The New Hire Down the Hall Knew My Name Before HR Did novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Turtleneck

Renee sets three rules in the stairwell and spends a training session with his boot against hers under the table. Dawn notices the collar and asks who the bruise is for.

On Tuesday I wore the gray cardigan buttoned to the throat, and I told the mirror it was cold.

It was sixty degrees.

The mark had gone from red to plum overnight.

When I pressed it with my thumb in the bathroom, it still hurt, right where it was warm.

I pressed it twice.

Kyle was at his desk in the east wing when I came in, with a binder open and his head down.

He did not look up.

I walked the long way around the break room so I would not pass him.

I spent the morning not listening for his voice, and I heard every word he said.

At noon I found him by the copiers, reading a memo he did not need to read.

"North stairs," I said, without stopping. "Two minutes."

I swiped us onto the landing and let the door shut.

He stood one step down again.

In daylight his face was younger than it had been in the supply room, and he had a shaving nick under his jaw.

"This is how it goes," I said. "I'm saying it once."

"Okay," Kyle said.

"One. Nobody knows. Not your friends, not your mother, nobody on this floor."

"Okay," he said again.

"Two. Nothing in the building before six. I don't care what you want."

His blue eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up.

"Six," he said.

"Three," I said. "Nothing above the collar. No marks anyone can see."

"Yes, Ms. Vavra."

"It's Vavra here," I said.

"Vavra," he said.

He said it softly, with a little weight on the second syllable, and I felt the word go down my back.

I had a speech ready for what came next.

I had rehearsed a speech on the drive in.

It was about my record, my mortgage and my reputation, and about how he was twenty-three with a whole career to wreck.

I did not give it.

He looked at me with his hands hanging at his sides.

I had already broken every one of those rules, and he was the one nodding.

"You don't have questions?" I said.

"One."

"What?" I said.

"Whether six means six o'clock sharp."

I shoved the door open and walked out, and I heard him laugh behind me on the landing, low and delighted.

Wednesday was the all-staff safety training.

The whole third floor sat at one long folding table.

A slide about fire exits glowed on the wall.

Dawn was on my left.

Kyle was two chairs down on my right, between a man from billing and the empty seat I had put my bag on.

I moved the bag.

That was a mistake.

He sat down in it, close enough that his knee was an inch from mine.

The man from billing leaned back to give him room.

The instructor started with the fire exits.

Under the table, a boot touched mine.

It was a heavy brown work boot, scuffed at the toe.

It rested against the side of my shoe with the pressure of a man who was thinking about something else.

I looked at the slide.

The boot moved, a quarter of an inch, until the whole length of his foot lay along mine.

Then it stayed.

For the next forty minutes I sat through a presentation on carbon monoxide.

My left hand was around a pen and my right foot was pinned under a boot.

I could not have repeated one thing the instructor said.

After twenty minutes my foot went numb, and I did not move it.

I could feel him through the leather, the weight of him, the small steady pressure that did not push and did not leave.

I wanted to press back.

I wanted to put my hand flat on the inside of his thigh, under the table, in front of forty people.

I wanted it so badly that the plastic creaked in my fist.

The instructor called for questions.

A hand came across the table with a blue pen in it.

It was Kyle's hand, extended past the man from billing, offering me a pen because mine had run dry.

I took it.

The barrel was still warm from his fist, and when my fingers closed on it his knuckle brushed my thumb.

"Thanks, Janssen," I said, in my claims voice.

"Sure, Vavra."

I held that pen for the rest of the hour, and I did not write one word with it.

The training ended at three.

I went back to my desk with a numb foot, a warm pen, and an itching cardigan.

At four I stood to reach a file on the top shelf, and he came past in the aisle with a folder under his arm.

The folder hit the carpet.

"It slipped," Kyle said, and went down on one knee to gather them, and I saw the back of his neck go red above his collar.

"You're clumsy," I said.

"I'm usually not."

I handed him a page, and our fingers touched, and neither of us let go for a moment too long.

Then he took it and went, and I sat down and made a mental list of reasons this would end by Friday.

Dawn rolled her chair across the aisle until her knee touched mine.

She was thirty-three, round-faced, with big earrings and a wedding ring she turned when she was about to say something she shouldn't.

"Ren," she said, very low. "Your collar went when you reached for that file."

I put my hand to my throat.

It was buttoned.

Dawn looked at my hand, and then at the place below it, and her eyes went wide and bright.

"Who's the bruise for?"

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