Page 12 of Friend Me

I dug one foot into the mat, lifted and gripped my back foot, and leaned forward into Dancer’s pose, imagining how graceful our instructor looked when she did it. I tightened my belly and made a ninety-degree angle between my leg and my abdomen, continuing all the way out to my outstretched arm. I sighted along my extended fingers. My torso hovered over the mat. I was grace, confidence, poise.

Until I cut my gaze to Cooper to ensure he was checking me out.

The slight movement of my head overbalanced me. I flailed for a second, desperately windmilling my arms to regain my equilibrium, but it was no good. I toppled forward and just managed to hit the mat with my shoulder instead of my chin. An “oof” flew out of me.Smooth, Marlee.

Without pausing the rhythmic whirr of the machine, he called out, “You okay, Marlee?”

Trying to recover from my yoga fail, I straightened my arms, lifting my upper body into Cobra pose. “Fine,” I squeaked.

* * *

Later that morning,the glass wall of Jackson’s office revealed the warning signs: the jiggling leg, the twirling pen, the vacant expression. Time to get him moving. After his ten-thirty left, I pushed open the door and poked my head into his office.

“Let’s take a walk,” I said.

Jackson looked at me as if I’d just told him school was dismissed for summer. “You’re the best, Marlee.”

“I know. Let’s go.” He needed to burn off some of his energy before his lunch meeting. He threw on a fleece over his Ramones T-shirt and walked beside me to the elevators. Outside, we turned toward the park. As the concrete turned to clover and grass, the tension eased from his shoulders, and the line between his eyebrows smoothed out.

“Anything you want to talk about, boss?” I asked. I kept my gaze on the paved path to avoid snagging my black kitten heels in the seams—the faux leather would peel right off—but he tensed.

“Not really.”

That was his prerogative. I was his assistant, not his therapist, and if he didn’t want to talk about the stress that was making his ADHD flare up, that was fine by me.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and headed off the path toward a sculpture of a man and two bears—or dogs, I was never sure exactly what they were. He always meditated on a flat-topped boulder over there.

While he got his Om on, I sat on a bench and pondered my own problem: Cooper. And whatever was going on with Jamila. I’d borrowed a copy of a local tabloidfrom Cooper’s new temp, and now I pulled it out of my bag. It covered a gala Cooper had attended with Jamila, and a large photo in the spread showed them on the red carpet. In her heels, she was as tall as Cooper, and her dark skin glowed against her white gown. He had his hand on the small of her back—something I’d imagined him doing to me at least once a day for the past three years—and their natural grins hinted that one of them had just told the other a secret joke.

But what caught my eye was the caption below:With wedding bells ringing forJackson Jones(left), will San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor,Cooper Fallon,soon follow his partner down the aisle with tech queenJamila Jallow?

I spared hardly a glance for the smaller photo of Jackson and Alicia and its caption’s speculation about her baby bump.

Wedding bells?What the hell?

I heard a scuff on the gravel, and Jackson rejoined me, a boyish smile on his face and his hands swinging free at his sides. He pointed at the tabloid I clutched. “Alicia looks fantastic.”

I wiped the outrage from my face and smiled up at him. “She always looks fantastic, but you both look great in this one. Want me to get a copy from the paper?”

He peered at it over the top of the page. “Yeah. But what are they saying about Cooper and Jamila?”

I swallowed. “That you’re giving them ideas with your wedding. Engagement ideas.”

He snorted. “They’re friends. Nothing more. No spark.”

His words didn’t comfort me the way they should have. When Jamila accompanied Cooper to functions, she was always gorgeous in a size-four evening gown with confidently cropped hair and a slender neck that showcased her glittering jeweled statement necklaces. So unlike me with my medium build, long brown hair, and one necklace. I caressed my pendant, tracing its sharp edges. She was the perfect partner for Cooper’s lifestyle. There was no way I could compete with her if that was what he wanted. I crushed the tabloid closed.

“Look, Marlee.” Jackson sat beside me on the bench. “I know you have…feelings for him. I think you two’d be great together.”

I stopped breathing. We’d always danced around the subject before, sidestepping it the way I’d have avoided looking directly at the sun through Dad’s telescope. I could have denied it, and he’d have backed off. But he was my friend as well as my boss. “Thanks.”

“Since he’s taking a date to the wedding, maybe you should, too? Dance a little? Show him what he’s missing?” He nudged me with his elbow.

The image of Cooper and me going separately to the wedding but ending up together, just like Cinderella and her prince, had consumed me. But maybe he was right. Going to the ball with another date had worked for Amy Adams inEnchanted. And I’d already battled a dragon lady.

But who’d go with me? The wedding was nine days away. Since I’d met Cooper, I hadn’t dated anyone seriously. No one had measured up to him.

“Think about it, okay?” He stood. “Andrew’s not taking a date. He’d go with you.”

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