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9am.
She wasn’t here yet, and everything was boring. The desks either seemed too bare or unbearably cluttered and the coffee tasted like water and She wasn’t here yet. Sirius was being cutesy texting Remus under his desk and She wasn’t here yet. Reg and Mary were snogging at the neighbouring desk, entangled in the wrong cubicle, not caring enough to move because they had gotten engaged last night, and he was trying to be nice about it even though he felt horribly jealous, and She wasn’t here yet.
He was in dire need of some more coffee.
He went to the break room, grabbing his Bugs Bunny cup on the way, accidentally twirling it in the telephone cord. He met Peter at the coffee maker, made some small talk and smiled at the news of his band that only made The Police covers, informing him that his favourite song of theirs was So Lonely, even though it really was Roxanne, but he was feeling a bit dramatic today. Yeah, of course he was coming to the bar after work, it was karaoke night after all.
He came back to his desk, taking the first sip of a well-deserved coffee and She was coming in late, some freckles on Her nose, a haphazard bun and a single buttered toast shoved between Her teeth while She got her coat off. Did the air taste better somehow?
‘Nice glasses, Evans!’
‘Thanks, they’re new. They make me look like my mother so much, it’s eerie. I’m feeling old.’
‘Lils, you’re twenty-four,’ he reasoned.
‘Anyways.’ A beat. She softened, and Her smile felt like a miracle. ‘Having a good morning?’
‘Well, it’s better now that you’re here,’ he jested, not feeling the need to admit to himself that his statement was heartfelt.
‘I saw Dumbledore in the parking lot, and you will not believe who he was with!’
‘Yeah, he’s been talking an awful lot to Gellert, huh? Sirius filled me in. My guess is that they’re totally banging, but haven’t admitted to their romantic feelings yet.’
She giggled, and elaborated on a wild theory about how they had gotten together involving chamber pots and knitting patterns.
10am.
The office could be fun, right?
He had an ongoing prank war with Sirius and for the moment he was in the lead because he had painted his desk bubblegum pink this morning. The whole office reeked of paint fumes, but Sirius hadn’t had the time to plan a retaliation yet because he was too busy organizing his date with Remus tonight.
He had fun with Peter, and with him it was a betting war he had, and he lost from one to five dollars at a time, betting on stupid things like how many cups of coffee Sirius could take without realizing they were decaf or who could horrify best Sybil Trelawney, the bogey fortune teller from accross the street, by guessing horribly wrong on their own demises, or the number of snogs Mary and Reg thought they could pull off without getting caught in a day (their record was a measly two and a half).
Remus and him chatted constantly in the break room, sharing various snacks from the vending machine, recommending tv shows to each other and explaining the plotlines with varying degrees of truthfulness, even reenacting some of their favourite scenes depending on if James had had two or three cups of coffee that particular morning.
He joked around with Reg and talked about Quidditch and sometimes capitalism, but only when Puddlemere United was losing so horrendously that even talking about their games was depressing.
He played board games with Mary in the break room when they were sufficiently bored and that no one would notice, and they danced and drank together at the bar on Fridays and told each other salacious jokes that she would always relay religiously to Reg later to see if he would blush.
Dorcas and Marlene did not come separately, but whenever he talked with them he was left with a huge smile on his face because of their little bickering that was so dishonest it made people feel sick, dripping with love. They were the ones to perform the best duos at karaoke night, and Marlene would make up songs about everything and Dorcas would make exaggerated harmonies just to ruin them and mess with her. The couple’s little jingles got stuck in his head all the time and he would spend entire days humming them.
Nothing compared to Her sunshine, though. Everytime he was with Her, it was like an electric current was going through him, like the sun had lodged itself beneath his ribcage and gnawed at his bones with hunger. He felt frazzled, and dazzled, and bemused, and all he could do was smile and smile and smile. She made him feel ecstatic, but strangely lucid, like the feeling of sun warming up his hair on a day without any clouds where the sky was so intensely blue it was disheartening.
He could have fun without Her. Couldn’t he? (Or was he just being dramatically lovesick? It was a habit of his when it came to Her).
She sat down next to him in the break room and sighed heavily, interrupting his quickly derailing train of thought. ‘What was that word we made up for when you have a thing stuck in your shoe? Anyway, I have a thing stuck in my shoe.’
