Is She Really Going Out with Him?

Chapter 27

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Jonathan leans out of his doorway and calls across the office.

“Anna, in here, please!”

When I walk through his office door, I see Will is already there. He still hasn’t replied to my message and I’m starting to suspect I might have invented the whole weekend. He’s wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, and his thick, dark-rimmed glasses. His face is so familiar to me now: the small patch of missing hair follicles on his chin, which you only notice when you’re an inch away; the fleck of gray in his green eyes. My belly hums at the sight of him. Was he always this handsome?

“Will tells me the weekend was a great success,” Jonathan says gleefully, and now I feel as though I have hot coals pressed against my cheeks.

“It was,” I say, my voice coming out at a higher pitch than usual.

“Moonlighting for the Times , who would have thought it? I can’t wait to read the piece,” says Jonathan, offering us each a brandy snap biscuit. Will declines but I take one. Jonathan orders his sweet treats from an expensive patisserie, and they are always mouthwateringly good. Sensing Will looking across at me, I can’t bring myself to look at him yet. “Crispin wanted the three of us to jump on a call this morning,” Jonathan tells us, picking up his mouse and tapping it up and down on his desk. “Will, can you?” He nods toward his computer. “I can never get video calls working.”

Will goes to assist. As he’s shifting the screen, Jonathan picks up his newspaper and says, “?‘Delight,’ eight letters, fifth letter S?”

“?‘Pleasure,’?” I say at the exact same time as Will. Our eyes meet across the desk, and I have to look away.

“Excellent,” says Jonathan, filling in the clue. Will clears his throat, then turns the screen so we can all see. He’s pushed up his shirtsleeves, and my eyes are drawn to his forearms, the light smattering of hair on his arms, his strong broad hands, which effortlessly hold both of mine in one—

“Didn’t love your latest column, Anna,” Crispin says, and I realize the call has started and my mind is elsewhere. I clear my throat and nod, trying to focus on what’s being said. “I liked the ones you wrote about flirting with a twenty-two-year-old and getting stoned at a house party, or nearly giving nits to your celebrity crush; they were funny. Going for a walk in Regency clothes feels rather staid. Where’s the romance? Where’s the danger?”

I cross my legs, then clasp my hands tightly around my knee. “I think readers will relate to the fact that you won’t have chemistry with most people.” Now I can’t stop my eyes from darting back to Will. He’s looking right at me, and his eyes unmoor me from the meeting. I’m back in the woods, lying on the rug, his hand running up my—

“Anna, Anna.” Crispin’s tsk jolts me back to reality. He frowns through the computer screen. “I need more, Anna. More. Were you disappointed not to feel attracted to this man or were you relieved? Do you think he was attracted to you? Do you want to meet someone or has your divorce made you cautious? Do you have trust issues? What’s your relationship like with your ex? Real questions, real feelings. This column might as well be written in the third person. I don’t get any sense of what you were feeling.”

“I can edit it,” I say, feeling wounded.

“I liked it,” Will says, jumping in. “Anna raises an interesting point about the online/offline debate. If you’re looking for something niche, that’s where the internet really shines.”

I know he’s trying to help, but I’m annoyed Will feels the need to try to rescue me.

“What I was trying to get at in the column is that dating can forge connections, even if they aren’t romantic ones,” I explain. “There’s an Austen-themed ball next month, and I’ve promised to help Michael find a suitable date—”

Crispin holds up his finger to silence me, then taps a closed fist against his lips. “Tell me more about this ball.”

“It takes place every summer, people get dressed up in Regency clothes and throw an Austen-inspired soiree. It’s a big event in Bath.”

“This is what your column is lacking, an end point, a goal, a grand finale,” says Crispin, smacking one fist into his other hand. “You should go to the ball, choose a date from one of the men you’ve written about. It will give the column a narrative through-line, bring readers back week after week to see who you’ll pick.”

“Me, go to the Regency ball?” I laugh, but quickly look back and forth between Crispin and Jonathan and realize no one else is laughing. “I don’t even know how to dance.”

“You’d better learn, then,” Jonathan says. “Oh, what a marvelous lark. Two of the most useful things I ever learned at school, how to rewire a fencing foil and how to dance an eightsome reel.” I get the impression Jonathan and I went to very different schools.

“Will’s column needs an end point too, something more modern, but also classically romantic,” Crispin says.

“I’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower,” Will suggests.

“Perfect!” cries Crispin, pointing down his camera lens at Will. “A weekend in Paris—every girl’s dream.”

I know what Will’s doing. He’s future-proofing his column in case he’s not in the country to finish it. I shift uncomfortably in my chair. Crispin slaps his desk again, delighted. “Anna goes to the ball, Will goes up the Eiffel Tower—our readers get two happy endings.”

