Page 26 of She Likes It, Hey Micah
Micah Taylor: And I will! Most of the time. But not when you don’t play by the rules!
Me: I stand by my answer.
Micah Taylor: Do you believe eating raw cookie dough can give you salmonella?
Me: Do I believe in actual medical research? Yes.
Micah Taylor: Have you ever eaten raw cookie dough?
Me: No. See reference to salmonella above.
It goes on for hours. Micah asks me question after question, some of them pointless and some of them designed to dig beneath my surface. Do I go grocery shopping with purpose or wander the aisles and grab what looks good? Do I ever let fear stop me from going after something I really want? Do I ever wear anything but business casual? Maybe it’s because I’m hidden behind my phone instead of trapped in a car with her, but I answer every question. Each one seems to pry something loose inside me, like she’s chipping away at my armor, and I can’t bring myself to stop her because Kale is right.
I can breathe again.
Chapter Eight
Fischer
October 15
“Are you sure you don’twant regular coffee?”
I have no idea how Micah is awake right now. After five late nights of texting in a row, I’m dead on my feet, and she’s as bubbly as ever. Unless I’ve been texting someone else late at night—in which case I would be rather put out with whoever has assumed her identity—she’s been up as late as I have. You would never guess it.
I cradle my coffee closer, as if she might try to take it away from me. I still don’t like the taste of it, but she’s given me a cup every day for the last four business days, and now I’ve come to expect it. Crave it. I even bought myself a cup on Sunday even though I didn’t have any reason to drink it.
“You don’t want to see me with caffeine,” I mumble, slapping myself in the face. Becausethatwill help. Last night we were up especially late because Micah asked if I would rather watchParks and Recand tell her if I relate to Ron Swanson or list all of the times I lied to my parents as a kid. Honestly, the second one probably would have taken longer, so I picked the sitcom.
And got addicted. I may have stayed up past the point where Micah stopped responding because she fell asleep. Ididfind a character I related to and wanted to see where his story arc was going.
Micah giggles and does a spin in her chair. The conference room is empty for now—I got here a few minutes early—but soon we’ll have the whole Ember staff to keep us company. It’s been like that most of the week, and despite our long conversations into the wee hours, Micah and I haven’t had much time to interact in person since the caterer. She’s always at Lila’s beck and call, and Grant is getting more and more stressed as we get closer to his court date to finalize his divorce next week. That means I’m on stress-relieving duty as much as I am the party planning committee, and frankly that isn’t helping my exhaustion.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been keeping you up late,” she says with another spin. “I tend to lose track of time.”
“Me too.” But only when she’s involved. I count down the minutes between when I’m at Grant’s disposal and when I’m free to tell her I would rather be stranded on an island with Tom Cruise than on a ship with Tom Hanks. I don’t think there’s ever been a movie with Tom Cruise stuck alone on an island—pretty sure that was also Hanks—but he sounds safer than the guy who always seems to end up in disaster while traveling.
This is awkward. I don’t know what to say to her, even though it’s so easy to talk to her through text. But seeing her sitting there in her bright red pants that match her lips, it’s like I forget how beautiful she is each time I’m away from her. I still can’t date her, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know if her curls are as soft as they look. I want to know how easy it would be to pick her up because she’s so small. Why do I want to know this? Because if I think about kissing her, I think about how far I would have to bend down, and it sounds a lot more comfortable to have her in my arms at a more practical level for that kind of thing.
The flowers have stopped me as much as my self-control has. Three times in the last week, she’s had a fresh bouquet on her desk. I snuck a peek at one of the cards on Monday, and it was definitely from a date, some guy named Brock. I don’t know where she’s finding these guys—the only one she told me about was a guy in front of her in line for coffee—but there are many of them, and that’s enough to tell me she and I wouldn’t suit. Even when I was dating, I’ve always been monogamous and put time into one relationship at a time. Micah is young and energetic, and if she wants to play the field, that’s her choice.
That doesn’t mean I like it.
“How far did you get intoParks and Rec?” she asks.
I don’t know if I actually want to admit this. “A few episodes into Season Three.”
Her jaw drops. “Okay, I’m definitely getting you some caffeine. I think I nodded off before you got to Ben and Chris.” Then she narrows her eyes, staring at me in that way she does when she sees too much. It feels different now, though. Because now we feel like friends, and there’s a lot less for me to hide because she already knows a lot of things about me.
I wince when her eyes reach maximum wideness. “What?”
“You’re Ben Wyatt, not Ron Swanson! How did I not see this before?”
“Because you didn’t know me before,” I mumble. And that was probably a good thing. She shouldn’t know me now. But we still have more than a week and a half before the Greenwood opening, and that’s a lot of late-night texts that could put me in a dangerous position.
I glance at my watch, surprised to see that it’s already ten past nine. I can understand Grant being late, but Lila and her whole team? “Is the office always this quiet in the morning?” I ask.
Micah frowns, which means something is definitely wrong. “No. I didn’t notice… Lila had me making copies this morning, and our copy machine is super loud.”
