~You walk by my desk, flicking your eyes at me in such a way that I have no choice but to follow. I purposefully walk just a little too close, bumping into you when you stop and turn to me, alone in the break room. When you tell me your plan, a giggle laced through your words, I have to work hard to concentrate; in that moment your perfection is all I can see.~

[An alliance with Dwight becomes an excuse to hold her hand. The slight squeeze of her warm fingers pressed against his becomes "yes" in his mind.]

He leans on her desk while she is led away. The day is shattered, but the pieces left are enough to sustain him through the night; then the look she gives him the next day when Dwight walks in with blond hair salvages everything. He is right back where he started. But, he held her hand.

~~~~~~~~~~

~You're dressed like a cat, and once out of the corner of my eye I catch you twitching your nose as if the drawn on whiskers are real; it's so damn cute and I just want to kiss you, smudging the lines until neither of us can tell where they really are anymore. I lean over you as you sit at your computer, and whenever you move I can smell your shampoo, or whatever it is that you put in your hair to make it so curly I want to tangle my fingers in it. I have to reach out, brace a hand on the desk to keep from falling over; it means that I'm now surrounding you, and if I shift in just the right direction, we'll be embracing. You laugh, stifling the sound, and I can feel my elbow start to buckle. I almost let it.~

[Posting Dwight’s resume becomes a pain somewhere inside his ribcage, then dissolves into a reassurance that she needs him (which leads, somehow, to an even greater pain than before).]

He walks out to the parking lot, and she falls into step beside him. Fall has settled in, and there’s a slight puff of air as she laughs up at him; he wishes he could somehow catch it, save it. They reach their cars, and the smoky crowd of Poor Richard’s, far too soon.

~~~~~~~~~~

~I catch your eye when he’s a half an hour late, and you raise your eyebrow and my heartbeat all at once. By eleven, I’ve heard you take a message and laugh to yourself, and for me, five times. Five times now I’ve felt that flutter deep in my chest, felt my stomach tighten like a coiled spring; it only starts to unravel when you’re not around. Or maybe that’s when it’s the worst.~

[A mission to make Dwight think it’s Friday gives him something to look forward to, a connection that spills over from one day to the next. If he could, he would convince Dwight to come in late every day.]

He sits next to her at lunch and they congratulate themselves on a job well done. When she takes a sip from her mug, asking him what their next plan of action is, he nearly chokes and wishes the day could last forever, that there would be no weekends (those blank stretches where they don’t exist together).

~~~~~~~~~~

~I consider not going along with it, going back to work as usual; but you skip behind me and your face is giddy with laughter…I realize then how I never have a choice when you’re involved. It’s funny, the day I can’t talk to you is the day I tell you the most. I wish you would listen.~

[A game of jinx means it’s just the two of them, they aren’t using Dwight as an excuse. Yet, once he can speak, Dwight becomes the safe topic, the one thing they can always fall back on, the mask for everything else.]

He splits his Coke between them, wishing he could throw away the extra cups and just share it, share everything with her. But he doesn’t and she doesn’t so everything stays the same. She touches his arm, briefly, when she gets up to leave, go back to work; everything feels different and he doesn’t and (she doesn’t) give up.

~~~~~~~~~~

~I don’t understand, can’t quite figure out how you manage it, but you’ve used the umbrella to captivate him and my heart feels too big, like it’s trying to escape even though it has nowhere to go. When you wink (a smile in your eyes meant for me), and he’s there, the shake of my hand has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with you. I wonder if you realize. I wonder if I could ever tell you.~

[A coat rack turns into a way to make eye contact with her while the one she belongs to stands right there. It’s dangerous and perfect and he wishes she would look between them and say “You. You. You,” until nothing else matters.]

