Chapter 20
TWENTY
TORI
The copy room hums like a lazy beehive—not that I can hear it—printer warm and breathing, the big industrial copier chewing through a packet for Dr. Patel one thunked ream at a time.
It smells like hot paper and toner and that faint plasticky scent of fresh lamination, even though I have yet to find the magic laminator.
I’ve commandeered the only clear stretch of counter—left to right: quizzes, stapler, paper clips, sticky notes with my reminders in tidy loops—while my audiobook chatters straight into my skull.
Maybe “chatters” isn’t the right word. More like, caresses my senses.
It’s supposed to be background noise, something to keep my brain from gnawing on itself while I alphabetize the chaos in front of me. Except… it’s not background. It is very much foreground. The narrator’s voice drops and I swear the room temperature climbs five degrees.
“…his hand slides along her hip—firm, claiming—and she tilts toward him like a tide pulled by—”
Okay, um, wow. I click the speed to 1.3x like that’ll make it suddenly SFW. It does not. I should switch to a podcast about amortization schedules or something, but my hands are full of three-hole-punched seduction. I set a neat stack, reach for the next—
A warm palm lands on my hip.
Every nerve in my body misfires. The book in my ears says hip and my hip gets touched and my hindbrain, that traitorous bitch, responds before the human part can vote.
I inhale and—God help me—lean back, ass first. My hips press into firm muscle.
A breath catches behind me—his or mine, I don’t know, but I felt it—and heat spikes at the nape of my neck.
Oh. Oh no.
Reality slams in a beat later. I jerk forward so fast a stack of quizzes avalanches, whirling around, heart in my throat, earbuds still droning on, noise canceling still in full effect.
Leo is inches away, palm lifted in a useless oh-hey-don’t-freak gesture, eyes wide like a kid who set off a firecracker in a library.
The slap leaves my hand before I decide to use it.
Crack. Except, still, I don’t hear anything save the foreplay ramping up from two to five chilis super hella fast in my ears.
Leo’s head snaps to the side. A faint red bloom rises on his cheek, slow as a Polaroid. For a split second we are both statues—me with my chest heaving, him with his jaw clenched and his eyes carefully not on mine.
I yank an earbud out. Silence floods in except for the copier’s steady chunk-chunk, the clack of a paper tray reseating itself. The audiobook, disrespectful little hussy, keeps going in one ear about how she opens for him like—
This has to stop. Like right the fuck now.
Pulling out the other earbud, I slam it down on the countertop next to its partner.
“I—” My voice comes out shredded. “You cannot—do not—touch me like that.” I’m trying to breathe through it. The adrenaline spike. The shame and heat climbing up my throat. The way my body moved all on its own like I’d been wired to a switch.
Leo lifts both hands now, palms out, fingers spread. No swagger, no grin—he’s looking at me like I’m a spooked animal, seconds away from fight or flight.
He’s probably not wrong.
“You’re right,” he says, and it’s quiet and immediate, the apology tucked right into the first syllable. “I’m sorry. I thought—” He swallows, recalibrates. “I didn’t think. I saw your earbuds and… I shouldn’t have touched you. That’s on me.”
The thing about anger is that it comes with friends. Embarrassment. Mortification. A slideshow of moments I will replay in my brain at three a.m. night after night for the rest of… forever? Yes, forever.
“Why would you think—” I stop, inhale, try again. “Why would you touch me? At work?!”
“I was trying not to startle you with my voice,” he says, wincing like he hears how stupid that sounds as it exits his mouth. “Which, when said out loud, is dumber than the dumbest option available.” A beat. “I’m sorry.”
The handprint on his cheek is perfectly shaped where it rises above his stubble, finger lines extending toward his cheekbone. Suddenly, I don’t know what to do with my hands. I put them on my hips, then cross them, then aim them at the stapler like that’s a weapon I could use.
“I—” I suck in a breath that shakes. “I leaned back.” Why am I admitting that out loud? No idea.
Leo blinks. The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to acknowledge that sentence. But of course, he does. “You did.”
“Don’t,” I warn, finger up, because if he smirks even an inch I will shove him into the recycling bin and call it a day.
“I won’t,” he says quickly. “I’m not. Tote—Victoria—Tori—I’m serious.
I’m sorry.” He points vaguely toward the pod offices beyond the copy room door.
“I’m going to give you some space. And get some ice.
For your hand or my face or maybe your pride…
or mine—whatever needs it most. Probably all of those things. ”
He pivots, then hesitates. “Can I— Are you okay? You look… frazzled?”
