A seat at the table

Marketing

Ten minutes pass.Then fifteen.My phone remains aggressively dark on the nightstand. No vibration. No light. Nothing.I stare at the ceiling, the familiar teal wall suddenly feeling less like a sanctuary and more like a waiting room.

I do marketing.

It was a clean, sharp answer.

Maybe too sharp?

A horrifying thought hits me out of nowhere, blooming in my chest like a dark comedy.

What if he isn't some brooding, sharp-jawed guy at all?What if the person on the other end of these texts is actually a fifty-five-year-old man named Bob?

A round, completely bald guy with a thick mustache, sitting in a stained leather chair, breathing heavily while typing with his thumbs.

What if his "meetings" are just him arguing over property taxes, and his "site inspections" consist of him yelling at a contractor because the layout interrupts his afternoon nap?

I shudder, burying my face in a mustard-yellow throw pillow. If I'm getting butterflies over a man who uses a CPAP machine and unironically posts minion memes on f*******:, I am deleting my digital footprint and moving to a convent.

A sudden, sharp thud rattles the glass of my bedroom window.I freeze.Thud.It sounds like a bird flying into the pane, or someone throwing pebbles. I slide off the bed and cross the room, pushing open the heavy glass window to look down at the manicured lawns below.

The view does not feature a romantic suitor holding a boombox.Instead, True is standing in the middle of my mother's pristine, imported rose bushes. She has a half-eaten cucumber slice stuck to her cheek, and she is holding a handful of small decorative garden stones.

"Leah!" she loudly whispers, frantically gesturing toward the kitchen window behind her.

"You have to help me. He's making miso soup from scratch and he asked me if I prefer red or white paste. I told him I like the kind that comes in a packet!"

"Why are you in the bushes, True?" I call down, leaning my elbows on the sill.

"Because I tried to lean coolly against the kitchen counter and accidentally knocked over a vintage ceramic jar of pickled plums!"

she hisses, throwing another pebble that completely misses my window and hits the brickwork.

"He looked so disappointed, Leah. It broke my spirit. I had to escape through the pantry window before he called security!"

Before I can answer, a deep voice echoes from the terrace level below.

"Miss True? Did you find your missing earring in the flora?"True stiffens like a statue, dropping the remaining stones onto her sneakers.

She slowly turns around, pasting on a smile that looks entirely psychotic.

"Chef Kenji! Yes! The... the roses are simply magnificent this morning. Just checking the soil health!"

I pull back behind the curtain, biting my lip to keep from laughing out loud as True awkwardly marches back toward the house under the watchful, utterly baffled gaze of the Japanese chef.

My phone finally buzzes on the nightstand.I lunged for it, my heart doing a stupid, irregular flip before I can remind myself about the mental image of the bald, fat man.

Unknown Number:Marketing. Explains the silence. You're probably analyzing my response rate to optimize your engagement metrics