Page 34 of All's Well that Friends Well
“Right,” I say, pulling off my glasses and pinching the bridge of my nose. “What I meant was why are you doing that now instead of earlier this morning?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to do it earlier this morning.”
“You were,” I say shortly. “Before anyone enters their offices or cubicles, preferably. You have about twenty minutes before the people on the work floor arrive. Do it then.” A thought hits me as I’m speaking, and I go on, “Hang on—did you come in my office yesterday too?”
I would have smelled her, wouldn’t I?
Sure enough, she shakes her head. “Nope,” she says with a smile as she glances around the small room. “This is my first time, but I’ll be here from now on.” She leans forward, her expression more conspiratorial now. “I requested this section of the floor.”
Of course she did.
“Well, do your job, then,” I say, jerking my chin toward the trash bin. Then I turn my gaze to my computer and pull up my email. Rod’s admonitions to be friendly echo in my mind as I begin drafting. I read through the short messageonce and then twice, but I can’t see anything wrong with it, and I think he’d approve?—
Until I hear a little gasp over my shoulder.
“You can’t say that!” Juliet says, her voice scandalized.
I whip around without thinking, only to find my face inches from hers. Her eyes widen, and for just a second I can feel her breath on my lips, something intoxicating and sweet and?—
“Gah!” I say, rearing back so fast I’ll have a crick in my neck.
She stumbles backward too, her arms flailing as she loses her balance in those stupid heels, and I—I?—
I let her fall. I let her fall right to the floor, except it’s not a clumsy landing; somehow she manages to make the crash into more of a graceful topple.
How does she do that? Is her body not subject to the same laws of physics mine is? She’s lesssprawledthan vaguelyposed, nothing haphazard about her position.
“Luca!” she hisses a split second later, her eyes narrowing at me when they swing up to find mine.
I blink in surprise. It’s one of the first less-than-pleasant expressions I’ve seen from her, one of the first that’s not tinged with any sort of flirtation or playfulness.
“You—you—” She breaks off and climbs to her feet—once again, impossibly gracefully—before saying, “What wasthat?You could have pulled me upright!” She dusts herself off, although I know my office to be very clean. Then she runs her hands over her hair, her irritation fading into nothing more than a little frown. “That was rude,” she says.
“I—sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she says with a sniff.
I blink at her. “I—well.” Then I clear my throat. “I am a little.”
She bends over at the waist—no bent knees—and picks the bag up where it fell, and I find my brow furrowing. Even in monstrously high heels she’s flexible enough to lean down that far; she’s unnaturally graceful too.
“A gymnast,” I say, snapping my fingers as it comes to me. I was wondering what she was doing before she came to work here—it clearly must have been something like gymnastics, right?
She straightens up slowly, and it’s only when I see the look on her face that I realize how weird I must sound. Like a creep. My cheeks heat as I try to figure out what to say, but then she shrugs.
“Ballet,” she says lightly. “That’s what I did before I lost my job and had to find something else. I was a ballet teacher. Look—see?”
Then, standing on one heel-clad foot, she lifts her leg up, up, up, grabs her ankle, andstraightens her leg—all the way over her head, like it’s nothing. Like she does this every day.
My mouth goes dry, and I don’t even know why. “Put that down,” I say gruffly, swiveling my head to look at my computer screen again. I blink a few times as I register my email draft; then I frown. “And what did you mean earlier?” I nod at the screen. “What’s wrong with this?”
I don’t even hear her returning to her normal, feet-on-the-floor position. I don’t hear her approach from behind me, coming to lean down at my side.
“That,” she says, pointing at the email. “You can’t say that. Aren’t you trying to get people to like you? You can’t be so mean.”
“I’m not mean,” I say, bristling.
“You’re regularly mean,” she says, but the words aren’t hurt or offended. “You have a kind heart, but your execution is very poor. You push people away to avoid getting hurt.” She says the words matter-of-factly, like she’s barely even thinking about them, and yet my whole body freezes.