Am I? My pulse is a drumline. My face is on fire.
There’s a dry spot on my tongue that no amount of swallowing fixes.
And beneath the humiliation is the whisper of something I don’t want to admit: the way my body said yes before my brain remembered where we are, who we are, how complicated all of this is.
For fuck’s sake—I didn’t even know who had walked up behind me! My body wants to say it knew, instinctively, that Leo was the man touching me. But can I honestly say that? Nope.
The sexy book said he put his hand upon her hip, then the mystery man put his hand upon my hip, and then my body was like, “Mmmm, yes. When I dip, you dip, we dip.” Absolutely mortifying.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because I don’t have a term for this particular flavor of meltdown. “Just… go.”
He goes. The door sighs shut, and I exhale. I press my palms to the countertop and drop my forehead to the cool metal, breathing until the strobe-light thud under my skin slows enough to be mistaken for a heartbeat. On the floor, a sad disaster of disorganized paper fans across my shoes.
Looking up, I growl, “Pull it together,” at the stapler. Sure, it is not at fault, but it is listening.
The door opens again. Leo returns with a ziplock filled with ice, wrapped in a brown paper towel and donning a blue sticky note that reads SORRY in block letters big enough to be read from space. Cute.
He takes three careful steps in, once again approaching that frightened animal. He sets the ice on the counter, then retreats to a safe distance near the paper-cutter, hands back in his pockets like he’s disarmed himself.
“I brought reparations,” he says, tone tentative. “For your—” He gestures at his own face, then my entire existence. “Everything?”
A painful laugh barks out of me. I pick up the ice and, for reasons unknown to science, press it to my cheeks one at a time. It’s cold, and it helps. I set it down, then smooth my blouse like it misbehaved. Nope. Not the blouse. Just your horny hips and ass, Tori.
“Thank you,” I say. “And I’m… I’m sorry I slapped you.”
“Totally earned.” He tips his head toward the mess of papers on the floor. “Want me to fix your paper massacre while you choose something… else… to listen to?”
I squint. “You didn’t hear—”
“Just a murmur,” he lies so quickly I almost admire the technique. “Sounded… super… plot-driven.”
A sound escapes me that could be a laugh if I wasn’t so embarrassed. “That was… not plot.”
He holds up both hands again, playful surrender reappearing by degrees. “You’re killing my lie, Tote.”
We move around each other ever so carefully, simultaneously playing a game of “clean up” and “the friend is lava.” He crouches to gather the escaped quizzes; I restack and re-straighten until my edges line up in a way my life does not.
The copier snarfs the last set of prints and spits out a neat pile with a triumphant whirr, like See? I told you I could do it!
When I speak, it’s once again to the stapler. “You can’t touch me from behind.”
“I won’t touch you at all unless you tell me to,” Leo says, no hesitation. “And if I ever forget that, feel free to brand my other cheek.”
That shouldn’t make me feel better. But it does, a little.
He slides the rescued stack my way. “And I know this isn’t about me, but I want you to know I didn’t mean—” He searches for the right words, brows knit. “I wasn’t trying to—whatever it felt like. I should’ve gotten your attention with a ‘hey’ and some jazz hands like a normal person.”
“Jazz hands would have been worse,” I say, and the quip falls out before I can help it. “You in the doorway like a deranged mime? Please, no.”
His smile makes a careful cameo, small and lopsided. “So you’re saying I should not keep a white glove in my pocket for emergencies?”
I roll my eyes at him, dismissing his ridiculousness with a shake of my head.
We work. The quiet is different now—not awkward, per se, but full of things neither of us knows how to set down yet.
I shove a fresh stick of staples into the stapler and watch the neat silver spine click into place.
If only brains and feelings worked like office supplies.
If only desire had a tray you could slide back in.
I’ll pull you out when it’s appropriate and file you away when it’s not your time to play, thankyouverymuch.
If only.
“Hey,” Leo says after a minute, gentler. “Can I ask a clarifying question that will not get me slapped?”
I side-eye him. “Proceed with caution.”
“If I accidentally make you laugh again in the next five minutes, is that allowed? Or do I need to submit a request to HR for a sense-of-humor permit?”
I snort. This man. “You are HR’s worst nightmare.”
“Incorrect,” he says. “I am HR’s favorite problem. Big difference.”
I hate how my mouth curves. I hate it and also I don’t. “You can joke,” I say, and then add the boundary I should’ve led with. “But not about this—the book and hip thing, I mean.”