Page 56 of All the Right Words
She felt Gina’s hands reaching around, pulling her tighter. Harper’s body wanted to go there, and it did. No light could have leaked from between them, every contour fitting like puzzle pieces. Everything went away at that moment. The world outside of Gina didn’t exist. She was a black hole pulling a universe of feelings into this moment.
Until someone knocked on the door.
Harper and Gina immediately fell off the desk. ‘Oh shit!’ Harper yelled as she hit the floor, pulling a raft of crap off the desk -- papers, pens, and a damnlaptop, all crashing around her and Gina. Vincent popped his head around the door and saw the women splayed on the floor. ‘Uhh…’ he said.
‘We were just…’ Gina said, wide-eyed with horror. What they’d been doing was written on her face in indelible ink.
‘Fighting,’ Harper said wildly.
‘What?’ Vincent asked reasonably.
‘I had a spider on my face,’ Harper said crazily. ‘Gina slapped it away, and there was some confusion.’
Gina nodded, managing to find her voice again. ‘Yeah. I probably should have warned her that I was gonna do it. She thought she was being attacked. Lunged at me. But we worked it out. So it’s fine. No one’s pressing charges.’
‘Good?’ Vincent said. He blinked. ‘What the hell did I even come in here for?’ he asked himself. He shrugged and left.
Harper turned to Gina amid the detritus. ‘You think he bought it?’
‘He told me once that he thinks all cats are girls and all dogs are boys. We’re good,’ Gina said, looking dazed.
In the quiet, reality returned to Harper like the slap across the face she’d just made up. She sighed. ‘What have we done?’
Gina stood up quickly. ‘Nothing.’ She walked into her office and closed the door with a slam.
Harper, still on the floor, was shocked. Appalled even. How was she alone now? What had she done? How had it happened? What should she do now?
Eventually, she did the only thing she could. She got up off her arse, picked all the crap up off the floor and placed it carefully on the desk in what she hoped was close to its original order. That done, she left Olivia’s office via the main door. She took the lift down to the lobby and walked out of the building. Her mind was blank. She wasn’t sure if she was in some kind of shock. Was that something that could happen? Could your mind close down to protect you from your own actions?
Because she’d done a bad thing, she knew that. She had made that kiss happen out of nothing. But she was floating away from it like it hadn’t happened. Drifting away from wrongdoing. It couldn’t last, she knew. She wasn’t equipped. She’d never done anything like this before. She hadn’t thought she could.
There was, of course, a case to be made in her favour. Exclusionary facts. Had she and Olivia ever said they were exclusive? No. Were they even officially dating? No. Did any of these excuses matter? No. Because her gut was telling her that she was a piece of shit.
Gina clearly felt the same. She’d walked away in disgust. That was right. It had fuckinghurt,though. Harper couldn’t possibly imagine how it had come about in the first place now. What had Gina thought when she let her kiss her? Harper knew it was crazy to attempt to figure that out. The woman had always been and would always be beyond her understanding. Any moment they’d appeared to have, had been made up in Harper’s mind. It had to be. How did you walk away after that kind of earth-shattering kiss?
Simple. It had only shattered Harper.
Thirty-Three
After Vincent had finally buggered off, Gina was left alone on the floor with Harper, dazed. She didn’t know where to look. And then Harper said, ‘What the hell have we done?’ And Gina understood what was expected of her. She said, ‘Nothing,’ and went into the other office, where she sat with her head in her hands. When she heard Harper leaving next door, Gina opened her laptop. She wrote a swift and unremarkable resignation letter. She sat staring at it for a long time. The sun set on her, still looking at it.
It was fine. Gina would have had to do this anyway. Better sooner than later. If she was out of the way, she couldn’t cause any more problems.
She refused to make the kiss into something it wasn’t. She’d been a bit maudlin, and Harper had given her sympathy. Gina had lost her head and turned it into something it shouldn’t have been. A very hot mistake.
Harper had regretted it immediately. She’d had a small system error and quickly performed a hard reset. ‘What the hell have we done?’ It was better than saying, ‘We should never have done this, and we must forget immediately.’ But the meaning was the same. The hard drive had restored its original settings, and all would be well as long as Gina removed herself. Which she was doing before she made this worse for herself. Or anyone else. She’d promised to help Olivia. This was not helping Olivia. This was fuckery. This was selfishness. She was out.
Speaking of Olivia, what in the hell was she going to say to her? Would Harper say something about this? Probably. She was probably on the phone with her now, telling her that her assistant was sexually unhinged. Maybe Olivia would sack her before she could send this email? Just in case, Gina went ahead and hit send. That way, HR couldn’t technically say she was fired, and it wouldn’t completely ruin her job history.
Gina went home that night and slept horribly, wishing the morning wouldn’t come. But of course, it did. It was a fucker like that.
It was time to face the music.
She covered her eyebags as best she could and trudged into work. She went straight to Olivia’s office and knocked on the door.
‘Come in,’ Olivia said.
Gina took a deep breath and went in, shutting the door behind her. ‘Did you get my email?’ she asked quickly. She was trying to get this over and done as swiftly as possible. She’d take whatever came in the way of rude words or slaps.
