The Perfect Find by Tia Williams

Author:Tia Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Girls Publishing

CHAPTER 17

The next month went by in a blur. After shooting the Maggie video, Jenna and Eric became inseparable. They were best friends, excruciatingly platonic partners in crime. They were uninterested in anything not having to do with them. But no one could know.

The workday was spent figuring out sneaky ways to accidentally-on-purpose run into other. Eric always found a way to be in line at the Starbucks downstairs when Jenna went for her 2 pm coffee run. They never went together, and always left separately. But ten minutes later, they’d appear in the office within seconds of each other, Jenna looking zip-a-dee-doo-daa delighted and Eric acting like Jay Z after selling out Madison Square Garden.

All day, they’d hope to see each other in the hallway or in the kitchen or somewhere. When they did, if anyone was around, they’d go through this dance of pretending not to be excited about it. But as soon as they parted, they’d text incessantly about that one brief moment.

Eric: Did you part your hair on a different side today just to fuck up my equilibrium?

Jenna: Jesus, your biceps when you were carrying all that camera equipment to the elevator! Are you TRYING to ruin me for all other men?

Like teenagers, they texted all day and talked on the phone all night. Jenna, a person who, a month before, had found technology baffling at worst and distasteful at best, didn’t enter a bathroom stall without her iPhone. She’d find excuses to get up from her office just to walk by the vicinity of Eric’s cubicle to get a glimpse of him. He’d get a glimpse of her, too, and then he’d have to focus on Chimpanzees and baseball—two things he hated—until he erased the NSFW thoughts from his brain.

Eric and Jenna were in the grips of a full-blow obsession.

The situation drove them to it. If they were two normal adults with a crush, they could’ve gone to the Cheesecake Factory, seen a movie, boned, and been dating by now. But this wasn’t a normal situation—there was Darcy, the job thing, and the age thing. They never saw each other outside of a work situation. They never stood or sat too close, and never touched. After the explosive moment in Jenna’s office, they knew that if they so much as grazed each other, it was game over.

They hid in plain sight. Everybody knew Eric and Jenna collaborated on The Perfect Find, which was StyleZine’s biggest draw. No one batted an eyelash at their lengthy “meetings” in Jenna’s office—they were expected to have a relationship. If anything, the girls in the office assumed that Eric had a hopeless, unrequited thing; and that a much older, quasi media celeb like Jenna would never give him the time of day.

The daily editorial staff meetings were the best because Jenna and Eric got to sit in the same room for twenty minutes. They could text and steal glances while everyone else discussed UTI’s and taking Plan B.

Of course, there was always the element of danger—Darcy.

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