He ached to reach across his cup of coffee (second or third of the day?) to take Her hand in his, but didn’t. Because he was a coward.
The office could be fun without her, he convinced himself.
11am.
Mary had finally gotten around to giving everyone the little candy hearts she had bought for the staff and walked around, handing them out. James felt like he was in kindergarten again, when the teacher gave every student a sole red candy, row by row, sticky hands touching everything, little desks littered with wrappers they hadn’t bothered to throw away.
He felt horribly bored.
She came, a saviour from monotony, asking for his stapler because She had just broken Hers, its mangled remains littering Her desk where She had tried to put it back together.
‘Ugh, why is it that I have the most boring job in the office?’
She was wearing a pink blouse today, and a skirt that let people see Her milky legs, stained with various bruises from falling in the stairs all the time. (Last week, in an attempt to stay upright in Her heels walking in the eastern staircase, She had grabbed his arm like She needed it to survive, and a jolt had run through his whole body like he had just been hit by lightning.)
‘Hey, that’s not fair, I think I could compete for that title!’
‘You are literally one of the founders of this company! You love your job.’
‘Not right now I don’t. I’m bored out of my mind.’
‘Well, then, thank god I’m here. Let me entertain you.’ Thank god indeed. ‘ Let me entertain you with my misfortunes, that is. Ugh, I’ve been looking for job openings in newspapers and they are all too good for me! Doesn’t anybody employ incompetent people anymore? I mean, I would love to work at the Daily Prophet, but it's pretty much impossible since I have no experience and it’s one of the most read newspapers in the country.’
‘Come on now, you’re not incompetent. A bit unexperienced maybe, but you’re so far from incompetent that incompetent has been trying to reach you for days to see if you’re still alive but you can’t see the smoke signals from where you are.’ She raised a brow quizzically. ‘Okay, starting over without the weird drawn-out metaphors. Evans. Lily. Look me in the eyes. I’ve read your stuff, and I think it’s pretty good, amazing even, and I’m not just saying this to make you feel good, I’m serious here. I think you've got as many chances as all the other talented people applying there. They need passionate people like you.’
The shy smile he got in return made his heart stop. God, he hoped She wouldn’t quit. How terrible it would be here without Her! She did leave after some time, but only to go back to Her desk because the phone was ringing.
‘Hey, Lil, you forgot the stapler!’ She came back hurriedly, blushing furious red.
12pm.
His favourite colour used to be red. When he was a little boy, all he wanted to wear were red clothes. To this day, the scarf he wore to brave the cold daily was a bold and flaming red that his mother knitted for him when he was eighteen. He still wore it every winter, even if his mother had offered to knit him a new one since his current one was full of holes, sported one cigarette burn on the right side and that the thread had ripped from the bottom some years ago and his mother had to sew it back for him.
Since he had met Her, his favourite colour changed everyday, depending on what She was wearing.
Some colours stayed everyday, like the deep red of Her hair, glorious and rich like a wine he would drink like he had spent forty days parched in the desert, or the green of Her eyes, pale like moss, like the water of a shallow lake he would willingly drown in, the gentle pink of Her skin that he would like to kiss all over.
Some varied and made him discover new hues of the likes he had never cared about in the slightest. Yesterday, She wore a dark blue sweater and he had never loved the night sky more. The day before that, it was a yellow dress and he wanted to lie in a sunflower or buttercup field, for the rest of his life, listening to flowers growing for eternity. Today, it was pink in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and he wanted to buy the whole world for Her if she would just let him.
He loved Her like human beings love air, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He loved Her like there was no other possibility, like a universe without James Potter loving Lily Evans wouldn’t be a universe anymore. For Her, he would have gone to hell and back.
1pm.
Dumbledore had gone in the city for a ‘meeting’ even though they all knew he was going on a date with his boyfriend for the rest of the day, the fact even more evident because of the peonies lying on his desk all morning.
And of course, Mary had a suggestion on how they should spend the holiday. ‘We should all go to the mini-mall! There’s a discount for couples for Valentine’s Day, and we should take advantage of the fact that we are young people in love, and basically have the rest of the day off!’
‘Talk for yourself, Mary, it’s not all of us that have recently gotten engaged to the man of our dreams. Some of us don’t even have a lousy date for tonight, so forget anyone to go to the mini-mall with,’ Lily interrupted.
‘I could go with you,’ James said, not believing his own boldness.
