There was nothing to hurry Nicholas along as he filed away the last of his documents for the day and began on the labors of returning home. He sighed, leaning back in his office chair, impeded for the knowledge that there were yet plans that wouldn't be going his way today, all that was left was to go home and try to sleep despite it all. Around him, everyone else had gone home hours ago while he buried himself in paperwork for its own sake, dotting the I and crossing the T in a plodding and humorless fashion so that it would take just that little bit longer and be just that much more correct.
It was quiet, without the dull sound of workers going to and fro. One didn't really notice it in the moment, but it was deafening when alone enough to notice its absence. The air rang with the faint buzz of electricity, of computers put to sleep for the night, punctuated by the printer in the corner asserting itself with some preparatory cycle. This would have been pleasant, he thought as he forced himself out of his chair and into his coat, but for the things he was forcing to the back of his mind. On his desk, the flowers... it would be too much to see them in the trash bin on Wednesday morning before another full day of work when he would already have his hands full not thinking about things.
He took them with him, the half-dozen roses along with the small box from the chocolatier. He'd have to find someone to take them off his hands, maybe leave it at the front desk for whoever cared to have their pick. Tomorrow was half-price-heart-shaped-chocolate-box day anyway. It felt like too much of a waste to throw away fifty dollars like that.
As he left the elevator on the ground floor, the silence was broken by the clack of keys; someone else was burning the same midnight oil as him it seemed. Well, another reason to distract himself was another reason, he pressed back into the building and came to one of the stupid, new, open-floor-plan spaces, where someone sat bathed in the glow of their laptop from within a self-made cubicle of propped-up binders.
She didn't seem to notice Nicholas come closer and take a nearby seat and that was alright by him. He was certain he would spook her either way, no matter whether he announced himself or she turned to see him. Not his type anyway, he tried and failed not to think.
Not that she wasn't cute enough; he knew that things as they were had primed him for these kinds of intrusive thoughts. Fighting it would only make them assert themselves that much harder. Not at all tall, blonde, or stacked, (he was very aware of how pedestrian his tastes were). She wore her dark hair in a plain, messy bob, long bangs held out of her face by a paper clip of all things, the light of her laptop reflected in under-rim glasses and allowing only brief glances at weary eyes with dark bags. She'd relieved the top button of her dress shirt for comfort since nobody was supposed to be here to see her, and kept herself warm in an earthy cardigan. Then blue jeans and sneakers that squeaked a touch as she idly tapped her left foot. Slender, sharp chin, freckles; no, not really his type at all...
Nicholas didn't work on this floor, of course, but he thought he got around enough that he should know who this was. Not a clue. She wouldn't be all that noticeable to him on a normal day so it made sense. Ah, that mystery would be solved very soon anyway, as she brought her arms above her head to stretch and nearly fell backwards out of her chair when she caught sight of his 'menacing shadow' in the shine off her glasses.
"Ah, fuck!" he cried, lunging to try and catch her before she kicked and righted herself in her chair, she took a pen from the desk in a white-knuckled grip and he slowly backed away. "Sorry, are you alright?"
The woman put her hand to her modest breast to calm her heart and slowly, one finger at a time, released her erstwhile weapon. "Mister Pellsson, I thought I was alone... J-just shocked I think..."
Fuck, she knew him... And the floor plan meant there wasn't even a name plaque to look for so he wouldn't seem like an ass...
"No, it's my fault," he said. "Sorry, I was in my own little world, not even sure why I was in here in the first place." He chuckled to try and dissipate the uncomfortable air between the two of them; it worked well enough, he thought. "You sure are here late, anything I can help with?"
She blinked away tiredness and rubbed her eyes to relieve some of the stress built up from looking at a screen for hours on end. But she shook her head. "Only finishing up some of these expense reports from the guys we sent to the conference last week. They all filed in today and I can't deal with leaving an inbox filled."
"Ah," he said, nodding, feeling a little guilty for the half-filled box he'd left behind despite his best efforts to carry on all night.
"And... I mean, shouldn't you be going soon, too?" she asked.
"Not as such. Really, I can run a copier just fine; do those reports have to go to HR?"
She leaned in conspiratorily, cupped her hand to her mouth and said, "Don't you think you should be getting along for your date?" She pointed at the flowers and chocolate which had morphed at some point in his mind to meaningless objects. Then, a cautiously shy smile lit on her face. "Don't worry, nobody's waiting on me."
"Me neither." Nicholas set the things aside on the unclaimed desk space next to him. "Started the day with a girlfriend."
"I see... Sucks."
"You can say that again."
"That again," she said, turning to hide her grin, and the two shared a sober moment of humor. "Suppose you could walk me out to my car when I'm done, then?"
He leaned back in his chair thankful to have a reason to prolong being away from home a little longer. There were picture frames to change after all that he didn't feel quite like taking care of that very day. "So," he said, "I'm going to sound like an ass, here, in a second, so forgive me. What's your name?"
She stifled a laugh and ended up with a little snort instead. "Theresa. That's my fault, I'm one of the ones who makes name badges, so don't worry about it. Nobody can be expected to know everybody else."
"Except you?"
A subtle shrug. "I'm just good with names and faces. It's nothing special."
"I'll say it is! I barely have time to put one to the other before some of our new guys up and quit on us," he said. Was that a touch of blush he caught in the glow of her screen on her cheek? "Anyway, you sure seem to have eked out your own little space down here. Can't stand the open floor plan either, can you?"
Theresa spun in her chair, nearly knocking down her privacy binder wall and slapped her hands down on her knees. "Don't get me started on this! Someone upstairs found a magazine from the nineties and thought it was just the best idea ever, took away our cozy cubicles and made us all breathe the same air as everyone else!" Then, suddenly self-conscious again, she slowly turned back to her work.
"Right? It's one thing to be in your own box all day; it's another thing entirely to never once in your day be out of someone's sight. The office they've put me in has a glass wall looking out into the same kind of thing, but at least nobody's walking behind me and looking at my screen while I'm working. That sort of thing will drive a man mad sooner rather than later."
"And it isn't even more productive," she quietly agreed. "Less, even, since we had to move all of our things to a satellite office for months while they made the transition, then move everything back over here, but they've taken away the desktop computers! This laptop isn't even the company's, the one they wanted me to use couldn't smoothly run spreadsheets of all things."
"And let me guess, they almost wouldn't let you buy your own equipment and run company files on it?"
She sighed and nearly collapsed into a heap over the laptop in question. "I had to wheedle them for a month before I.T. would give it the go-ahead, and even then I had to install a kill switch so they can wipe it remotely. Their luck I had an old PC that I could sacrifice to the cause."
"Yeah, I had to do some of the purchasing on that, sorry." Nicholas rested his head on his crossed arms over the shared desk. "You would be surprised just how much they are willing to spend on some things, and leave peanuts for necessary equipment. Those desktops weren't even sold or anything, they're either in storage or donated to the schools nearby."
"Those poor kids."
Again, they shared a silent moment of humor.
She went back to her documentation and spent a good, long while on it before social convention demanded that one of them speak. "Do you, um, want to talk about it? I mean, uh, what happened with her."
"Came out of nowhere... No, no it didn't, but I'm only seeing the cracks now, looking back on things. All I got was a text around lunchtime, and then she blocked my number when I responded... then I got a text from her friend to stop trying to reach her." Fuck... not here; if he could keep it together while he was alone earlier, he damn well wasn't going to let himself break down now... "Pretty sure she's been cheating for a while, didn't want to believe it."
"What a cunt."
He sighed. "Better to find out about it now, I suppose."