She shows up in the warehouse and steals all the air from around him. He tries to recover, mention how he almost wore the same thing, but her laugh ruins everything and he feels like she’s somehow turned him inside out. He’s afraid at that moment that he’ll say it, say it until there’s nothing to say anymore but please and you and yes, so he turns and gets a drink instead. He swallows it all and it’s hard going down, like it might come up again at any moment.

~~~~~~~~~~

~You’ve been gone for four months, yet it somehow feels like four years since you left and only four minutes since you kissed me. I feel like I’m finally remaking my life, smoothing out the wrinkles as I learn a new way; you’ve become the wrinkle that I’m not quite sure how to reach. I sit in the conference room and imagine I can hear your laugh, but when I turn to meet your eyes I’m just reminded of how alone I am, and how far away you are.~

[A package for Dwight turns into a reminder he’s not there. She laughs, and for a moment, imagines that somewhere he’s laughing too. The thought lifts her up for the briefest moment, but then it all comes crashing down.]

~~~~~~~~~~

~I get to work early, and read yet another reminder that you still exist somewhere around me. I nearly fold up the piece of paper, putting it in my purse so I can keep a piece of you with me that’s tangible, something to hold onto that’s real, something that you’ve touched in the most basic way. Instead, I place it back where it belongs, and tell him it’s there when he comes in; watching his reaction and laughing, I feel next to you, somehow.~

[A fax from Dwight to Dwight is a reason for her to hope, to imagine his shadow falling over her desk as he tells her his latest plan, and her part in it. She hopes she always has a part in his plan.]

He’s coming back and she feels like maybe sometimes prayers are answered, if you wish hard enough. She wonders what she’ll say, because she can’t count on him to say anything. Deep down she knows that it’s her turn, and she can only hope that he’ll listen better than she did. She tries out new hairstyles and pushes away the voice in the back of her mind repeating it’s too late over and over and over again.

~~~~~~~~~~

~You finally let me know there’s still a chance and with one look, I lose everything I’ve learned; words mean nothing anymore and I want to tell you how I feel with my eyes again and again until you beg me to stop. I find that I spend the whole day wanting to hold your hand, because that way you me everyone would know that we belong to each other. The back of your head tells me don’t give up all afternoon.~

[A date proposal from Andy makes her day and reminds her she needs to buy a new curling iron. She can feel something like determination bubbling up inside her.]

It isn’t until she’s driving home and singing along with the radio that she realizes it was a day of silence. She wishes, briefly, that four months of silence could mean as much as the past eight hours. She counts the looks they shared at every red light, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, and thinking how she always slows down at yellow lights. She thinks to herself, maybe I’ll start speeding up instead. The next day doesn’t come soon enough.

~~~~~~~~~~

~You break my heart and somehow heal it all in the span of one day. I wonder if this is it, if this is how you felt for years while I was inflicting everything on you, knowing but not really. I watch you and realize that I’ve never given you a gift before, except for myself (and that was only for a minute). I wish I could give you me again and again and again, this time when I don’t already have someone else’s name written on my tag. I wish I could erase her name from yours and write mine in permanent ink.~

[Accepting her gift (giving Dwight a mission), is what she hopes is the first step she’s been waiting for, with no retreating, no more hesitation or excuses holding her back. He accepts it and he’s accepting her.]

She was prepared, equally, for the best and worst scenario. She walks in, and stands in her clean (just in case) apartment for a moment before changing, getting the cookie dough out of the fridge. She settles in and decides somewhere in the middle before reliving every moment of her day, making sure to recall how he still isn’t free, still isn’t quite there; otherwise, she’ll wake up with a pain squeezing her chest because her dreams still can’t quite come true, just yet. Maybe soon.

~~~~~~~~~~

~I listen to his singing and know, just know, that you’ll need me later. It’s such a relief when you finally ask me that I’m afraid I talk too loud, somehow scare you away. But you come back (you came back), and I know what to do without you telling me. Touching your hand, something I haven’t done in months, is nearly too much and I want to drop the phone, tell you we need to start again. For the first time, she’s still there and I almost forget. Touch me again. Please.~

[A phone in the ceiling and she feels closer to him, like if she got any nearer they would be there and she’d have to find a way to climb inside him to get any closer. She wouldn’t mind spending forever figuring it out.]

Something changes and she wishes she could pinpoint how or why so she could repeat it, but then she realizes that it doesn’t matter. When he leaves, he looks at her and she feels on fire, like one of them struck a match and started the whole thing over again. She thinks that maybe she’s finally done crawling out of the ashes.