He was the definition of tall, dark, and handsome as he stood hovering over the shoulder of a colleague, paying attention to their screen with intense focus. He wore a gorgeously cut suit and had his dark brown hair in an expensive-looking crewcut. A beard skirting the line between bushy and ruggedly handsome graced the billionaire’s angular jaw, and he ran his fingers through it in a contemplative fashion as he stood there, the fine flakes of salt-and-pepper leaping with every stroke of his fingertips.
The man was a masterpiece, positively mesmerizing in every way. And it was precisely because of that fact that I wound up staring too hard for too long at him, until it pretty much became inevitable that he would notice me.
And sure enough, he did just that.
He didn’t even fully lift his head. His face remained angled toward my colleague’s computer, but his eyes darted suddenly up at me, his irises a dazzling color somewhere between mahogany and obsidian.
Our eyes met, and I felt a sizzling current flash through the space between us. The air fled my lungs, and I felt myself drowning above the surface. His gorgeous face cracked, and a blinding white smile appeared across his lips.
I could feel my face turning beet red, my skin prickling, heating up like a car in the hot sun. My throat burned now, and I ripped my eyes back down, pretending to be entranced by something of vital importance on my computer monitor.
I gave myself a few seconds to try and collect myself, counting down in my head, One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
I exhaled, and decided to risk peering back up over at him again.
His attention was once again away from me, fixed back upon my colleague’s screen.
I let out a deep sigh, either of intense relief or disappointment, and let out so much air I might have gone shooting wildly around the office like a balloon.
What the hell was that? I wondered.
Malcolm and I had had more than our fair share of interactions over the years. That was pretty much a given, seeing as I was a project manager at his hydra of a social media company, and had worked with him very closely on a number of Goldfinch’s most popular products. We had a very friendly relationship- maybe even a little bit more than friendly…
I mean, obviously I’d never thought that seriously about that sort of thing. He was a freaking billionaire after all, and I was- well, I was, like I said, pretty much just the boring career girl obsessed with keeping her life “on track.” There’d been plenty of times when you might have interpreted our interactions as flirtatious, going both ways. But I’d always just sort of associated that with the way Malcom Finch operated. He made you feel good, at ease in his company. He made you feel wanted, desired even. It was just good business.
I’d always taken it all in stride, never daring to let my imagination run wild with these kinds of fantasies. So why was he having such an effect on me all of the sudden? Was I really letting my newfound singleness, coupled with Dennis referring to our relationship as “settling,” make me think there was anything between Malcom Finch and I other than a healthy bond between employer and employee?
He was, in case I needed reminding, a billionaire, and could literally have any woman that he wanted. He did, actually- some gorgeous young model named Alyssa Muenzel, who was engaged to be his wife within a year’s time. There was absolutely no way I could compete with that, I told myself, and deluding myself into such a fantasy would hardly be the cure for the self-esteem issues I was having.
I tried to shake off the whole interaction, and entered my half-remembered login information into the dating app on my phone. I half-expected and half-hoped that I might be entering it in wrong, but alas, all the old ghosts of my former romantic life came shimmying back out at me from the screen.
The first thing I did off the bat was to open up my old profile picture, as one does. A pretty girl in her twenties with strawberry blonde hair and baby blue eyes stared smiling back at me. I had on a loose-fitting white crop top that showed just a peek of pale-as-moon midriff. I let my eyes follow the flow of my curves, and stared for so long at myself that I started losing track of what I was looking at.
Surely I was pretty enough- not the kind of woman a guy has to “settle” for at all. But then again- and I can’t believe I’m saying this- maybe looks just aren’t everything for some men. What if Dennis had been talking about some deep flaw in my personality, something I was totally oblivious to, and therefore had no way of controlling or improving upon?
My next mistake was to open my old chat logs on this app, and I very quickly regretted doing so. Between the abuse, the one word replies, and the unsolicited dick pics, I could feel myself tensing up as I scrolled, remembering what a dog-eat-dog place the hellish world of online dating had really been.
Maybe I was the one who’d settled, it suddenly occurred to me. Maybe I’d been so disheartened by all of this that Dennis had seemed like my knight in shining armor when he came along. As positively average as he was, I guess after a while even that seems like a pretty high bar to clear compared to the guys you meet on online dating apps…
“Hey there, Annalise. Working hard or hardly working?”
I nearly leapt out of my skin with surprise at the sound of my boss’s voice. I fumbled with my iPhone, dropping it beneath my desk. I stooped down awkwardly to pick it up, blushing furiously as I turned and straightened my air, trying to respond with something even resembling a hint of composure.
“Malcolm! I’m so sorry about that,” I stammered instead.
He laughed. “No, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to catch you off guard like that, and I definitely wasn’t trying to startle you.”
A few necks were craned to stare at us now, but they turned away again as I began to compose myself.
“No, no it’s fine,” I said. “I was on my phone at work, and I shouldn’t have been, I know…”
My boss’s lips slid into a thin smile, and one of his eyebrows pushed up ever so slightly.
“Don’t worry about that,” he reassured me. “It’s almost five o’clock anyway. Come on. Why don’t you clock out a little bit early tonight? Come grab a drink with me. Chad and I have just been discussing some exciting ideas for our messaging app. I’d like to pick your brain about it and see what you think, if you aren’t in any hurry to get home.”
I had absolutely nothing waiting for me but an empty apartment at home, and in any case this felt more obligatory than optional.
“No of course,” I said, running the palms of my hands across my skirt, and doing my best to compose myself. “I’m excited to hear all about it!”
“Perfect,” he said, flashing me that immaculate smile of his yet again. “I’ll go grab my coat.”
_____
Minutes later the two of us were seated together at a luxurious, dimly lit bar downtown, as drifts of snow fluttered past outside the window. Old crooners rang out through the speakers overhead, and I sat awkwardly sipping at a glass of bourbon, letting the heat of the alcohol burn exquisitely down to the back of my throat, warming my entire body.
I waited until Malcolm had downed a considerable gulp of his own scotch, then asked brightly across the table, “So, what were some of the ideas you’d been discussing with Chad? I’m really excited to hear about it.”