Chapter Seventeen and a Half - Nora
They told the office the following week, on their own terms. No announcement. No performance of it.
Elias walked her to her desk one morning with two coffees instead of one, set hers down without ceremony, and lingered a beat longer than a coworker had any reason to.
Small thing. Also in full view of half the creative floor, which was the point.
Word moved the way office news moves. Quietly, then all at once, then not news anymore. A few people looked twice. One of the junior designers, Priya's newest hire, asked her outright over lunch.
"Wait, are you and Elias —" She let it trail off with an expectant lift of the eyebrows.
"Yeah," Nora said. It cost her nothing to say, which surprised her, over a sad desk salad in a break room. "We are."
"That's so — okay. Congratulations. I did not see that coming." She reconsidered mid-bite. "I saw that coming."
"Everyone saw it coming." Someone from the account team, leaning in from the next table, uninvited but not unwelcome. "You two used to bicker about tagline word choice like it was a blood feud. We had a pool going."
"A pool."
"A small one. Dana was the closest guess, timeline-wise, which nobody expected."
Nora laughed. Weeks of being careful and quiet, and it had been obvious to everyone the entire time. The secrecy had cost her far more anxiety than it had ever protected her from.
She told Elias about the pool that night, curled into his couch with her feet already claimed in his lap before either of them said a word about it.
"A pool," he repeated, delighted. "Who won?"
"I didn't ask. Some feels like information I don't need."
"I want to know who won."
"You would."
He worked his thumb slow along her arch and she let her head fall back against the cushion.
A few months ago she'd have been braced for something. She wasn't braced for anything now. It had survived daylight, gossip, and a betting pool run by the account team, and none of it had cost her a thing.
"Can I ask you something." Eyes half closed. "Do you regret any of it? The waiting. Weeks of not saying anything."
He took it seriously, the way he took most things she asked him. No rush to the answer.
"No."
He was quiet longer than the answer needed.
"If I'd said it early you wouldn't have believed it. You'd have thought I was — I don't know. Seeing what I could get away with, with the two of us stuck on the same account." He shifted under her. "It needed something real under it first. That's not me being noble. That's just how long it takes."
"That's annoyingly reasonable."
"I have my moments."
"You do." She flexed her feet against his palm and felt him track it, attentive without ever making it too much. "I don't regret any of it either, since we're doing this. Even the parts where I was pretending very hard not to notice you noticing me."
"I noticed you pretending. For the record."
"I know you did. That was sort of the whole game."
He laughed, low and real, and pulled her feet more firmly into his lap. Outside the window the city went on doing what cities do on an ordinary Tuesday night, entirely unaware of how much had quietly and permanently rearranged itself on one couch in one apartment.