The office always felt different after seven. The phones stopped their shrill demands, the printers fell silent, and the overhead lights dimmed to their night-cycle glow: a muted amber that made everything look slightly unreal, like a photograph left too long in the sun. I told myself I was staying late to finish the quarterly projections, but the spreadsheet had been done for an hour. I was simply waiting.He appeared in the doorway at 7:42, tie loosened, sleeves rolled once, the way he did when he thought no one important was watching.
“Thought I was the last one,” he said.
“So did I.”Neither of us moved to leave. The corridor behind him was dark; only our floor still breathed this half-light. He stepped inside and let the door drift shut. The click it made was soft, but in the stillness it sounded deliberate.We talked about nothing for a while: the client who kept changing his mind, the coffee machine that had started gurgling like it was dying, the way the air-conditioning always smelled faintly of someone else’s citrus perfume. Safe topics. Yet every sentence carried a second, quieter one underneath, the way a river carries silt you can’t see until the light hits it just right.Eventually the conversation thinned, and silence pooled between us. It wasn’t awkward; it was careful. He leaned against the edge of my desk, close enough that I could see the small scar at his hairline I’d never noticed in meetings. I stayed seated, swiveling my chair a fraction so that my knee brushed the inside of his calf. Neither of us acknowledged it, but neither of us moved away.Minutes collected like raindrops on glass. I watched his fingers rest on the desk beside a stack of reports, watched the way his thumb traced idle half-moons on the wood. I wondered what that same motion would feel like on skin. The thought arrived fully formed and uninvited, warming me from the inside out.He spoke first. “You ever think the building keeps secrets?”
“Every night,” I answered.His eyes flicked to mine, held. Something shifted in the air, the way temperature changes just before a storm breaks. He didn’t ask permission; he simply let his hand cover mine where it lay on the armrest. His palm was warmer than I expected. I turned my hand slowly, palm up, an invitation so small it could almost be accidental. Our fingers threaded together as naturally as if they’d done it a thousand times.We stayed like that, breathing in tandem, letting the moment stretch until it was thin enough to see through. When he finally leaned down, it wasn’t sudden. It was inevitable. His lips brushed the corner of my mouth—not quite a kiss, more the promise of one. I felt it everywhere.I stood. The wheels of my chair rolled back with a whisper. Now we were the same height, close enough that the fabric of his shirt grazed the front of my blouse with every breath. I could smell the faint trace of his day on him: coffee, copier toner, the warmth of skin held too long under fluorescent light.His free hand rose, hesitated, then settled at the small of my back, just above where my skirt met blouse. The pressure was light, but it anchored me. I let my forehead rest against his for a moment, feeling the steady rhythm of him, letting it sync with mine.“Tell me to stop,” he said against my temple, so quietly I felt the words more than heard them.
I didn’t.Instead I tilted my face until our mouths met properly—slow, deliberate, like people who had all the time in the world and none of it at all. The kiss tasted like restraint finally giving way. When we parted, it was only far enough to breathe.Somewhere down the hall a printer woke itself up and spat out a single blank page. The ordinary sound felt obscene. We smiled against each other’s lips, conspirators.He drew back just enough to look at me. “Tomorrow,” he said, “this place will be bright and loud and full of people again.”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed, “we’ll pretend none of this happened.”
“Until it’s late enough that we don’t have to pretend anymore.”His thumb traced once along my lower lip, a silent punctuation mark. Then he stepped away, straightened his tie with the same hand that had just held mine, and walked to the door. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. The air still carried the shape of him.I waited until his footsteps faded before I gathered my things. The reports could wait. The numbers would still be there in the morning. Some things, though, only exist in the particular hush that comes after hours, in the amber light and the half-closed blinds and the delicious, dangerous certainty that tomorrow we would do it all again—only better at pretending we weren’t counting the minutes until the office emptied once more.