Right Here, Right Now

by Georgia Beers

  For the first time in more weeks than I could count, I felt like I could breathe freely. Easily. Normally. The pressure was off. Yes, this exact thing happened every year on the fifteenth, but every year, I forgot how poignant it all was. I had a lot to do, but doing it actually felt good, productive, and reminded me how much I loved my job. I worked diligently throughout the morning, but there was a shift in the air, and I felt zero pressure. I’d get it all done. I had no doubt. Even the bassline from music next door didn’t bother me. I cocked my head as I listened—Bruno Mars, I was pretty sure—and bopped along to the beat.

  Around eleven, my bladder let me know that it could only hold so much coffee, so I went out to reception only to find the nail for the bathroom key empty. I pointed to it and raised my eyebrows in silent question at Mary.

  She gave me a silent answer by pointing to her left in the direction of Just Wright. I nodded. All right. I guess now’s as good a time as any to humble myself. I’d use the bathroom key as an excuse to see Alicia.

  I’d been right about Bruno Mars. He was just finishing up when I arrived in the doorway, the door wide open, the Just Wright staff buzzing around like worker bees. Gisele was squinting at her computer monitor, as was Justin. Pantone Patrick was pacing in front of the whiteboard. He’d stop and doodle with a green marker for a few seconds, then pace some more. Alicia’s desk was deserted, and I didn’t see her anywhere in the room. Brandon must have been down the hall because he startled me as he entered the office behind me.

  “Hey,” I said, working hard to inject friendliness into my voice.

  “Hey,” he said with a grunt and didn’t look up as he tossed the bathroom key onto the food table as he passed.

  Gisele looked up from her computer and smiled at me as she gave a little wave. I picked up the key and said, “I just came for this.”

  Gisele shook her head with half a grimace. “I’m so sorry. Alicia’s been in constant contact with maintenance about our bathroom. We really thought we’d have it up and running by now. They said next week for sure.”

  “It’s no problem.” With a small wave of my own, I pocketed the key and hit the restroom, a little bit bummed that Alicia hadn’t been around. I missed her face. And that thought, that simple fact, brought a smile of my own.

  The afternoon was very much like the morning: relaxed. Busy, but relaxed. I fielded a few last-minute questions from clients. I e-filed nearly forty returns. My pile for the post office was ready by five thirty, so I gave it to Mary and sent her on her way, knowing there’d be a line and she’d probably be there for a bit. But I told her to go home after that. She’d been working overtime for nearly a month, and she deserved a break.

  Just before seven, I called Jules at ChopStix and placed an order. I would be there until midnight, but I wasn’t frantic, so I wouldn’t look up at ten and realize I hadn’t eaten all day. It was another perk to seeing that light at the end of the tunnel: I went back to taking better care of myself.

  The knock on the door startled a little yelp from Leo.

  “Relax,” I told him. “It’s just dinner.” I called for the person to come in. But when the door opened, it wasn’t dinner.

  It was Alicia.

  Alicia, with a very large bouquet of flowers in one hand and the strings for what had to be at least eight balloons in an array of bright colors floating above her head in the other.

  “It’s April fifteenth,” she said, as she closed the door behind her with a foot and stood there with her back to it.

  I blinked at her. “Oh, my God,” I said quietly, so touched that I had trouble finding words. “Are those for me?”

  Alicia cocked her head a bit. “Well, if I was going to bring something for Leo, it wouldn’t be flowers and balloons. It would be made of meat.” She gave a gentle laugh. “Yes, they’re for you.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say.” And I didn’t. Nobody had ever done that for me before. Most people didn’t get how significant this date was to somebody in my line of work. My gaze moved from the rainbow of balloons to Alicia. She wore tan slacks and a navy blue top. It was a subtle color for her, but it made her eyes and hair pop, and the added display of color from the balloons and flowers only served to accent just how gorgeous her face was. She was smiling, and I swear to God, I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.

  I pushed my chair back and walked toward her with determined steps. I had no idea what I was going to do until I was inches from her. Then I grabbed her face in both hands and kissed her.

