Delete My Number (But He Didn't)

Chapter Four: Rumors Are Faster Than Emails

By day four, the story had grown legs.

Zara heard the first version on Wednesday morning when she was waiting for the elevator on the main floor. Two women she didn't know were standing close together, voices low, and she caught her own name before they noticed her and went quiet. She stepped into the elevator. She pressed thirty-two. She looked straight ahead at the doors.

By Thursday, there were at least three different versions floating around.

The tamest one was that she'd flirted her way into the PA role, which was insulting enough. The second version, which she heard secondhand through a bathroom she probably should have left before the conversation started, was that her and Luca had been texting for months before the reassignment, like this was some kind of planned thing. The third version she didn't fully catch but it involved the words not qualified and she stopped listening after that because her jaw was starting to hurt from how hard she was keeping her face neutral.

She did her job. She answered emails. She confirmed the venue contractor about the ramp situation, which was being handled, finally, after two phone calls and one firmly worded email she was low-key proud of. She organized Luca's Thursday morning so cleanly that Elena glanced at the updated schedule and made a small sound that might have been approval.

She kept her expression professional and her feelings somewhere deep in the back of her chest where she could deal with them later.

Inside, she was absolutely furious.

She hadn't done anything wrong. She'd sent a message to the wrong number. That was it. That was the whole crime. And somehow in four days it had turned into a whole office narrative where she was either a schemer or a flirt or both, and people who had never looked at her twice before were now looking at her like they were waiting for her to confirm something.

It got worse on Thursday afternoon.

Jess Park appeared at the edge of her desk around two, holding two coffees, which Zara immediately recognized as the universal gesture for I come in peace and also have information. Jess was from the marketing department, same floor Zara used to be on. She had a warm face and a habit of talking fast when she was nervous, and right now she was talking fast.

"Okay so don't freak out," Jess started, which was never how you wanted a sentence to begin.

"About what," Zara said flatly.

Jess set one of the coffees down in front of her and pulled out her phone. She turned the screen around. It was the building's anonymous internal gossip channel, which Zara knew existed but had never had a reason to look at before. There was a screenshot of a scheduling email, the kind that got sent out to multiple people when conference rooms were booked. It had Luca's name on it. And hers.

Just the names. A scheduling confirmation. Nothing in it that meant anything. But someone had screenshotted it and posted it with the caption: so this is what the texting situation looks like? and it had thirty-seven reactions.

Zara looked at the screen for a moment.

"Nobody actually believes it," Jess said quickly. "Like seriously, people are just bored. It's a slow month and everyone's looking for something to talk about. It doesn't mean anything."

Zara smiled. It was a good smile. She'd practiced it. "Good. Because there's nothing to believe."

Jess nodded, relieved. She stayed for a few more minutes, chatting about nothing, asking how the new role was going, and Zara answered in the easy pleasant way she'd gotten very good at. She thanked her for the coffee. She meant it, actually. It was the first genuinely kind thing someone on this floor had done for her since she got here.

When Jess left, Zara counted to ten, stood up, and walked to the bathroom.

She stood at the sink and looked at herself in the mirror for thirty solid seconds. Just looked. Her face was fine. Her expression was fine. She looked like a person who was totally okay, which she was, which she absolutely was.

She was not going to let a building gossip channel ruin her day.

She ran cold water over her wrists the way her mom used to tell her to do when she was stressed as a kid, dried her hands, and went back to her desk.

At five forty, Elena knocked on the open door of Luca's office and said something Zara couldn't hear, and then Luca appeared in the doorway and said, "Ms. Elliot. A moment."

Zara grabbed her notepad. She'd learned fast that he never called her in just to talk. There was always a purpose.

She went in. He gestured to the chair across from his desk, which he hadn't done before, and she sat.

He was still standing. He leaned back against the edge of his desk instead of sitting behind it, which was also new, and he looked at her in that direct way of his that she still hadn't fully figured out how to handle.

"The venue adjustment," he said. "The ramp situation. You confirmed it?"

"Thursday," she said. "The contractor confirmed. It'll be installed ten days before the event and inspected the following Monday. I got it in writing."

He nodded. "Good."

She waited for the next thing.

He was quiet for a second. Then he said, "You're going to hear things."

She kept her face still. "Okay."

"People speculate when something changes. It's not specific to you." He looked at her directly. "Don't let it affect your output."

She looked back at him. That tight little feeling that had been sitting behind her ribs all day pulled a little tighter.

"Is that your version of asking if I'm okay?" she said.

Something moved through his expression. "It's my version of telling you your job is safe."

She held his gaze for a second. "That wasn't actually what I was worried about."

He blinked. Just once. It was such a small thing and yet it felt like the most reaction she'd ever gotten out of him in four days of watching his face for information.

She picked up her bag and stood. "The contractor's name and confirmation number are in the venue file. I'll have the full accessibility check sent to Elena by end of tomorrow."

She walked to the door.

She heard him say, quietly, almost to himself: "I know."

She left.

She didn't look back and she didn't stop walking and she got in the elevator and pressed the lobby button and stood there with her hands loose at her sides, breathing steadily, thinking about the fact that he'd called her in to essentially make sure she was okay and then framed it as a business conversation because that was apparently the only language he had for it.

It was annoying.

It was also, against her will, a little bit something else.

She got home and ate the leftover rice Priya had saved for her in the fridge with a sticky note on top that said don't stress babe with a small drawing of a sun next to it, which was so Priya that Zara laughed for the first time all day.

She showered. She looked at her phone. She did not open the gossip channel. She was not going to give it the energy.

She went to bed telling herself tomorrow would be quieter.

She woke up at seven and opened her work email on instinct before she was even fully awake and the first thing she saw was a company-wide email sent at six forty-three a.m.

From: L. Voss

To: All Staff

Subject: Conduct Standards

Professional conduct standards apply to all internal commentary. This includes speculation about personnel decisions. Any continued violation will be addressed accordingly.

That was it. Fourteen words. No explanation, no preamble, no names. Just those two sentences sitting in everyone's inbox at six forty-three in the morning like a quiet reminder of exactly who ran this building.

Zara read it twice.

She sat up in bed and read it a third time.

He'd sent a company-wide email. For her. Not with her name on it, not publicly, but everyone who'd been watching and talking and screenshotting scheduling emails would read those two sentences and understand immediately what they were about. And they would stop. Because nobody on any floor of that building was going to test what will be addressed accordingly meant when it came from Luca Voss.

She sat there for a while with her phone in her hand.

There was something sitting in her chest that she didn't fully know what to do with. It wasn't gratitude exactly, or it wasn't just gratitude. It was something more uncomfortable than that. It was the feeling of being seen by someone you weren't prepared to be seen by, in a moment you didn't ask for, and not knowing what to do with it.

She put her phone down.

She got up and started getting ready.

She told herself it was just a management call. A professional decision. He'd protected his department's workflow, not her specifically. That was all this was.

She almost believed it.

What she couldn't shake, standing in her kitchen drinking her tea before the commute, was a simpler question. One that had nothing to do with emails or contractors or gossip channels.

He'd sent that email at six forty-three in the morning.

Which meant he'd been thinking about it before six forty-three.

Which meant at some point last night, after she'd left his office, he'd thought about her.

She didn't know what to do with that at all.