She suspects something when there’s a note on her computer when she arrives on her third day of work.  “Lunch?—The floppy haired guy” is scrawled in blue pen against the fluorescent yellow.  And she just assumes it’s a friend thing because he must have seen the ring.  How could he not have?  So she just nods to him from her desk with a small smile and he responds with one that’s bigger.  A lot bigger, she thinks and pushes the thought away, but it doesn’t stop her heart from kicking up a little bit.  

He takes her out for Italian, which she loves, and orders for her, which she surprisingly loves more.  Trust me, he says and when she takes that first bite of pizza, cheese sliding everywhere and tomato sauce staining her top lip she realizes that yeah, she really can.  It’s when she’s wiping her mouth with her left hand that his eyes fall from hers to the ring to finally the table she realizes oh, so maybe it wasn’t that obvious.  So rather than ignoring it (she’s never been good at that), she just blushes and stutters and talks about Roy, the wedding that hasn’t happened yet but it will soon once money is saved and the time is right.  And he nods and is polite but something is visibly different in him.  Like a light went out or maybe just got dimmed.  She pushes that thought away, too.

Even still, there’s another post-it note on her computer the next morning, this time in bright pink.  “Lunch in break room?”  it clarifies, and she’s more than a little relieved.  She nods more enthusiastically and his smile is a little smaller, the light still dim.

They laugh over their grade school, brown-paper bag lunches and she thinks that maybe she’s going to have to start getting better at ignoring things.  Just in case.