  Like, a lot.

  Like, really a lot. Like, enough to make her drop the flowers (I heard them fall near my feet) and let go of the balloons (they softly hit the ceiling above us). I felt her hands on me then, one at the small of my back, pulling me closer to her; the other sliding into my hair at the back of my head.

  This kiss was so different from the last one. Much less tentative. Much less trepidatious. More intense. Much more intense. It’s hard to accurately describe a really good kiss, to put a really good kiss into words, and this was definitely one of them: a really good kiss. Alicia’s mouth was crazy soft, and she tasted amazing. Intoxicating. I had no idea why, and I actually pulled back and whispered, “God, why do you taste so good?”

  She smiled and kissed me again. I leaned into her and she let out a soft grunt as her back hit the door. I pressed the length of my body against hers and did my best to get more. That was the only word in my head for long, long moments: more. There was so much I wanted then. I wanted to slowly remove her clothes and touch every single millimeter of her body. With my hands. With my lips. With my tongue. At the same time, I wanted to kiss her forever, because my God, she was the best kisser I’d ever had the pleasure of kissing. If there’d been a Best Kisser trophy, I’d have happily handed it over. If there’d been a Best Kisser list, she’d have been at the top. I was pretty sure I could just stand there and make out with her. For hours.

  It felt like that’s exactly what we did. I had no idea how much time had passed when we finally broke apart, ragged breathing the only sound in the room for a stretch. We stayed close together, our foreheads touching as we each tried to catch our breath. Alicia’s hand at the back of my neck toyed with my hair, sending thrilling shivers across my shoulders and down my back. My arms were wrapped around her neck and I had no intention of letting go just yet. Her other hand had made its way under my shirt and was softly playing across the skin of my lower back. More shivers.

  “So that’s what it takes to get you to kiss me,” she said, humor in her tone. “Finally. I’ve seriously been wondering if you’d ever make a move.” She pulled her head back far enough to meet my eyes, and hers were sparkling with happiness. “If I’d only known, I’d have brought gifts much sooner.”

  “What can I say? Apparently, balloons get me hot.”

  “Who knew?” And then she was kissing me again, but this time, I was certain I could not do this for hours because that word was back: more.

  I moved my hand to her face, cupped the side of it for a few more blissful seconds before wrenching my mouth away. My vision felt blurry, hazy, as though I was trying to focus through a fog, and I ran my thumb across her swollen lips. Once. Twice. Trying to orient myself and stop the blood that was rushing hotly through my body. “We have to stop,” I managed to breathe out. “Or we’re going to end up naked on this floor, and I don’t think this carpet would be kind to bare skin.”

  The knock that sounded on the door against Alicia’s back made us both jump apart, tandem gasps escaping our lips, as if we were teenagers about to be discovered by our parents. I squinted at her in confusion and she mirrored my expression until I realized who it was.

  “Dinner,” I mouthed.

  “Oh,” she mouthed back and took a step toward me. With a quick reach, she flicked her finger along the corner of my mouth, then stepped back again and gave me a nod of approval.

  I shook out my arms like a boxer preparing to spar, and then opened the do
or to my usual delivery guy. I signed and tipped him, he handed over the food, and I thanked him and shut the door. A huge sigh left my lungs as I turned around and saw Alicia sitting on the floor next to Leo’s bed, petting him as he looked up adoringly at her. She, in turn, looked up at me, and I felt a rush of combined affection and arousal.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” I said quietly, before I had time to think about it.

  She responded by blushing, her smile almost shy, which seemed really unlike her.

  I held up my bags. “Care to join me? There’s always way too much for just me.”

  “I like that idea.” She stood and pulled a chair closer to the desk as I cleared it off. I took my seat and pulled an extra set of chopsticks and a plastic spork from a drawer. I offered her both; she took the spork. Then I opened all the containers and spread them across the surface of my desk.