“Isn’t it a little contrived?” I ask. “What if neither of us find anyone suitable? Dating is as much about discovering yourself as it is about finding a partner, isn’t it?”

“You don’t have to marry the guy, Anna. People like a resolution,” Crispin says, leaning back in his chair, then shifting his eyes to the ceiling. “Look, if you’re not comfortable writing a column like this—”

“I’ll go. It’s fine,” I say hurriedly, before I talk myself out of a job.

“So who have you got lined up this week?” Crispin asks, and I sit forward in my chair, feeling ever more uncomfortable, trying not to look at Will, trying not to feel jealous that it won’t be me whom he takes up the Eiffel Tower.

“Our neighbor. He’s a widower. We don’t get on.”

Jonathan lets out a sigh of pleasure. “Ah, enemies to lovers, my favorite trope.”

—

When we finally escape the meeting, I hurry back to my desk, trying to ignore the fact that my whole body feels like a charged magnet, drawn to wherever Will is. I put my headphones in and try to focus on my screen, but then, ping. An e-mail from him.

Will: I thought Crispin was too harsh back there.

Anna: I’m a big girl, I can handle it.

Is this how it’s going to be now? We go back to being colleagues and pretend nothing happened? Maybe it’s not a big deal for him. Maybe he has weekends like that all the time, whereas I feel bereft, because it’s like he’s woken me up but now expects me to go back to sleep. Another e-mail.

Will: BTW I broke my phone if you were trying to get in touch.

So he wasn’t ignoring me. That’s a relief. I reply with an ambiguous thumbs-up emoji. He doesn’t reply, and when I turn around, I see he’s left his desk. I’m starting to see why workplace relationships might be a bad idea—I’ve never felt more distracted or less productive. Twenty minutes later, finally, he gets back to his desk and I get another message.

Will: This isn’t going to work.

My heart starts to pound before I’ve even finished reading the sentence.

Anna: What’s not going to work?

Will: What happened in the woods. I don’t think it can stay in the woods.

I keep my eyes trained on my screen so he won’t see me smiling.

Anna: ??

Will: I think it’s going to happen again. Upstairs in the archive room in four minutes’ time.

And when I turn around, I see he’s left his desk and is walking off toward the stairs without a backward glance. Oh my. What do I do?

I quickly run through the pros and cons of following Will up the stairs. Cons: I didn’t wear my nice underwear today; this is our workplace, it’s unprofessional; we could get caught, fired; this is not what we agreed at the retreat. Pros: there’s no time to list the pros because I’m already following him up the stairs.

My legs tremble as I climb the narrow stairwell. No one works on the second floor of the building; it’s used for storing archive copies of the magazine going back to the first edition in 1954. My pace quickens. I undo the top button on my blouse and pull my hair out of a ponytail so it falls around my shoulders.

Opening the door to the archive, before I can whisper, “Will?” I feel a hand reach for mine and pull me inside. He closes the door behind me. The main strip lights are off, but there’s a dim desk lamp on in one corner.

“What are we doing?” I ask, full of nervous energy, my whole body alert with anticipation.

“Shh,” he says, raising a finger to his lips. “What happens in the archive stays in the archive.” Then he leans down to kiss my neck and every nerve ending burns with pleasure.

“What happened to not letting things get messy?” I say, trying to sound stern, but my voice comes out a whispered moan.

“I was thinking about that,” he says, his voice slow as he punctuates each word with a kiss down my collarbone while gently unbuttoning the rest of my blouse with one hand. “I think if it’s just this, then it won’t get messy.”

“Just sex?” I ask, reaching for his belt, pulling his work shirt from his trousers, running a hand up his chest. The smell of him, the feel of him against my palm, makes me heady with need. He leans into my ear, and the sensation of his breath on my neck is intoxicating.

“Right,” he says. “No one gets attached, no one gets hurt.” He flicks open the last button on my blouse, then kneels on the floor in front of me, laying both his hands across my bare stomach, hugging my hips as he reaches around to find the zipper on my skirt. “If you think that would work?” he says, and his voice catches now, betraying the effort it’s taking for him to keep talking.

“That could work,” I say, clasping a handful of his hair, biting back a whimper.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, pausing to look up at me, and our eyes lock in the low light. There’s something in his eyes I can’t read.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Havers,” I say, pressing a thumb under his chin and forcing it up. “You’re not my type, remember? And I don’t think you’re boyfriend material.”

“Oh, I remember,” he says, and there’s a flash in his eyes, a smile on his lips. This is all the permission he needs. With two deft tugs he relieves me of my skirt and then my knickers. The smallest groan escapes my lips, and I need to bite down on my fist to keep quiet as his hot mouth makes contact.