A warning.
I left her office with the same screenshot and considerably less faith in my employer.
That evening, Graham knocked on my door.
No costume. No clever name tag.
Just jeans, a dark jacket, and a face that looked genuinely nervous.
“I’m attracted to you,” he said before I could offer coffee. “I have been for a long time. I should’ve said that Saturday.”
I folded my arms.
“You’ve had a year.”
“I know.”
“That’s an impressive amount of procrastination for a payroll guy.”
He smiled.
Then he asked me to dinner.
A real date.
Thursday evening.
At the little Lebanese restaurant on the east side I’d mentioned months earlier.
He remembered.
That mattered more than the restaurant.
Thursday was wonderful.
We ate grilled chicken, shared hummus, and argued about whether snow in November counted as charming or a personal insult.
For the first time, he looked at me without immediately finding something safer to discuss.