  We ate in companionable silence for long moments. I couldn’t speak for her, but I can say that I was stupidly happy just being in the same room with her, eating dinner and getting to look at her the whole time. I never realized just how easy to please I actually was.

  A gentle rustling sound had us both looking up as the balloons softly drifted their way across the ceiling. I grinned. “That was the coolest,” I said to Alicia. “I love getting stuff like that, and I rarely do. So thank you.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that,” she said, tossing a glance at the bouquet of flowers still on the floor.

  I gasped. “Oh, my God. I forgot about those.” I jumped up from my chair as she laughed and said she was only teasing me. “No, seriously. How ungrateful could I be?” I was slightly mortified as I picked up the bouquet and straightened them, making sure no stems had broken. Then I felt a wave of mischief wash through me, looked at her, and said, “And I’m not the one who dropped them on the floor.”

  Alicia lifted her chin as she chewed some rice. “Well, somebody caught me off guard and distracted me in a major way. Not my fault.”

  “Okay. I’ll cop to that.”

  Our gazes held for a moment, and I felt captured by those blue eyes of hers. Once I somehow managed to break free, I found a vase on a bookshelf, filled it with water from my afternoon water bottle, and arranged the flowers in it. I could feel Alicia’s eyes on me the whole time until I sat back down and continued eating. Leo had decided to get his lazy butt up from his bed now that food was involved, and he parked himself at my feet.

  “So,” Alicia said, switching to a spring roll. “Tonight’s your last late night? Is that how it works?”

  I nodded as I chewed. “Pretty much. I mean, the work isn’t over. Extensions and so forth. And I do other things besides taxes. Financial advising. Help with investments. Retirement guidance. So work isn’t over, but yeah, the crazy hours are. I’ve got more to do tonight—I’ll probably be here until midnight—but after that, I can breathe. The rest of the week should be much easier.” Saying that out loud was even better than knowing it in my head.

  “Good. That means you can have dinner with me Saturday night then, right?”

  It was my turn to snag her gaze and I did, held it for a beat or two, then nodded. “I can. Yes.”

  “There’s a new place over near Olde City that specializes in contemporary Mediterranean…”

  “Stavros?” I asked, remembering Amy’s text not long ago.

  “Yes!” Alicia pointed her spork at me. “Interested?”

  I gave an enthusiastic nod. “Very.”

  “Excellent. I’ll get us reservations.”

  “You think it’ll be that easy? You’re talking a new, popular restaurant on a Saturday night with not a lot of notice.”

  Alicia grinned at me like a Cheshire cat. “I did their marketing. They’ll fit us in. Meet me there Saturday night at seven?”

  “Perfect.”

  She took one last bite of her food, then gathered up her litter and tossed it in the trash. She came around my desk and stood next to me. “I’m going to let you get back to work. I know how cranky you get when your routine is messed with.” She softened the words with a playful tug on my hair.

  “Ha ha,” I said, knowing she was right.

  Her tug turned into a gentle pull until my head was back and I was looking up at her. She brought her lips to mine and kissed me. Softly. Languorously. Besides her hand in my hair, we didn’t touch each other. I kept my hands on my desk. Her other hand was at her side. Only our mouths connected and it was indescribably sensual. I’d never been so turned on by a simple kiss in all of my thirty-three years of life. Her mouth was magic.

  When Alicia finally pulled away, she stood looking down at me for a moment. Her face was flushed. Her lips were swollen, and she looked slightly disoriented. She smiled, cleared her throat, and rubbed her lips together. “Okay,” she said, on a sigh. “Well, that was…ridiculously hot, and I need to get out of here before I can’t stop myself.”

  God, she made me feel sexy.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said.

  “You will.” Alicia bent over and scratched Leo’s little head. “Bye, buddy,” she whispered, then headed for the door.

  “Alicia?” My voice stopped her and she turned back to me. “Thanks for the flowers and the balloons. That was really sweet of you.”

  “You’re welcome, Lacey. Bye.”

  The door clicked shut and she was gone.