‘What?’ She turned toward him with a jerk, Her eyes getting comically larger.
‘I could go with you,’ he repeated, more confidently this time. ‘You’re single, I’m single, we want a little discount, nothing to fret about.’ He looked Her in the eyes, fearing her answer. ‘Right?’
‘Well, I have been wanting to do something nice for myself.’ She thought for a moment, likely weighing Her options, nervously biting down on Her lower lip. ‘Oh, what the hell! Let’s go!’
‘Yay! Come on, we have to go recrute all the others!’ said Mary with a smile to break her face in two. ‘I am such a genius!’
Twenty minutes later, and they were all squeezed in Reg’s Jeep, Mary and him in the front, Sirius and Remus squeezed in the backseat with Dorcas and Marlene on her lap, giggling to themselves. Lily and James were in the back of the truck, the wind whipping their hair and him leaning heavily into Her body everytime Reg took a turn.
‘This is fun,’ Lily stated with an enigmatic smile.
‘I can already feel that this is going to be a very good day,’ he agreed.
Their knees bumped against one another and Her hair was in his face, and he wanted to doodle on Her leg since She was wearing a skirt, Her legs very inviting, and he was still very much in love with Her.
‘How is it that everyone is in a relationship with one another in this office? I’m beginning to feel singled out,’ She said, laughing at Her own bad pun.
‘That’s what happens when you start a company with all of your friends from business school.’
‘Fair enough.’ He wanted to smile very hard, and he didn’t know why.
Life was very good.
To be fair, life is always good when you are alone in the trunk of a car with your best friend who you happen to be in love with, and whose body you are currently pressed upon because the driver is a reckless one, and that you are on your way to the mini-mall where you will pretend to be in a relationship with said best friend/love of your life/soulmate, and hoping for a kiss.
2pm.
They stopped first at a Subway, because Lily craved a sandwich and no one could think of a better idea. She got some ham and cheddar cheese, with onions, olives, bell peppers and pickles. He hated olives and She seemed to love them. Somehow, that felt very important.
They ate their lunch and the eight of them were smushed together at a table made for six. James kept bumping elbows with Reg and made regular eye contact with Lily, who was sitting just in front of him.
The group paired off for the real shopping part. Sirius and Remus were off to the bookstore, which Lily and James were planning to hit just after their trip to the supermarket. Marlene and Dorcas went to get some ice cream and no one wanted to know what Reg and Mary were doing, and where they were doing it.
‘I want some chocolate and alcohol, maybe it’ll help tonight go faster’, sighed James, gripping the shopping cart tighter. The aisle of cookies seemed to be smirking at him. Maybe he wouldn’t go to karaoke with the rest of his colleagues tonight. It’d be too depressing.
‘Weren’t you seeing someone, like a month ago? What, you couldn’t get her to stay with you ‘till Valentine’s Day?’ Lily joked.
‘Beth? No, I haven’t seen her in a while. I’m pretty sure she didn’t like ice cream or something, some kind of freak of nature.’
‘And that was reason enough to dump her? You’re rough, Potter.’
‘And you,’ he said rapidly, changing the subject. ’What are your wild plans for the night?’
‘Well, there’s this concert that I really wanted to go to with my friend, but she got herself a date last minute, so I’m debating just going straight home and going to sleep at 9:30,’ She said.
‘What band is it?’ ‘I don’t know if you know them, I used to listen to them in high school. The Weird Sisters? They have the one single that always plays on the radio in the middle of the afternoon.’
‘You have tickets to the Weird Sisters?’ he asked, shocked. ‘God, you are so much cooler than I thought!’
‘Well you could come with me!’ A beat. ‘If you wanted to, I mean. I know lots of people have plans on Valentine’s Day, and some single people have weird rituals to follow to avoid going into a depressive coma or something.’ She had started talking faster, Her hands moving around nervously at lightning speed. ‘I know my sister would only go to one bar with a heavy theme on the 14th of February, and she would eat the same ice cream and watch the same three romantic comedies. Unless she got a date. Now, she’s engaged, so she doesn't have to do that anymore. Most people…’
‘Of course, I would love to come, Lil!’ James cut her. ‘It’s the Weird Sisters with the funnest person in the office, I would have to be a total fool to say no. Don’t sweat it,’ he smiled.
