Chapter Seven - Nora
She started leaving the heels under her desk on purpose.
Not admitting that, exactly. If anyone had asked she'd have said it was practical — walk to Conference B in flats, change once you sit down, save your feet three extra hours of punishment a day.
All true. What she didn't say, because she hadn't said it to herself yet either, was that she liked the ten seconds it took to slip them off once the door closed and it was just the two of them again.
By the third week she'd stopped thinking of the office as a place she performed in.
That was new. That was, for her, rare enough to be suspicious of.
She curled into the chair with her knees up and her feet tucked under her while she typed. She crossed the room in stocking feet for a stack of printouts instead of bothering with the flats. Small things. Nothing she'd have called a pattern if someone had laid it out for her in a list.
But she noticed him noticing.
Not the way you notice a stranger staring. Nothing uncomfortable in it. Nothing that made her want the shoes back on. Just a low, steady awareness, like knowing a window was open in another room.
He never said anything. Never did one thing she could point at and call inappropriate. But there were moments — her feet up on the empty chair beside her while she read, his eyes going there and away, quick, controlled — that weren't discomfort and weren't anything she had a word for either.
She tested it once. Half on purpose.
Wednesday night, deep into revisions. She stretched her legs out under the table until her bare feet came to rest an inch from his. Not touching. Just there. Close enough to be a choice if either of them wanted to read it that way.
He didn't move his foot. Didn't move at all, actually. Not for a while.
"You're going to kick me," he said, eyes on his screen.
"I have excellent aim. You'd deserve it."
"For what?"
"For something. I'll figure out what later."
That got the almost-smile out of him. She'd started keeping a private tally of those. The moment passed the way most of their moments did, banter closing over it before either of them had to decide anything.
She left her feet where they were for another ten minutes. He left his. Neither of them mentioned it. She went home unreasonably pleased with herself and didn't interrogate why.
Later, brushing her teeth, she caught herself replaying it. Not the words. The stillness of him. The deliberate way he hadn't looked at her foot once in ten minutes, like looking would have cost him something he wasn't ready to spend.
She was getting good at not examining things.
But she noticed, barefoot on the cold tile, that she'd started paying attention to her own feet in a way she never had. Not as something to dress, or hide, or forget about until they hurt.
Just as something that was apparently worth someone's attention.
She turned the tap off and stood there a second longer than she needed to.