Chapter EightFischerOctober 15
Chapter Eight
Fischer
“Are you sure you don’t want regular coffee?”
I have no idea how Micah is awake right now.
After five late nights of texting in a row, I’m dead on my feet, and she’s as bubbly as ever.
Unless I’ve been texting someone else late at night—in which case I would be rather put out with whoever has assumed her identity—she’s been up as late as I have. You would never guess it.
I cradle my coffee closer, as if she might try to take it away from me.
I still don’t like the taste of it, but she’s given me a cup every day for the last four business days, and now I’ve come to expect it.
Crave it. I even bought myself a cup on Sunday even though I didn’t have any reason to drink it.
“You don’t want to see me with caffeine,” I mumble, slapping myself in the face.
Because that will help. Last night we were up especially late because Micah asked if I would rather watch Parks and Rec and tell her if I relate to Ron Swanson or list all of the times I lied to my parents as a kid.
Honestly, the second one probably would have taken longer, so I picked the sitcom.
And got addicted. I may have stayed up past the point where Micah stopped responding because she fell asleep. I did find a character I related to and wanted to see where his story arc was going.
Micah giggles and does a spin in her chair.
The conference room is empty for now—I got here a few minutes early—but soon we’ll have the whole Ember staff to keep us company.
It’s been like that most of the week, and despite our long conversations into the wee hours, Micah and I haven’t had much time to interact in person since the caterer.
She’s always at Lila’s beck and call, and Grant is getting more and more stressed as we get closer to his court date to finalize his divorce next week.
That means I’m on stress-relieving duty as much as I am the party planning committee, and frankly that isn’t helping my exhaustion.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been keeping you up late,” she says with another spin. “I tend to lose track of time.”
“Me too.” But only when she’s involved. I count down the minutes between when I’m at Grant’s disposal and when I’m free to tell her I would rather be stranded on an island with Tom Cruise than on a ship with Tom Hanks.
I don’t think there’s ever been a movie with Tom Cruise stuck alone on an island—pretty sure that was also Hanks—but he sounds safer than the guy who always seems to end up in disaster while traveling.
This is awkward. I don’t know what to say to her, even though it’s so easy to talk to her through text.
But seeing her sitting there in her bright red pants that match her lips, it’s like I forget how beautiful she is each time I’m away from her.
I still can’t date her, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know if her curls are as soft as they look.
I want to know how easy it would be to pick her up because she’s so small.
Why do I want to know this? Because if I think about kissing her, I think about how far I would have to bend down, and it sounds a lot more comfortable to have her in my arms at a more practical level for that kind of thing.
The flowers have stopped me as much as my self-control has.
Three times in the last week, she’s had a fresh bouquet on her desk.
I snuck a peek at one of the cards on Monday, and it was definitely from a date, some guy named Brock.
I don’t know where she’s finding these guys—the only one she told me about was a guy in front of her in line for coffee—but there are many of them, and that’s enough to tell me she and I wouldn’t suit.
Even when I was dating, I’ve always been monogamous and put time into one relationship at a time.
Micah is young and energetic, and if she wants to play the field, that’s her choice.
That doesn’t mean I like it.
“How far did you get into Parks and Rec ?” she asks.
I don’t know if I actually want to admit this. “A few episodes into Season Three.”
Her jaw drops. “Okay, I’m definitely getting you some caffeine.
I think I nodded off before you got to Ben and Chris.
” Then she narrows her eyes, staring at me in that way she does when she sees too much.
It feels different now, though. Because now we feel like friends, and there’s a lot less for me to hide because she already knows a lot of things about me.
I wince when her eyes reach maximum wideness. “What?”
“You’re Ben Wyatt, not Ron Swanson! How did I not see this before?”
“Because you didn’t know me before,” I mumble. And that was probably a good thing. She shouldn’t know me now. But we still have more than a week and a half before the Greenwood opening, and that’s a lot of late-night texts that could put me in a dangerous position.
I glance at my watch, surprised to see that it’s already ten past nine. I can understand Grant being late, but Lila and her whole team? “Is the office always this quiet in the morning?” I ask.