‘Perfect. I’ll pick you up at seven, then? The concert’s at eight’, She specified. He smiled even wider. ‘You use laundry softener?’ She said with a surprised voice, watching him trying to decide between the myriads of ones stocked on the shelf.
‘Yeah. Don’t you?’
‘Yeah. Me too. My favourite one smells like springtime.’
He picked the springtime scented one, and the whole situation felt weirdly intimate. He watched Her choose some toothpaste and bought Her some chocolates to thank Her for his ticket, since She refused to be repaid for it. ‘Consider it your Valentine’s Day gift, James, it’s incredibly rude to say no to a gift, didn’t your mother ever teach you that?’ He suddenly felt a desperate need to kiss the smirk right off Her lips.
3pm.
James was standing in one front of one of the many bookcases in the bookstore, a mystery novel tucked comfortably under his arm with the comfort of knowing he would be able to identify the killer accurately before the grand reveal. He heard a thud to the ground, a swear from a well-known voice, and spotted Lily in the next row. Flamboyant red hair was all he could see since She was kneeling to the ground trying to grab the first book that had fallen and to prevent a catastrophe with the remaining five ones She held between Her chest and chin.
‘Oh, hey! They really have good options here, don’t they? I’m so happy I could find all these, today I’m treating myself!’ She said with an adorable grin.
‘I’m feeling like a bit of an illiterate here, Evans!’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to buy all six, my wallet couldn’t afford that kind of splurging, I just like to have options. Anyway, what’d you get?’
‘Some Agatha Christie. You can never go wrong with her.’
‘I was obsessed with her when I was fourteen! She was who I wanted to be when I grew up. I read her entire 900 pages autobiography in like, two weeks! I should lend it to you, it’s terribly interesting’, She said, Her face lighting up adorably.
‘I would love that, Lil.’
‘Perfect! It’ll be on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Have you read this one, then?’ he asked, delighting in getting to know Her better and to see Her so open and ecstatic.
‘The Seven Dials Mystery? Yeah. My favourite ones, though, were Sparkling Cyanide, Murder in Retrospect and By the Pricking of my Thumbs,’ She counted the titles off on her fingers.
‘I was always an And Then There Were None kind of guy.’
‘There’s a reason it’s a classic, James! The atmosphere is magical and the plot twist of the end is true genius. That’s why they called her the Queen of Mystery.’
‘Truly a Desert Island book.’ ‘What’s a Desert Island book?’
‘The rules of Desert Island are clear and unflinchingly rigid. If you got stuck on a desert island in some kind of boat crash, and there were only five items you could take with you, which would be the ultimate favourite ones?’
‘Okay, so And Then There Were None would be the first. What would be the other four?’
‘Uhhmmm… The Princess Bride, Good Omens, The Lord of the Rings and… maybe a very long one, to pass the time. Probably War and Peace, just so Sirius will stop nagging me to read it.’
‘Ambitious, huh?’
‘Or overly self-confident,’ he corrected and She giggled.
‘I guess mine would be… wait, let me think for a second. It’s always when people ask you about your favourite movie that you forget every film you’ve ever seen, isn’t it? Wuthering Heights, Persuasion, Till We Have Faces, Sharp Objects and The Robber Bride.’
‘So depressing.’
‘I like sad things. They remind you about the things that are not so bad, in comparison.’ God, did this girl get any more kissable?
‘Okay, quick, five movies now.’
‘Pride and Prejudice, Good Will Hunting, La La Land, Howl’s Moving Castle and something like a guilty pleasure, 10 things I Hate About You or Legally Blonde.’
‘You’re going to take a guilty pleasure movie in the only five you’re alloted for life?’
‘Don’t judge me! Okay, okay, I’m changing my answer. Non-guilty pleasure would probably be The Social Network.’
‘Big Zuckerberg fan?’
‘No. More like big Zuckerberg hater. Although, my brother-in-law loves him. At the end of the movie, he still thought he was a hero, so I said I had to go to the bathroom and just escaped through the window. It was that kind of night, I guess. It’s still a cinematic masterpiece.’
‘I love the bit where he shouts at him about the flip-flops. Genius.’
‘Yes! But sorry, we’re getting off track, what are your choices, James?’
‘I’ve thought about this for quite a long time, so bear with me here. Catch Me If You Can, because I still want to be Frank Abagnale when I grow up, The Silence of the Lambs because for some reason I was fascinated with Clarice’s accent and also Hannibal Lecter was the coolest fictional character I’d ever seen, The Matrix because it blew my fifteen year-old mind, The Back to the Future trilogy, because I used to watch it with my father and Veronica Mars: The Movie.’
