Chapter 5: First Day
1098 Words
Monday arrived the way most things in Aria's life did.
Without fanfare.
She was up before her alarm, dressed by six thirty, out of the house before her uncle's boots hit the kitchen floor. The morning was cold and grey and the bus to Mirren smelled like damp coats and someone's breakfast and she sat near the window with her bag on her lap and her eyes on the passing countryside and told herself very firmly that this was just a job.
Just a job.
Nothing else.
She arrived forty minutes early and stood outside the building for twenty of them because walking in too early felt desperate and she had promised herself she would not be desperate today of all days.
Celeste was waiting in the lobby at exactly five to nine.
"You're on time," she said, in a tone that suggested she had prepared for the alternative.
"I'm always on time," Aria said.
Something shifted in Celeste's expression. Not quite approval. Not quite its opposite. She turned and walked and Aria followed.
The morning passed in a blur of orientation. System access, filing structure, communication protocols, the particular language of a company that ran on precision and expected everyone inside it to do the same. Celeste explained everything once and only once and Aria wrote everything down because she wasn't too proud to admit she needed to and because she didn't intend to ask twice.
By eleven she was at her desk. A small one near the corridor, outside the junior division offices, with a view of absolutely nothing interesting. She didn't mind. She had her work and that was enough.
She didn't see Damian.
She told herself she wasn't looking.
She wasn't entirely convincing.
***
He knew she was in the building.
Celeste had confirmed it that morning in her usual efficient manner, Miss Voss has arrived, settled, no issues, and he had nodded and gone back to the papers in front of him and that had been that.
He had a full day. Back to back meetings, a call with Vienna, a situation with one of his shipping contracts that required more delicacy than it should have. His mind was where it needed to be, sharp and present and entirely focused.
Mostly.
He found himself pausing outside the junior division corridor at half past twelve. Not intentionally. He had been on his way to the east wing and this happened to be the route and there was nothing deliberate about it at all.
She was at her desk with her head down, hair falling forward slightly, pen moving across a notepad in quick precise strokes. She hadn't noticed him. She was completely absorbed, her brow furrowed in the particular way of someone who was refusing to let something beat them.
He stood there for exactly three seconds.
Then he kept walking.
***
Lunch was a sandwich from the small cafe two streets over that Celeste had pointed out during orientation. Aria ate it on a bench outside, alone, because the staff common room felt like a space she hadn't earned yet and she had never been good at inserting herself into rooms where she wasn't sure she belonged.
The bench was cold. The sandwich was adequate. The sky above Mirren was the colour of old dishwater.
She was on her last bite when a shadow fell across her.
She looked up.
A man she didn't recognise. Fifties, silver haired, expensive coat, the kind of smile that had clearly been practised in mirrors. He looked at her with an interest that felt immediately like it had nothing to do with who she was and everything to do with what she might be useful for.
"You're new," he said.
"Yes," she said carefully.
"Rowan." He extended a hand. "I'm an associate of Mr Holt's."
She shook it because refusing felt impolite and she wasn't yet in a position to be impolite. "Aria Voss."
"Voss." He repeated her name slowly like he was tasting it. His eyes didn't leave her face. "Interesting. And how are you finding it so far, Miss Voss?"
"Fine," she said. "Thank you."
He smiled again. That same practised thing. "I'm sure we'll be seeing more of each other."
He walked away before she could respond.
She watched him go with the particular feeling she had learned to trust over twenty years of bad luck and narrow escapes. The feeling that sat low and quiet in her stomach and never once had been wrong.
She looked down at the hand he had shaken.
She wiped it slowly against her jacket.
She was packing up her desk at six when she heard his voice.
Not directed at her. He was in the corridor, phone to his ear, speaking in the low controlled way he had, words clipped and precise and carrying the particular weight of someone who was not making a request.
She kept her eyes on her bag.
He passed her desk.
Slowed almost imperceptibly.
She felt it without looking up, that shift in the air, that awareness that prickled across the back of her neck and refused to be ignored.
Then he was gone. Footsteps continuing down the corridor, voice fading, the space where he had almost stopped returning to ordinary air.
Aria zipped her bag.
Stood up.
Walked to the elevator with her jaw set and her eyes forward and her heart doing that thing she kept telling it not to do.
The elevator doors opened.
Damian was inside.
She stopped.
He looked at her. Said nothing. Held the door.
She got in.
The doors closed.
They stood in twelve square feet of silence, side by side, not touching, not speaking, the small space between them somehow both too much and not nearly enough. The numbers above the door counted down with the patience of something that had no idea what it was doing to her.
Three.
Two.
One.
The doors opened to the lobby. She stepped out first. Walked toward the exit without looking back.
"Aria."
She stopped. Eyes closed for exactly one second.
She turned.
He was still in the elevator doorway, one hand holding the door, watching her with that expression that gave everything and nothing away simultaneously.
"How was the first day?" he asked.
She looked at him. At the question that was simple and the eyes that weren't.
"Fine," she said.
The corner of his mouth moved. "You keep saying that."
She turned and walked out into the cold evening air before he could see her smile.
She almost made it.
***
End of Chapter 5
- Writer
