Bursting into my office was like tearing open the veil between heaven and hell. Shutting the door behind me, closed off all the noise and manic energy buzzing around outside, granting me calm and serenity in the warm embrace of the security within.
I threw my things down on my desk and fell into my seat with a grateful sigh. The creak of Emily's chair though picked me out of my slouch and to my surprise I found my officemate stock still and staring straight into her computer screen, likely occupied with some important task. She'd been so busy running around, looking at venue options, that I'd grown used to a solitary office. However, a friendly ear was exactly what I needed and I felt that some fortune was finally rolling my way. I needed to vent about that morning, and then, of course, there was also my rather confusing interlude with Alec from the night before that needed some analysis as well.
I shivered at the memory. With everything going on, that quiet, peaceful — even something like wonderful — moment on the patio seemed long ago. At that point it almost felt like a dream rapidly slipping through my fingers the harder I tried to hold on to it. And to my surprise, I really was trying desperately hard to keep it within my grip.
I kept telling myself I just enjoyed the one-on-one attention and the personal compliments, but something kindled inside of me whenever I thought of how Alec pressed himself against me. Bosses didn't do that. Nor did good, upstanding employees. Falling for my superior was not in my plan, in fact, it would seriously derail my plan. Yet, there I was, reliving that moment in an endless time loop and lamenting how the resolution of that memory was getting fuzzier and fuzzier with each iteration.
I shook my head and rubbed my fingers against my temples, making quick, tight circles in order to massage away my dangerous line of thinking. It was all very unprofessional and that really made me realize that this all had to be one sided. Alec always carried himself with a fierce work ethic and unwavering dedication to his job. There's no way he'd allow himself to go down this road.
I needed someone to talk reason into me and the only person I could trust with the sort of information that could potentially put careers in danger was Emily. Once I got this all out, I knew I'd feel better and I'd put the feelings behind me. I just needed to get Emily's attention so I could vent and I figured she likely needed a break from her tireless quest to prove herself anyway. So, I rolled my chair over and moved in next to her. She didn't immediately turn to acknowledge my presence, but I was no stranger to the oddly hypnotic effect reading long texts on a computer screen could have.
"Emi," I finally said, clearing my throat in hopes of gaining her attention, "you will not believe the day I am having. And last night, well..."
I looked over at Emily to see if I'd managed to pull her interest away from work, but she stared forward with her lips slightly parted and her brow pinched. That's when I noticed her arms limp at her side with her hands clamped around the edge of her seat instead of poised over the keyboard while a screen saver of colorful bursting flowers played out on her monitor.
"Emi," I said, leaning forward in an attempt to make eye contact, "is everything okay?"
"I..." She cocked her head slightly, shifting her thoughts around so she could proceed. "I think I had something...something like a moment." She finally looked my way, confusion etched on her face.
"A moment?"
"You know," she said, waving her hand around as if to pull the words she was looking for out of the air, "a...a moment. When, something like, um..." She then threw her hands to her face, pulling them down her cheeks as she groaned. Her eyes darted to the glass wall that faced the Pit and I tried to pinpoint the target of her gaze, but she turned back around before I could make anything close to an educated guess as to who she may be worried about. She then, continued on in a low voice.
"You know when you watch some silly romance movie and the pacing slows for a second and the music shifts and the two characters seem caught in the stillness of a moment because you know that's the moment they realize there's like a spark or something?" She watched me from the tops of her eyes, unable to look at me fully.
"Yeah, I think I understand," I said, my words slow with uncertainty over the direction of this conversation.
"Well, I think I had one."
"I think you might still be having one."
"Lex, I'm serious," she sighed.
"I am too, you don't seem to be all here right now," I said with a light laugh. Then, I reached out and wrapped an arm around her hunching shoulders. "Sorry I'm just not sure what to think. You tell me you had one of these time altering moments and yet you seem unhappy."
"I'm...I'm not, or at least I don't think so." She then moaned and slammed her face into her hands. "I'm so confused."
"Alright," I said, clapping my hands together before spinning her chair around so we were face to face and her back was to the office. "Why don't you tell me exactly what happened?"
"Well," she said after another minute of deliberation, "I had gone to the supply closet to grab some paper for the copier and I was on my way out. I flicked the lights off and had my hand on the knob and that's when...that's when..." She bit her lips and her face swelled like a red balloon about to pop.
"What?" I asked, starting to become more and more concerned about my friend. "Did something bad happen?"
"No!" she said, perking up and looking me in full. "No, no, he didn't do anything wrong."
"Oh," I said with a sly smile as I leaned back into my chair. "So a certain guy walked in, huh?" I then tried to think of who on our floor had been holding Emily's attention, but I soon realized that she hadn't mentioned a single office crush since her last one left three years ago to work in a Quinto office half a country away. "Wait, who exactly was it that walked in?"
"Um," she said, chewing on her lip and looking over at my desk. "It was...Theo..."
"Theo?!" She gave me one piercing glare and I slapped a hand over my mouth before casting my eyes out through our glass wall to make sure no one heard my outburst. Then, I continued on in a whisper, "Theo?"
"Look, I have...or had...or I don't know...anyway, I wasn't interested in Theo. I mean he's so much younger than me."
"Some guys are into that," I said, wagging my eyebrows at her.
"You're not helping."
"Sorry," I said with an apologetic smile. "I'm just trying to lighten things up. Why don't you just tell me what happened?"
"Okay," she sighed. "Well, you know the closet, it is tiny, so I had little room to dodge the door. I stumbled back and he lunged forward to catch me. But, it's all dark, you know, because he didn't have a chance to turn the light back on and he says 'Emily, is that you?' I know that doesn't sound like much, but it was just how he said it. Like he was so relieved to know it was me he was stuck in there with."