‘Veronica Mars?’
‘What? I like mysteries.’
They stood in line for a good twenty minutes and held hands to get the discount, even though the cashier never even seemed to look at them for more than a millisecond. Her hands were unbelievably soft and letting go would probably have broken his heart clean in two. They argued the whole time about who had the best sudoku and solitaire scores. (Lily for sudoku, which James insisted was only luck, and Solitaire for him, because he had ‘lightning quick reflexes and never-ending wits.’)
4pm.
She wanted to get Her nails done, and convinced him to try to paint his. He chose soft pink to go with Her clothes, but claimed that he chose it because it was the most natural-looking colour. He briefly wondered how the pearly white nails would go with the golden ring he had acquired at his father’s death.
His phone pinged and Sirius had sent him photos of him and Remus in a photobooth, looking utterly adorable in each other’s arms, Remus’s lips planting a kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek with a big grin. Happiness looked a bit impractical, more teeth than soft skin, but still, he wanted it. It. Someone to smile with, to kiss, to hold hands with, someone to talk to about all the inane things in his head and all the too long ones he never bothered to explain, talk about the deep stuff and his parents and hers and why they thought life happened the way it did. So he longed for Her, a little bit. He wanted that with Lily, specifically. He wanted a photobooth on Valentine’s Day type person to be with. Someone to truly live with instead of existing. All these adventures that apparently preceded wisdom, he wanted to share them. Wasn’t all love about community?
She was lightly swaying to the music on the radio, the nail polish She had chosen dangling from Her fingers, a ring with a silver stag on it adorning Her index. Every detail about Her seemed worthwhile. Maybe if he could remember everything about Her he could trap Her radiance in his mind and reminisce on it in harder days... In some non creepy way.
‘Hello! We’re here for the couples discount?’ She said, holding their newly joint hands above their shoulders to show the woman behind the counter. The bottles of nail polish clinked together.
‘Yes, of course! We’ll be with you in a minute.’
They whispered stupid things in each other’s, waiting in white plastic chairs. Their closeness made James feel electric.
When they were finally seated in front of two women doing their nails in perfectly fluid motions, without a drop spilled, is when their scheme got a little more delicate and a lot less easy. ‘So, how long have you two been together?’ asked the manicurist in charge of Lily’s hands.
Lily looked a bit lost and James jumped to rescue Her. ‘It’ll be a year in a week, actually, won’t it, darling?’ Since his hands were otherwise occupied, he bumped Her shoulder affectionately. She smiled weakly back, dazzled.
‘How wonderful for you! And how did you meet?’
He stole a look at Her, and She looked frozen into place. He once again stepped in, leaning forward. ‘You see, we met at her job interview.’ The memory of it seemed to snap Her back into reality, because She continued the story, making it up as She went along.
‘Yeah, I wasn’t really charmed at first, because I thought he kind of looked like an asshole.’
‘You just say that because you were intimidated by my confidence!’
‘More like astounded by your arrogance. It turned out okay, though. I would say we kissed and made up, but we made up, and only kissed much later. We were friends first.’
‘Friends for a really long time…’
‘Well, not that long, Jamie. Only two years.’ She turned to the manicurist again. ‘Two years is nothing, right?’
‘Agree to disagree,’ he added quickly.
‘Depends on what you’re comparing it to’, stated the manicurist, trying to remain impartial.
‘Anyway, so, one day, I decided to ask her to dinner. I was unbelievably nervous. I think I was more nervous that day than before opening my letter of acceptance to uni.’
‘He was lurking around my desk—’ ‘I wasn’t lurking, per se,’ he cut in. ‘Just faking to use the printer while gathering the courage to ask a gorgeous woman a very important question.’ He looked up at Her with adoration in his eyes.
‘As I said, he was lurking. So after I asked him for the fourth time what exactly it was that he needed, he asked me out.’
‘And she said yes.’
‘And I said yes.’
They grinned up at each other, beaming like the waves do for the moon. The woman smiled as well. ‘Well, aren’t you the most well-matched couple I’ve seen today! Seems like fate brought you two together. I don’t meet a lot of people with that kind of chemistry.’
