“Okay then, it’s a date.” James said, winking at me.
“It’s a date!” I said beaming at him. He smiled with a weird look on his face but I walked away, ecstatic.
I’d been going to work that morning when I bumped into a hard surface, spilling the contents of my half-opened work bag and my hastily grabbed coffee and doughnuts to the floor.
“What in the world….” I seethed as I bent to salvage what I could.
“Oh, I’m so sorry-” said a deep voice that sent shivers down my spine.
“Nope, we’re not doing that,” I said, as I stood up to meet the most beautiful eyes I’d seen in a while.
“Do what?” he grinned. I’m quite sure he was conscious of the effect he had on women.
I paused, trying to recover my bearings. “Yeah, I mean….I mean, that whole clichè thing where the guy collides with the girl and they fall in love and live happily ever after.” I mentally slapped myself as I heard him chuckle. Why was I rambling to a total stranger?
“That’s…interesting.” He said looking at me like I was a peculiar specimen that marvelled him greatly. I also stared at him, lioness that I am and all of that.
“Anyways,” I paused, looking panicky at my watch. “This has been fun, have a lovely day,” I said with a tight smile as I rushed into the company’s building, not waiting for the handsome stranger’s response.
Seriously Milly? I thought to myself. We’re already giving him adjectives?
I got into my office and began work immediately. The perk of becoming a supervisor and having my own office was that I didn’t need to do the whole explanation as to how scattered I looked to my nosy colleagues.
Couple of hours later, there was a meeting for all supervisors in the conference room to welcome a new supervisor. And as I walked into the room and saw the stranger from this morning, I wasn’t even surprised. My life was known to be dramatic at best and of course, fate had it that the man that I was semi-attracted to at a glance plus who saw me in my worst state was now my new colleague.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the manager preened. “ I present to you, James Hathaway. The said James beamed and bowed so elegantly that the women erupted into wistful sighs. Just my luck. An honest-to-God charmer. And then, as if he couldn’t possibly be more annoyingly perfect, he made a joke and the room erupted into boisterous laughter. Like really? He had to be smart and witty too?
I walked out of the office that day determining in my heart not to let his charming ways get to me. I’d been burned too many times by men like that but to top the drama that is my life, a few weeks later, each supervisor at the company was supposed to work in pairs on a project and surprise, surprise, we were paired together.
I guess I could have gone to the Manager and told him that we couldn’t work together, but the old bugger, said clearly before giving the list that he wasn’t going to change the pairings as he’d given it a lot of thought and weighed our strengths and weaknesses and blah blah. And I didn’t want to draw the spotlight on me that I had a problem with him. Because, technically I didn’t. He just made butterflies spin in cartwheels in my belly.
We started working together and surprisingly, he wasn’t even arrogant. He didn’t do that whole thing chauvinistic men did where they pretended to listen to your opinions but then override them with theirs. This one genuinely listened, asked questions and all of that. And if that wasn’t enough to make a girl fall, I didn’t know what else was.
So as I dressed up that evening for the date that James had fixed that morning which was at his place, I thought to myself that it was finally going to happen. He would open up and confess that he had feelings for me, probably even ask me out.
As I walked to James’ house, looking at my phone and ensuring I’d gotten the directions accurately, I was distracted by the laughs and noise coming from the house I identified as his. What was happening? A laughing James came out soon after, red paper cup in hand.
“Hey,” I said, walking to him and trying to overlook the rapid beating of my heart.
“Wow. You look…gorgeous.”
“You mean I look overdressed. What’s going on? I thought….” I swallowed. “I thought, we were supposed to….”
“Date?” he said, looking mortified.
“Yeah, that’s what you told me.”
“No, I said it’s a date. Because I was reminding you of the party of the supervisors at my place and you said you’ll see me there and I was like “It’s a date.”
I wished the ground would cave in and I fall into the deepest parts of the ground never to return. Fighting the lump in my throat and the tears threatening to fall I said “So, it wasn’t a date?”
“I’m so sorry. I thought you understood. You’re still welcome to party.” He looked genuinely distraught, good thing. But I was too embarrassed to even face him now. Turning to leave, he grabbed my hand.
“You know, we can still-”
“Nope. We’re not doing that.” I said decisively, smiling tightly at him. “Never again.”
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