Look at You

Chapter 33

33

I wake up before my alarm. Usually, when this happens, I stare at the watermarks and cracks in the ceiling and will myself to think of three good things in my life (coping mechanism) to make getting out of bed worth it at all.

Today I don't do that.

I get up, and as soon as my feet hit the floor, a thought drifts into my semi-consciousness. I should bring Simon some coffee.

I let it marinate. I push myself to stand and pull on jeans. Yeah. I should. If only for some social interaction from someone moderately my age.

Buzz is ten minutes out of the way if I'm driving straight to TechNet, which I am, but it's the best coffee in Baker and I can't stand that he drinks Starbucks. The Amazon Marketplace of the coffee world.

I tell myself I've woken up early anyways, so I might as well treat myself to a nice latte and show Simon the joys of spending under $4 for his daily caffeine fix.

At Buzz, the girl behind the counter has her blonde braided hair pulled back with a handkerchief. She's all eyes and a big hoop nose ring. She's objectively a pretty woman—like Callie, like Libby—but all I can think about is getting up to the eighth floor.

It's 8:35 when I do. No one is here. Not Callie, not Simon, not even Marketing Squadron who apparently has my schedule down to a T. (They conveniently end up in all the same elevators as I do, consistently, every day.)

I lean against his desk, sipping my latte, debating how long is appropriate to stand and wait to coffee talk with a man you hardly know.

I decide it's two minutes. In those two minutes, I've successfully climbed and talked myself off six different ledges of you're weird, this is weird, you need to go. I leave the coffee on his desk and absolutely sprint for the stairs—elevators are too risky at this point—before I regain a shred of my prior confidence and go back for his desk. I don't wait, but I scribble a note letting him know I was here. I don't sign it. (There goes the confidence.) I fast walk back toward the stairs, then backtrack one more time. I grab the note, fold it into a teeny square, and shove it under the cup, simultaneously hoping and not hoping he will find it.

When I land on the sixth floor, I'm out of breath. Paul sees me, absolutely huffing and puffing, and laughs in my face for a minute straight.

"Get over here," he slaps my back, walking me toward our home base desk. "And talk Doug out of this mirrored wall."

__

All day I'm on edge. Every ding of the elevator, every swing of the door to the staircase puts me in overdrive. Not once is it him, why would it be, but still, every time, I jump a little. It's pathetic.

The crew starts leaving at three, headed to some senior management meeting that I don't need to be a part of, so I check a few more things off my list—successfully getting rid of the mirrored wall idea one of them—and head for the elevators around 4.

I hit the down arrow and the doors pop open almost seconds later, and I'm met with the face I've been expecting to see all day. Simon, arms crossed over his chest, a small uptick in his right eyebrow as he listens to Callie chatter away next to him.

As soon as she sees me, she stops. Her lips curl up into her thousand-watt smile. "Hi Callie," I smile back at her because it's contagious. I eye Simon, stepping in between the two of them. "Hi Simon."

I get a measly nod from Simon, and Callie starts letting her lips run with whatever conversation she was having before I arrived, little bits of acknowledgment of me mixed in between.