Lily shifted in her seat, heat spreading across Her cheeks. ‘You haven’t heard the best of it yet! We’re moving in together!’
He turned to her once again, taken aback. She was really indulging in the fantasy of their life together, wasn’t She? It felt like some kind of challenge: who could come up with the most romantic, most ridiculous thing to say? He couldn’t think of anything, so he kissed Her on the cheek instead, soft as a butterfly. Her cheeks were now beet red. ‘Honey, I just can’t wait!’ he said in an overly high-pitched voice.
‘We’re going to get a cat and name it something weird, like Agamemnon or Isildur, the kind of thing the guests don’t quite know how to pronounce. I’m a literature major, so, you know,’ She said as if it explained everything. ‘The movers are actually coming tomorrow, but James has been sleeping at my place so much these days that it’s like we already live together. I mean, he even made me breakfast this morning, isn’t that so darling of him?’
‘He’s a charming guy,’ agreed the other woman, now very distracted from her task.
‘He kills all his plants, can’t even get one to live right in the window of his office and spills his coffee everywhere, but I love him anyway.’
‘Hey, I could get all the dirt on you too! You’re sloppy when you eat and you pout way more than you should. It’s annoyingly endearing.’
‘You’re annoyingly endearing!’ The bickering continued like that for quite some time.
5pm.
They were all back at the office now, alone, and he had broken the news to Peter about not going to the bar for karaoke night and after some five minutes of coaxing in vain, Peter had left, as well as the rest of the staff, off to enjoy their romantic lives to the fullest. Except for Lily. She was putting her coat on, and he looked like he had something he wanted to say, but he was too afraid of the words about to come out of his mouth. Everything felt terribly momentous. He was so on edge it felt like electricity crackled from his fingertips, and when he touched Her arm as he was saying how fun it had been today, She yelped from an electric shock.
‘Yeah, it was fun. We make a good team.’
‘We do, don’t we?’ He felt like screaming, for no good reason. His heart was beating a little too fast for a girl who was just putting on a coat. He wanted to hold Her forever and know every inch of Her skin like a geographer knows a map. Maybe he was a little too dramatic for love. It made it feel frazzled, like the world was coming to an end, but also like he would never feel so alive again.
They fell in a comfortable silence, the kind you get when you’re both daydreaming, the kind you get when you’ve known each other for a long time and you get used to the vulnerability of silence lingering, its grabby fingers hanging on to your every word, making them echo.
‘Evans, there was something I wanted to run by you.’ God, was that how he asked out people? Like he was talking about a project from work? Can I run something by you, Evans? How idiotic!
‘Sure. Shoot.’ These still did not seem like some start-of-the-asking-out-conversation words. Was he going about this wrong?
‘I think we do make a good team, and even more than that. You make me feel incredibly alive, like that thing where people say that your real life only starts when you realize you’re going to die one day? When I’m with you I feel like I’m going to choke on every word I say, like I’m going to die because your hair looks divine or your smile is too radiant or something dumb like that. You make me feel like I’m a toddler and I’ve just put my finger in an electrical socket. You make me feel like I believe in love and from that power I could reach a star and give it to you just because you said a certain constellation was pretty. Even though you might not feel the same way, I needed to tell you I’m in love with you. Once.’ Her coat dangled from one side, because She had only passed Her left arm through the sleeve and was too surprised to move. ‘I mean, I can get over you. I will get over you. Eventually. It’s not like I’m completely gone or anything, we’ve never even kissed. It’s not some kind of head over heels situation. Maybe more like head over knees?’
‘James.’
‘What?’
‘Shut up.’ She kissed him. Hard. More teeth than soft skin, more red lipstick than pink lips, more rigid body pressed desperately against his, every muscle tensed from excitement than tender slow kiss where the body is mellow.
‘This is a much better story than the one of me lurking by the printer,’ he said, a little out of breath.
‘Eh. You did say, and I quote, that you were ‘head over knees in love with me’? That was a little over-the-top.’
‘You can’t always expect the best of me when I’m under pressure!’ She used his new favourite technique for shutting him up again. Another kiss for the ages.
Life was perfect.
To be fair, life was always perfect when you’d just kissed your best friend for the first time and they’d responded with enthusiasm. Indeed, life was always perfect when you’d just discovered your best friend reciprocated your feelings of love, even if it was just head over knees instead of the classic head over heels. Everything else was just background noise.