I had elected to take it as a compliment.
That Thursday, amid some bisphenol A soapboxing, modeling techniques slander, burps, and someone pointing out over and over that they’d been in grad school with the third author on the paper, I was several beers in.
“. . . without even considering the ethical . . .”
“. . . always such a know-it-all . . .”
“. . . is this my glass or yours?”
“. . . they completely misattributed the catalytic activity.”
The last one was Matt. Tragically, I agreed with him, but I wasn’t about to admit it under threat of anything less than radical annihilation. So I stood, gave Tisha a pointed should we maybe wrap this shit up and go home? look, and headed for the closest restroom.
I was lightheaded, definitely buzzed—but not wasted enough to warrant the apparition coming toward me in the hallway. Eli couldn’t be here, could he? He wasn’t allowed at Kline anymore.
His slacks and button-down looked like they’d been a full suit and tie about eight hours ago. His hair had been cut since the last time I’d run my fingers through it. Still messy, a little shorter. The glasses were there, too. They didn’t make him look smarter, or softer, or more distinguished, but they did transform him into Private Equity Eli.
Even worse, they suited him, which was just unforgivable.
“Are you okay?” he asked. His voice sounded too real to be something pulled from my memories. And yet, it must be.
“Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been staring at me for thirty seconds.” He looked happy to see me, and the thought was infuriating, whether he was actually happy or I’d conjured him that way. He had no right. My brain had no right. That happiness was unearned.
“Rue,” he said, amused.
“Eli,” I said, trying for the same tone. I reached out, poking the closest part of him. An unfathomably solid, very unimagined bicep.
Fantastic. I loved coming across like an idiot. “You know,” I told him prosaically, “once upon a time, back before I’d ever heard the word Harkness, this startup used to be really nice.”
“Uh-huh. Is that why you’re so clearly drunk at your workplace at six p.m.?”
“It’s journal club.”
He seemed intrigued. “You get drunk at journal club.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. My head swam. “The first rule of journal club is, don’t talk about journal club.”
“Whoa.” He pretended to recoil. “Drunk Rue makes jokes?”
I considered giving him the finger, but he’d enjoy it way too much. “Why are you here?” My eyes fell on the manila folder in his hand. “Stealing company property. Should I call security?” I thought about adorable, elderly Chuck, with his beer belly and quick smile and cheerful good mornings. Pictured him trying to escort a resisting Eli outside. My fantasy did not end well for Chuck, and since he was approaching retirement, I decided to abandon it.
“Everything that’s in this folder belongs to me,” he said, a little harshly. I wasn’t in the best state of mind to spot a lie, so I didn’t question him. Not even when a prolonged, vaguely uncomfortable silence fell between us.
“How are you, Rue?” he asked quietly, once a century or two had passed.
“Drunk, as you pointed out.”
“Aside from that?”
I shrugged—as accurate a description of my feelings as I could muster.
“It’d be nice to have an answer, since you’ve ignored me for weeks,” he said amiably.
“Have I? Or did our acquaintance come to its natural and predetermined end?”
“Maybe it did.” His jaw tensed and his eyes cooled, like he was no longer in the mood to feign nonchalance. “And maybe you don’t have any obligation to value my peace of mind. I’d still love to know if when you and I were together I did anything to upset you. Or hurt you.”
“No.” Had he been carrying this around for the past two weeks? I studied him, and the vaguely inebriated thought hit me that he was absolutely the type to do that. There was something white knight-y about him. Observant. He cares, he really does care about doing the right thing. Why is he with Harkness, then? “Everything was fine.”
He scanned my face for lies. His lips twisted into a slow smile. “Fine, huh?”
“Good. It was very good.” Though not as good as I remembered, I was certain of it. I must have inflated the night in my head. Glorified it past reality.
Nothing was that good.
“Yeah.” His eyes darkened. When he spoke again, his voice was rougher. “I thought the same. Too bad for no repeats.”
Tragic, really, I thought. With the beer sloshing through my veins, that rule seemed flimsier than ever. And maybe Eli could read my mind, because he said, “Go out on a date with me.” The words seemed to explode out of him, unpremeditated. He appeared just as surprised by them as I was, but didn’t backtrack. “Dinner,” he continued, decisive, as if happy that he’d managed to ask. “Let me take you to dinner.”
It was all I could do not to laugh in his face. “Why?”
“Because. I haven’t seen you in two weeks and—I actually do like this. Being with you.” That self-effacing, teasing smile of his—I wanted to touch it. “You can tell me more stories. The awful, secret ones. I’ll listen and tell you mine.”
It occurred to me that if there was a person in the world who could come to dinner with me and not be disappointed by how awkward, boring, inadequate I was, it was probably this man. We’d been nothing but brutally honest with each other, after all. No pretenses between us. But if having sex with him felt like a betrayal of Florence, talking with him would be pure treason. “Stories? Like of how you ended up trying to steal my friend’s work?”
His expression hardened. “Yes, actually. I could tell you about—” Abruptly, he stopped. His strong neck tensed as he turned over his shoulder, and a moment later he was pushing me through the closest doorway and into a lab. He pressed me into a workstation that couldn’t be seen through the glass walls.
My sluggish brain couldn’t keep up. “What are you doing?” I asked, and then fell silent. A handful of voices were getting closer.
“You know who that is?”
I shook my head.
“Kline’s CEO and its general counsel.” His eyes held mine in what felt like a challenge. “I have no problem with your friend seeing us together, but I figured you might?”
I did. So I fell silent, letting the bite of the workbench dig into my lower back, listening as Florence’s voice grew fainter. Eli remained close, his hands caging me to the table, and it soaked the air between us, the shame of what I’d done. What I still wanted to do.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
I blurted out the truth. “You said ‘negotiated.’”
A confused look. “What?”
“On the app. The checklist part of it, it asks about kinks. You wrote ‘if negotiated’ but didn’t elaborate.”
His gaze sharpened to something so intense, I couldn’t conceive it. It was heady. A little unhinged.