She savored that thought, her lips contorting, struggling to find its center between a smile and a worried frown.
"You see, it took me awhile to answer because he was still holding on to my shoulders. He was just so close Lex, it's so small in there. So it was like he was embracing me. I could barely breathe, much less respond. So then he leans in closer, to get a better look — he could have just turned the light back on, mind you, but he didn't, he just leaned — and I felt his breath on my cheek. I damn near melted into a puddle."
"And did you?" I asked with a laugh.
"I don't know," said Emi with a shake of her head. "My legs still feel like Jello, but that may be because Jean walked in and plowed directly into Theo just after she turned the lights on. We were all crumbled up together on the floor and I think he whacked his forehead on a shelf."
"Never doubt Jean's abilities," I said with a sigh.
"He checked to see if Jean and I were okay and then grabbed whatever it was he came in to get in the first place, as well as the first aid kit." Then, Emily looked back out to the Pit, this time I felt certain she was searching for Theo's cubicle. "I think he was bleeding."
"You're concerned about him," I said, a soft smile dimpling my cheeks.
"Well, why wouldn't I be? He hit his head."
"Then," I said with a shrug, "I guess there's nothing to be confused about. You're just worried because you're a decent human being and he's a young guy with a passion for his job and a good sense of humor that happened to get hurt near you." I was a little ashamed of my tactics, but if I could get Emily to admit she had feelings for someone in the workplace, then it would make admitting my own problems so much easier.
"Yeah, I suppose so," she said, not taking my bait, though the blush on her cheeks seemed to indicate that she still wasn't so certain as she made her voice sound. "He probably was just reacting to the situation as anyone would if they suddenly ran into someone in the dark. I'm overthinking it."
She smiled at me, grateful for me lending an ear, but I couldn't return her grin. My brain was too busy echoing her own apprehension. What if Alec was just showing me stars. Pointing at stars from his own vantage point would do me little good. He needed to line his arm up with mine or else he simply wouldn't be able to point them out effectively. Was I just making more out of it than was there?
We both needed a change in conversation. Fortunately, we had developed a bit of a mental link over the years and Emily took the initiative before I could figure the best way to shift topics.
"Enough about my day. Sounds like you had some trouble. Marketing going all right?" She straightened up in her chair, shaking her hair out and folding her hands in her lap. She looked like a therapist waiting to take notes on my demented psyche and, frankly, I was ready to unload the baggage of that morning.
"I think we're in a good place. My pre-interview wasn't too bad. I survived."
"That's good at least. So what went wrong?"
"I, well, at the end of the interview, I realized that I didn't actually know much about the charity. Do you know anything about it? I mean we have to advertise the gala, obviously, but advertising the charity should go hand in hand with that."
"Yeah, that would make sense," said Emily as she brushed a finger along her bottom lip in thought.
"I mean besides it being called 'Coding a Future' and their general mission statement, I don't know who is running it, where they are running it from, or how any interested people could get in contact with them."
"They are new..." She sounded just as convinced as I was about that excuse. "Look, I see where you're coming from, but, honestly, what exactly are you concerned about?"
"I don't know," I said, running my hands through my hair. "Mariska just got it into my head. She was making insinuations about how Quinto spends money and then she started asking all these questions about the charity and I didn't like how little I knew. Which isn't necessarily a problem. The problem is I don't know why I know so little."
"What does Mr. Radcliffe say about it?"
"He doesn't. I haven't had the chance to talk to him since the interview and he just, oddly, never brought up the charity before."
"I'm surprised you guys are just now realizing the necessity to promote the charity as well as the gala. I would have expected him to be on top of that."
For a moment we both sat in silence, looking with blank stares at the white board hanging over Emily's desk.
"I think he might just be overextended," I offered with a shrug. "He's basically co-leading this team with me while also still handling all the day to day administrative needs of the department. That's no easy task."
"I'd say. We've only got a month to do what we'd typically have a year for. And he still has to run the place!"
"With everything going on, he probably just forgot about it," I said with some finality. "It slipped my mind too and I don't have executives breathing down my neck. Or at least I didn't until today."
"What do you mean?" asked Emily, her curiosity piqued.
I went on to explain in detail, with a few emotional embellishments to properly convey my dislike for the woman, my encounter with Tamara Hudson on the elevator. Emily listened with an attentive gaze and her eyes glassy with focus.
"What a strange thing to do, stopping the elevator like that," she said at the end of my story.
"Strange is putting it lightly."
"And she just wanted to look in on the project without Mr. Radcliffe knowing? Just wanted to check in on things?"
"So she said," I answered with a shrug.
"Then perhaps you should go to Mr. Radcliffe about finding out more on the charity. If they're scrutinizing his performance, you should let him know."
I agreed, but I also didn't want to add more to Alec's plate. He'd been just as busy as me, if not more so, and this was just one more thing to add to his endless to-do list. And I was lead of the team after all. The responsibility of researching the charity was really on my shoulders.
"Well, I'm certainly going to have to bring it up since I already know Mariska is going to hit me with it next week, but if he knows just as little as I do then I'd rather look into it on my own for now. He's got enough on his plate and I am the one who is supposed to be running this team. I'll see what he knows and then do more research from there."
"Fair enough," said Emi with a smile. "So when are we going to check the charity out?"
"We?"
"What better way to show initiative than to learn more about the charity? It would be useful for helping us narrow down a theme and maybe they have swag we can use for decorating or something."
"Can't knock you for trying to show initiative."
"Right, so if I tag along and help you, then we could both do some good for our teams."
"Okay Emi, deal. We'll be partners in tracking down this charity. How about we do it this weekend? That way it doesn't get in the way of our work and we can make a bit of a girl's day out of it."
"Throw in a trip to get frozen yogurt and I'm in."
***
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