  I fell back against my chair, feeling like I’d been completely tensed up and my muscles all decided to relax at the same time. “Holy crap,” I muttered, bringing my fingers up to lips that I was sure were puffy and very pink. I could still taste Alicia on them, on my tongue, a surprisingly sexy combination of her strawberry lip gloss and the food she’d shared with me.

  I allowed myself to stay lost in sense memory for several minutes before literally shaking my head and pulling my brain back to the present. “Okay, Leo. Enough. I can’t be daydreaming like this. I have work to get done. Don’t let me get preoccupied again, all right? I’m counting on you.”

  My dog gave me his signature party-horn yawn and curled up in his bed.

  “Yeah, you’re a huge help,” I said, and cleaned up my dinner mess. Once my work was back on the desk where it belonged, I did my best to focus. And I succeeded. Because there was dinner this weekend to look forward to. A grin spread across my face as I worked.

  I have a date.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was the first Saturday in nearly two months that I didn’t go in to work. I was home and I planned on staying there all day, getting things done that had been neglected while I worked toward the fifteenth. Things like laundry and cleaning, especially. My plan not to leave the house altered immediately after I opened my refrigerator and was greeted with not much more than two sticks of butter, a bottle of ketchup, three yogurts way past their expiration dates, and something brown and squishy that I thought may have been a cucumber at one time. All I was sure of was that it was gross and smelled awful. I added “clean fridge” to my to-do list.

  I was dusting what seemed like six inches of build-up off my living room furniture when my cell rang. I saw it was Leanne, and I put it on speaker so I could continue to clean.

  “Happy end of tax season,” she said, her voice cheerful. “You survived another one.”

  “I did,” I said, running my dust cloth over a picture frame.

  “How was it? Everything go okay? No last-minute catastrophes?”

  “Nope. It went great. I got everything in on time. No stragglers this year.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Right? And,” I added, putting extra emphasis on the word, “I got flowers and balloons.”

  “You did? From who?”

  “Alicia.”

  “The hottie next door?” Leanne’s tone was a fun mix of surprise and excitement.

  “That very one.”

  “I told you she was into you. The drink at the restaurant. Now flowers and balloons. Why don’t you ever listen to me?” She was teasing me, I knew
. She was also right.

  “I listen to you,” I claimed lamely. Leanne’s response was a snort, which made me laugh. “I do!”

  “You don’t and you know it. You’re stubborn, so you don’t really listen to anybody. And a lot of the time, we’re right.”

  I was nodding, even though she couldn’t see me. “I know,” I said grudgingly. “You’re right.”

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  My smile widened. “I said you’re right. Now shut up.”

  “Music to my ears, those two little words.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Leanne laughed, then shifted gears slightly. “So, I guess I now know why you’ve been ignoring Amy’s texts.”

  I wrinkled my nose and made another face that Leanne couldn’t see. “I’m not ignoring her. I’ve tried to respond a bit here and there. I mean, she’s nice enough…”

  “But you’ve got Alicia on your mind.”

  I sighed in response.

  “I get it,” Leanne said. “Actually, I suspected as much.”

  “Has Lori been giving you a hard time about it?” It hadn’t occurred to me that Amy might say something to Lori, who might say something to Leanne.

  “Not a hard time, no. She just asked me about it. I guess Amy’s a little bummed. She really liked you.”

  I wasn’t really sure what to say to that. I mean, really. What could I say to that? There wasn’t a good answer.

  “No worries,” Leanne said before I could interject something, anything. “I just wanted to check on you, make sure you hadn’t thrown yourself from your office window.”

  “Since I’m only on the second floor, that’d get me nothing but a couple of broken legs. Unless Nascar Kyle then runs me over, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility.”

  Leanne laughed. I thanked her for calling and we hung up.

  I felt bad about Amy. A check of my phone showed me that her last text had come three days ago and I hadn’t responded. It was a simple Hope you’re doing okay. I know it’s a rough time of year for you. I could feel the corners of my mouth pull down. Amy was being nice. She deserved better than I’d given her. I quickly typed out a text.