Page 62 of Written By a Woman

I felt my smile falter, my eyes tightening as I struggled to keep a polite expression without hurting his feelings, “I…don’t think so.”

Jake nodded, stepping back away from me, “Then, well, thank you for letting me know what I can work on going forward.”

“Of course,” I smiled, exhausted from this short but stressful conversation.How was I the one teaching a forty-two-year-old man how to act on a first date?We bid each other goodbye, me awkwardly shoving my hand out for a shake at the same moment he opened his arms for a hug, and then I speed-walked back to the office.

I also kept checking my surroundings to ensure that he hadn’t started following me back to work because even though he seemed to understand my rejection, I hadn’t been so lucky in the past. Men could be persistent.

As soon as I entered the building, I pulled my phone out to read Zaid’s text, which was really just a meme about how most meetings could be emails instead. I had seen the meme plenty of times because I had been an active member of the internet for years. However, the fact that Zaid had stumbled upon this meme and felt the need to send it to me made something warm bloom in my chest.

It’s just a stupid meme, Signe.

I was grinning as I stepped off the elevators towards my desk, almost stumbling into Nikhil.

“Eyes up, Signe,” Nikhil nodded before stepping around me and entering the elevator I had just vacated.See? I thought to myself,Nikhil could say my name right, so why couldn’t Jake?

“My bad,” I waved goodbye to him as I stepped backward toward my desk, “I was just—” warm, large hands grabbed my shoulders and halted my retreat. I yelped in surprise, freezing at the same moment a low voice spoke into my ear.

“You are O for two, Signe,” Zaid teased before quickly releasing my shoulders, allowing me to spin around and see that I was a step away from colliding with him.

I narrowed my eyes at Zaid playfully, ignoring the heat coursing through my veins at the sound of this man saying my name right every single time, “Maybe you both were just in my way.”

Nikhil’s laughter was cut off by the elevator door’s closing, so Zaid raised a dark eyebrow as he watched me round my desk and set my purse down, “Sure, blame the victims you were bulldozing into. Not the fact that you were glued to your phone.” His dark eyes dropped to said phone in my hands.

“I was looking at the meme you sent me, for your information,” I raised my eyebrows, showing him my screen that still had the meme displayed as evidence. Zaid grinned, making me get lost for just a moment as I contemplated what it would be like if Zaid had been my lunch date instead. How easily the conversation would have flowed between both of us. How I wouldn’t have been eager to step out of his touch if his hand rested on my lower back.

Hell, I was frazzled by the feeling of his hands on my shoulders a moment ago, and that was simply in self-preservation on his part.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and Zaid’s eyebrows lowered as his eyes focused on whatever notification popped up on my phone. I turned the device around to see and frowned at the message I had just received from Jake on the dating app.

Jake: If you ever want to get together again, just say the word.

I grimaced, before blocking his account and closing out of the app.

“Whose Jake?” Zaid asked, resting his forearms on my desk.

Damn, those were nice forearms.

Those two veins always did things to me.

“Hmm?” I asked, as I wondered if he brushed his arm hair in a certain direction, or if his arm hair naturally fell perfectly like that.

“Jake?” He pressed, making me tear my gaze from the free forearm porn I was admiring, to stare the CTO in the eye.

“Oh,” I waved a hand dismissively in the air, “Just a lunch date that I won’t be seeing again.” I gave Zaid a look that showed just how unimpressed I was with Jake.

Zaid was silent for a moment, his lips pressed together as a myriad of expressions flickered over his face before I had the chance to recognize them, “A lunch date? Do you do those often?”

“Sometimes,” I shrugged before plopping down in my desk chair, “Though today reminded me why I took such a long break from them,” I pulled myself closer to my computer, before rethinking and pushing away to turn to face Zaid directly, “He didn’t even comment on my sweater!” which was astonishing, considering the number of times his eyes dropped to my chest.

I tugged the bottom of my sweater away from my body, showing off the lettering to Zaid while also concealing the shape of my breasts underneath so it wouldn’t be weird.

Zaid’s dark eyes dropped, and the corner of his lips tipped up before he made eye contact with me again, “He didn’t?”

“Hedidn’t!” I slapped my palms down on the desk, loving how Zaid was validating me on this one, “Do you have any idea how easy it could have been? This sweatshirt is an icebreaker itself. It can start lots of interesting conversations. Instead, he just talked at me the entire time.”

Zaid frowned, “What a loser.”

“I know,” I glanced down at my sweater, reading the text out loud, “‘Hot Girls Read Books’. He could have asked me what I liked to read, what I read most recently, what the worst book I ever read was. The more I think about it, the more insane it is that I wasted this sweater on him.”

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