Micah frowns, which means something is definitely wrong. “No. I didn’t notice… Lila had me making copies this morning, and our copy machine is super loud.”
I didn’t even think to check Grant’s location, which means I’m slipping.
I usually know where he is at all times so I can make sure he gets where he needs to be.
Grabbing my phone, I bounce my knee as I wait for the app to load.
He’s not far from here, and when I zoom in to see more detail, my heart rate kicks up a notch.
“Jean-Marc’s,” I say on a breath. The restaurant is known for its breakfast and is a popular spot for corporate meetings because of its many small gathering rooms.
Micah leans over and grabs my phone out of my hand, as if she doesn’t believe me. “They held a breakfast meeting without us? Why didn’t she tell…”
We’re both on our feet in the next moment, working our way through the silent and empty office. The only people we find are the accountant and the lawyer, both of whom have offices tucked away in the back corner and probably didn’t even notice that everyone was gone.
“What does that mean?” I ask as we settle in Micah’s cubicle.
She tugs a dead bloom from one of the bouquets and tosses it in the trash under her desk.
“It means they’re going to make a lot of decisions that are going to be wrong.
” Another flower comes loose, though this one isn’t as dead.
Still, it goes in the trash. “It means Lila has no intention of letting me be a part of the planning. It means I’ve been fooling myself this whole time that I might actually be good enough. ”
When the whole bouquet comes out of the vase, I grab her arm before she can throw the tulips away.
It should feel strange, touching her when I’ve barely been around her enough to be comfortable with it, but after all of our texting, I feel like I’ve known her a lot longer than I have.
Still, the feel of her soft skin beneath my fingers has my brain short circuiting, and I can’t remember what I was going to say.
So I shift my hand instead, sliding it down her wrist and to the dripping flowers she holds.
Her eyes track the movement, probably because she knows I don’t generally initiate contact like this.
I haven’t told her why because she only asked the one time, but she knows I’m not necessarily comfortable with physical contact.
Or I wasn’t, until I met her. I still don’t know what that means.
When I reach the flowers, I carefully pull them from her fingers and return the bouquet to its vase. I could leave it at that, but instead I take hold of one of her hands between both of my own, hoping she takes this as a sign that I’m still with her on this project.
“This may not be as terrible as you are imagining,” I tell her.
“Maybe Lila forgot to tell you, maybe she did it on purpose, but it’s not the end of the world.
We don’t know what they’ve planned yet, and maybe they’ve done a lot of good brainstorming to come up with ideas closer to what we were imagining.
They caught onto your rustic ideas for the decor, didn’t they? ”
Her lips twist into a playful half smile. “I thought being optimistic was my thing,” she says quietly.
“Yeah, well, you seemed like you needed help this morning.”
She puts her other hand over mine, and there’s enough emotion swirling around in her forget-me-not eyes that I wish I could read her as well as she seems to read me.
I’ve spent the last five days answering all her questions and telling her details about myself that I don’t tell anyone else, but I’m suddenly realizing that I haven’t asked her a single question.
She’s argued against some of my choices, so I’ve learned plenty of things about her, but I haven’t asked .
Isn’t that what she was complaining about to the caterer when she was talking about her date? That he didn’t ask her anything about herself?
Idiot, thy name is Fischer. I still don’t have plans for this to become anything more than a workplace friendship, but Micah deserves to feel valued and important, and she’s clearly not getting that here at her job.
I clear my throat, pulling my hands away but staying close.
“Would you rather go for a walk or sit in the stairwell?” I ask.
It’s not a clever question by any means, but I want to get her away from this place that, at the moment, seems to be sucking the life out of her.
Sure, we could show up at Jean-Marc’s, but I have a feeling Grant doesn’t want me there this morning any more than Lila wants Micah.
He would have had to set this up on his own, and he hasn’t done that since I started working for him.
Though she frowns at me, obviously confused by the question, Micah seems to consider the options seriously. “I like walks,” she says. “The stairwell is for singing.”