He leaned in very close, scrutinizing numbers with me at a desk. I could feel how he smelled and how he breathed. Eighty-six, he said. I was on a Tolkien horse as I watched his finger trace a dotted line on my paycheck to another column.
Asking him out for coffee has been my plan since Friday over cocktails and edamame. The words were on the tip of my tongue when he stood up and told me that we were going to have to sort this out over coffee: that this type of thing could not be negotiated under these circumstances. Only I don’t think he said the word, thing.
We are going to have to get this sorted out over coffee and a walk, he said. I will follow you, and carry a dung stick. I doubled over with laughter at the top of the stairs he’d already descended; he stood at the bottom looking up at me the way you do when someone laughs at something you say. In real life I woke up smiling.
AngelfromMontgomery et al. 