys with nothing but a sentence and a smile.
Meanwhile, my brain ran every possible version of his thoughts. Was last night actually an accident? Or a calculated move? Was he plotting to ruin my work, or had he already started?
Every time I caught a glimpse of him, a wave hit: heat in my chest, then adrenaline, then a deep desire for him, then a cold, sharp clarity. I hated it. I hated him. I wanted to slam a door in his face and kiss him at the same time.
I sat through an all-staff meeting where Gabriel was three chairs away, his profile too perfect, his attention laser-locked on a presentation about Q2 metrics. He never looked at me once. He didn’t have to. I felt his awareness like a hand on the back of my neck.
By noon, I was wound so tight my own footsteps sounded like gunshots. I ate my salad, then spent the rest of lunch hour pretending to review onboarding materials for the summer interns.
After one, there was a department touchpoint.
Gabriel led it, of course. He stood at the head of the glass-walled room, remote in hand, slides flicking behind him like he could change reality with a click.
He made an offhand joke about “user experience” that made the room laugh.
When someone raised an issue with the new vendor, he absorbed it with a nod, then redirected to me for an answer.
“Eliza, you’ve had the most contact with the implementation. Any perspective?”
My name. Just that. No smile, no inflection. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
I kept my voice flat and surgical. “Vendor’s mostly reliable, but their test environments are inconsistent. I’ve documented the variances and flagged the worst for next week’s build.”
He nodded. “Good. Can you share that with Product?”
“Already did.”
A flicker at the corner of his mouth. Approval, or amusement, or something I couldn’t parse. “Excellent. Keep me in the loop on progress.”
That was it. The bare minimum. The next hour, I spent dissecting every syllable, searching for secret messages. Did he want me? Was he setting me up to fail? Was this some subtle sabotage? Or was he just being… professional after he messed up?
When the meeting ended, he lingered to answer someone’s question.
I shot out the door, pacing the length of the corridor like a marathoner, then doubled back to retrieve a pen I’d left behind.
Through the glass, I caught him leaning in to speak to a designer; too close, too intimate, but then the designer laughed and it broke the spell.
He saw me in the reflection. Our eyes met for a second. He looked away first.
An unwelcome and unexpected emotion welled up in me; jealousy. I wanted him to reserve that body language for me. Leaning in close, the intimacy, the low voice he used when he moved into someone’s space. The thought of him with this woman had me seething… and I had no idea why.
He wasn’t mine. I sure as heck wasn’t his.
So why did I care?
By four, my productivity was a joke. I started three emails and finished none. I found myself typing “GAbrIEL” in all caps in the search bar, as if the act would summon a clue. I deleted it so fast I almost broke a nail.
I caught my own reflection in my monitor and winced. The woman looking back at me was sharp, alert, but there were cracks around the edges. I brushed at a loose strand of hair and tried to remember the last time I’d truly relaxed.
He passed by my desk. I was the only one left in the bullpen. His steps slowed just a tiny bit, like he might say something. I prepared for the worst; an accusation, an apology, a smirk.
Instead, he stopped at the printer, retrieved a single sheet of paper, and kept walking. No words. Not even a glance. I watched him until he disappeared into his office, the glass swallowing him whole.
I shut down my computer, collected my bag, and walked to the elevator with the calm of a person who has lost the ability to care. But as the doors closed, I caught one last look at him through the partition. He was standing in the dark, phone to his ear, looking right at me.
I pretended not to see.
But when the elevator doors opened, my heart was still pounding. My hands still shook. My body refused to let me forget the feeling of his lips on mine, the way his hands dug into my hips in my dream, the look in his eyes.
I told myself it would be better tomorrow.
But I had no faith it actually would be better.
*
The next day, I calculated a risk and went for coffee at the far end of the floor, the fancy espresso machine everyone fought over. I’d rehearsed my speech in case I ran into Gabriel: impersonal, clipped, nothing for him to weaponize. Instead, I almost collided with my brother.
He was in business drag; khakis, blue shirt, hair mussed in a way that said I was up late but I still care. He looked up from his phone, registered me, and did his usual double take. “Liz! You look tired.”
“Fuck you,” I said under my breath.
He let out a laugh and pulled me in for a one-armed hug. “You want one? I think I finally cracked the foamer setting.”
“Sure.” I hovered, watched him fumble with the unfamiliar interface. He looked wired. I felt a pang of something I refused to label. A few moments later, he offered me a cup.
“Told you I’d get it right.”
I took a sip of the scalding drink. “Impressive. Maybe you missed your calling as a barista.”
He grinned, but his attention flicked over my shoulder. I turned and saw Gabriel leaning against the far wall, arms folded, watching us with that impossible neutrality.
“Gabriel was telling me some wild stories about your first hackathon together,” my brother said, voice lowering. “I had no idea you did all-nighters back then.”
I flashed hot, then cold. “It’s called a deadline. Some of us respect them.”
My brother snorted, unbothered. “He said you coded circles around everyone, including him.”
Gabriel’s mouth ticked, but he said nothing.
The way my brother said “including him,” the lazy confidence of it, the unspoken we’ve talked about you, my skin prickled. It was the easiest thing in the world to imagine them as a team, exchanging stories I hadn’t approved, framing the narrative. Their shared glance was brief, but it was enough.
I drained my cup. “I have to prep for a vendor call. If you’re done with the machine, maybe let others have a turn?”
My brother laughed, but Gabriel only nodded, eyes never leaving mine. “Of course,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to keep anyone waiting.”
I left them in their little conference of two, pulse hammering in my throat. The coffee did nothing for the tremor in my hands.
All day, I wondered what else they’d discussed. What stories Gabriel would tell, if prompted. If he’d tell the truth that he’d kissed me.
I was done with my work by five, officially, but my inbox had different ideas. The only thing that kept me vertical was the prospect of unbuckling these heels and ordering Vietnamese on the way home.
I left without a word. Pretty sure no one noticed. That was a win.