Disappeared.
Came back.
You can’t say beige apology and think I’m letting that stay in text. Tell me in person. When are you done?
Micah was direct in a way that kept slipping under my skin. Not pushy. Just there in what he wanted, like he saw no point in dressing it up when the truth would do the job better.
And if I was being honest, I liked that more than was probably useful.
I should have made him sit with it longer. Should have looked back at my laptop, answered one more email, let him wonder a little.
Instead I stared at the screen with my coffee going cooler beside me and felt that same low pull I was starting to recognize for what it was. Not chaos. Not confusion. Not the kind of chemistry that made a woman feel like she was losing herself.
This felt different.
Like a man stepping into the middle of my day and making it more interesting without asking me to become less myself in exchange.
That was what made him dangerous. It was not because he disrupted me—no—it was because he fit.
My fingers moved before my pride could get fully involved.
Me: You are very demanding for a man still under review.
His answer came right back.
Micah: I’m serious. Fifteen minutes. This doesn’t count as Thursday.
I bit my lip, and looked up from the phone then, out toward the lobby windows, at the city moving beyond the glass in bright midday pieces.
I had work. Notes. A laptop open in front of me. A full day already in motion.
And still, some part of me had gone warm at the idea of seeing his face before dinner existed to frame it, before a reservation and dim lighting and a proper date gave us permission to be anything but exactly what we were.
A woman at a hotel bar. A man leaving work to come look at her.
Two grown people acting like they did not know what kind of current lived under that.
seven
. . .
By Wednesday afternoon,I had already answered too many emails, sat through one meeting that should’ve ended twenty minutes earlier, and watched a man in a tailored suit say absolutely nothing with his whole chest because somebody had given him a conference room and a little time.
The day had structure.
Numbers. Deadlines. Two client calls. One deal summary that still needed another pass because a business owner was trying to sell optimism like it counted as documentation.
Usually, that was enough. Usually, a workday with real density to it could hold me in place ’til five, easy. But today, therewas a woman somewhere in the city walking a hotel rooftop and calling bad design what it deserved.
That had its own effect.
I was halfway through reviewing the summary when my phone buzzed facedown beside the keyboard. I let it sit there for a second.
Then it buzzed again.
Talia: Saving a rooftop from becoming a beige apology. You?
I looked at the screen for a beat too long, then leaned back in my chair and laughed under my breath.