her lips. “I suppose I might be a little bit. I can’t help it that my work ethic is so much higher than other people’s.”
“Nice flex.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I’m kidding,” I said, dialing the cab company. “But you’re not making any more calls tonight. You’re going home and so am I. All of this will be here waiting for us when we get in tomorrow morning.” I ordered two cars to pick us up in front of the building while Kathryn stood up and put her coat on. She didn’t catch me watching as she pulled the pins and elastic out of her hair to let her bun tumble loose. Her dark curls cascaded around her shoulders nearly to the place on her back where I imagined her bra strap sat.
Her hair was longer than I’d realized. I’d never seen her wear it down before. That gave me reason to pause. We’d worked together for almost a decade, and in all that time, I’d never seen her let her hair down figuratively or literally.
Kathryn plunged her fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment, it felt like time slowed down.
I soaked in the sight of her. Her expression was soft and relaxed. Her lips were slightly parted and there was no brooding scowl lingering on her forehead. Her lashes cast feathered shadows across her cheeks, and when she opened her eyes and locked her gaze on me, I couldn’t help but notice how the Christmas lights in the office reflected in her hazel gaze.
“What?” Kathryn asked as she flipped the collar of her jacket down and grabbed a black wool scarf from the coat stand by her office door. She draped it around her neck and pulled on a pair of leather gloves she’d kept in her jacket pocket.
“Nothing,” I said, trying not to fumble for the right words. “The taxis will be here shortly. We should go wait down in the lobby.”
Kathryn turned her computer monitor off and strode for the door. I followed, and on our way out of the office, we made sure everything was turned off and locked up. I grabbed my umbrella from the holder beside the elevators as the doors opened with a soft chime. We stepped on and I jabbed the button to take us down. She kept to one side and I kept to the other while she pretended to be busy on her phone.
I tried to peer over her shoulder. “I hope you’re not secretly emailing any vendors.”
Kathryn dropped the phone in her pocket with an air of indifference. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She was a prickly little flower. That was for sure. For a minute up in her office, it had seemed like maybe she and I would be able to work together without strangling each other. But once we were in the confines of the elevator, that seemed unlikely. She was back to her sour self and she was doing everything in her power not to look at me.
The elevator spat us out on the ground floor in the lobby next to the Simon Fraser University entrance. The Harbour Centre building, within which Jon owned a floor for his business, shared its first few floors with the university. It wasn’t uncommon to come down there at the end of a long workday and find students milling about the stairs with books open on their laps and coffees in hand. On more than one occasion, I’d walked past political science or writing groups and overheard them discussing their classes. I had marveled at how long ago it felt like I’d been just like them, bright eyed and blissfully ignorant of the changes on the horizon. I loved my job, but every now and then, a guy wished he could go back to simpler times.
Like college.
Tonight, it was too late for any students to be outside on the sidewalk as Kathryn and I moved out of the way of the doors to wait for our cab. The university was open, and there were a couple of people inside, as well as a janitor who was running a polisher over the floors.
Across the street, Waterfront Station was done up in Christmas lights to look like it was out of a holiday film. No trains ran down on the tracks or spat out riders. It was too late for that. The city was beginning to slumber. Even the traffic was low at that time of night.