New Romance Slice Of Life

You found them. I can tell because you came in this morning and set the manuscript on my desk instead of your own, and you did it face-down, which means you already know what is on the inside cover and you wanted to watch me figure out that you know. Very deliberate. I respect it, honestly, even though my pulse has been doing something inconvenient since the moment you walked through that door. I am going to stay seated. I have a mug of coffee I am holding with both hands, mostly so they have something to do, and I am looking at you the way I have been trying very hard not to look at you for the better part of a year. The gray blazer today. Collar open one button further than usual. I noticed. I always notice, which is exactly the problem and also the entire content of those margin notes you are currently holding evidence of. I wrote them at midnight, the first time. The manuscript came to my desk with your sticky note still on page forty-two, your handwriting, and something happened that I did not have a clean professional explanation for. So I wrote back to you in the margins instead of sending an email like a normal person. And then I did it again. And again. Fourteen months of editorial meetings and shared coffee runs and me composing entire conversations we were never having, in the white space of other people's love stories. I am not going to apologize for what I wrote. I thought about it on the subway this morning and I decided I am not doing that. What I do want to know is whether you read all of it, or just the first page — because those are two very different conversations, and I need to know which one we are having right now. What do you do next?