Strictly Unprofessional

VIVIENNE The elevator doors opened at 7:52 a.m. and Viv stepped out with her tote bag, her coffee, his coffee, and the specific expression she had spent eleven months perfecting. Neutral. Competent. Completely unbothered. She called it her work face. Damien called it her "girl who watched the Titanic sink and is already calculating the insurance claim" face. They were both right. The 34th floor of Mercer Industries smelled like expensive air and quiet ambition. The carpet was charcoal. The walls were glass. Everything was either grey or chrome or aggressively tasteful, which suited Viv fine because she liked to think she was at least two of those three things. She set his coffee on the corner of his desk, adjusted the angle by approximately two inches, and pulled up his calendar on the secondary monitor. 8 a.m. Henderson pre-call. 9:15 a.m. Board review. 11 a.m. Legal. 12:30 p.m. Lunch with someone named "N" that he had entered himself, which meant it was personal, which meant it was none of her business. She made a note to push the 11 a.m. back thirty minutes because Legal always ran over and Kade always let them because he found corporate lawyers entertaining in the way some people found wildlife documentaries entertaining. "You moved my eleven o'clock." She didn't jump. She had trained herself out of jumping approximately six months ago. "Good morning to you too," she said, without turning around. She heard him set his jacket over the back of his chair. She heard the particular sound of Kade Mercer arriving in a room, which was less a sound and more a shift in atmospheric pressure. Like a weather system deciding to be a person. "How do you know I wanted it moved?" "Because Legal always runs over and you enjoy watching them, so by eleven-thirty you're always in a philosophical mood and that bleeds into lunch." She finally turned. "You had a capital-letter L for Lunch at twelve-thirty. You need a buffer." He looked at her. Kade Mercer looking at you was, objectively, a lot to deal with. Viv had done a great deal of work on this specific problem. He was six-foot-two of unfairly constructed human being, dark-haired, grey-eyed, with the kind of jaw that suggested his ancestors had won several wars. He was in a white shirt today because he almost always was, sleeves already pushed up even though it was not yet eight in the morning, and he was holding her note about the Henderson pre-call with the expression he used when he was about to ask a question he already knew the answer to. It used to do things to her. Inconvenient, unprofessional, deeply irritating things. Past tense. She was very proud of her past tense. "You're frighteningly good at that," he said. "Scheduling? Yes. That is my job." "Reading me." "I don't read you. I read your patterns. There's a difference." She held out the pre-call notes. "Page three has the Henderson clause you'll want to bring up first. It gives you the upper hand before they've settled into their chairs." He took the notes. His fingers didn't touch hers. They never did. Viv had also trained herself to stop noticing this. "What would I do without you, Calloway?" "Probably move your own eleven o'clock and ruin your afternoon." She picked up her own coffee. "The pre-call is in eight minutes. I'll patch you through from my desk." She was halfway to the door when he said her name. Just her last name. Just Calloway, in that particular tone he used that she had never successfully categorized and had stopped trying. She stopped. Did not turn around. "You have lipstick on." She did. Red. She always had red lipstick on. This was not new information. "I do," she agreed. "You never used to wear it this early." She had absolutely no response to that. She filed it under irrelevant, turned the corner into the outer office, sat down at her desk, and pulled up the conference line with hands that were perfectly, completely steady. She was fine. She was the most fine she had ever been in her professional life. From behind his closed glass wall, she could see him reading the pre-call notes. He had one hand in his hair, the way he always did when he was reading quickly. His coffee sat untouched. It would be gone in four minutes. She knew because she had measured. She was absolutely not still in love with him. She drank her coffee. She patched through the Henderson call at 7:59 a.m. because she did not do things at the last minute. And she did not think about the red lipstick comment even once. Three times. She thought about it three times. But they were brief Her phone lit up at 9:06 a.m. DAMIEN CRUZ [9:06 AM]: did you wear the red lipstick VIV [9:06 AM]: I always wear red lipstick DAMIEN [9:06 AM]: on MONDAYS? since when VIV [9:07 AM]: I'm in the middle of a board review DAMIEN [9:07 AM]: the board review is happening inside your boss's face apparently because he has looked at you through that glass wall four times in the last ten minutes DAMIEN [9:07 AM]: i'm sitting in the fourth row viv i can SEE him VIV [9:08 AM]: You are supposed to be listening to the board review DAMIEN [9:08 AM]: i AM listening. i am multitasking. i am a gift. DAMIEN [9:08 AM]: he just looked again DAMIEN [9:08 AM]: that's five VIV [9:09 AM]: Damien. DAMIEN [9:09 AM]: i'm just saying. the man is LOOKING. VIV [9:10 AM]: He's not looking at me. He's looking at the calendar display on my monitor. DAMIEN [9:10 AM]: the calendar display doesn't have red lipstick on it babe She locked her phone and put it face-down on her desk. Across the glass wall, Kade was talking, hands easy at his sides, the whole room leaning slightly toward him the way rooms always did. Marcus Leigh, his CFO, was saying something that made the other board members laugh. Kade smiled. Viv looked back at her screen. She had things to do. Emails to answer. A budget variance to cross-reference. A follow-up to draft for the Legal team about the 11 a.m. that she had helpfully rescheduled. She did all of those things. She was excellent at her job. She was also, and she would take this to her grave, still thinking about the red lipstick comment. But that was a private problem and she handled her private problems the same way she handled everything else. Efficiently. Quietly. Alone.