Page 28 of Tell Me What you Think

Her assistant jots something in her notebook, and Marina moves her arm to reposition the screen, and as she does, her elbow grazes Olga's waist. Olga steps sideways so fast she catches the corner of the opposite side of the desk, grabs one of the visitor chairs to keep from falling, and the chair slides with a loud scrape before she has to grab it to stop it from tipping over.

"Sorry," she murmurs, her cheeks burning red. "The chair, I just—"

"Right," Marina says, stunned.

"Do you need anything else?" Olga asks.

"No, that was it."

Olga leaves immediately, and Marina stands there looking at the visitor chair, which is now sitting crooked. It bothers her to see it like that, so she gets up and straightens it while sighing deeply, reminding herself of the line she said yesterday at Olga's own request.

This didn't happen.

Well, for something that didn't happen, it's generating quite a lot of chaos between them — and even though she managed not to think about it yesterday, today she's thinking about it too much. She puts her headphones on to listen to music and clear all the noise from her head, focuses on work, and doesn't stop until her stomach growls from hunger for the third time.

The vice president checks her wristwatch and sees it's already past one-thirty.

"I'm going to order some food," she says, appearing in the doorway. "Do you want Japanese again, or should we get something else?"

Olga looks up, and even though she looks at her, Marina can tell she's not really seeing her.

"I think I'll grab something nearby — I need to stop by the pharmacy before they close, so I might as well stretch my legs a little. Do you want me to bring you something?"

Marina runs her tongue over her teeth and shakes her head.

"No. I'll order something. I'm pretty hungry."

She turns and goes back to her office, and Olga feels an unease close around her throat. She's very aware that she's avoiding her — and that she's not even hiding it very well — but she doesn't know how to do this. Right now she feels completely unable to look her in the face without thinking about what she did. Marina told her it was fine, but she knows these things don't just disappear, that her boss must be wondering what kind of demon possessed her to do what she did.

She's tempted to call Silvia and tell her everything, because aside from laughing like a maniac at first, she'll support her and comfort her afterward, and with any luck offer some useful advice so that now that she'd been managing to act like a normal person around her boss, she might be able to do it again — after having thrown away all the ground she'd gained with that stupid kiss she still can't understand how she ever dared to give. She's spent two years unable to tell her how she feels, and the moment she finally works up the nerve to make a move, she does it in the worst possible way.

She decides against calling her friend — she's at her boyfriend's family's place for the holiday and Olga doesn't want to bother her with her nonsense. She grabs her coat and heads out, ready to walk as far as she needs to while the cold of this day — which started with rain and is still going with an overcast sky — clears her head a little.

Marina orders sushi again and eats alone in front of her laptop while she remembers that yesterday at this exact time, the two of them were sitting at the corner table, talking like equals and not like boss and assistant. She finds it incredible that a gesture that barely lasted a fraction of a second could have shifted the atmosphere between them so much, and she brings her fingers to her lips because as she thinks about it, she can almost feel the soft, perfect pressure Olga pressed against her.

It struck her as a tender, delicate, exquisite kiss — one she'd chalked up to the fact that she's always kissed men, and men are rougher because of stubble — but now, as she chews her sushi and keeps turning the situation over in her mind, it doesn't feel like the accidental kiss of someone who acted without thinking. Mostly because she knows what a quick peck feels like, and Olga's lips stayed against hers a second longer than they should have. She'd barely registered it in the moment, but she remembers it clearly, and a rush of images floods through her mind that leaves her dazed, a piece of sushi sliding off her chopsticks.

With jarring clarity, she begins running back through several times she's crossed paths with Olga — both before she became her assistant and since. She remembers the startled yelp on the first day, the near-constant blush that always takes over Olga's face in her presence — something Marina hasn't noticed when she watches her with other people. The stumbling and the nerves, how hard it was for her at first to string two sentences together when talking to her, the time Marina caught her arm in the elevator years ago and instead of a voice, Olga let out a strangled squeak. Or a few weeks ago, when Olga walked into her office and immediately looked away the moment she caught her with her blouse open.

The vice president goes through the scenes the way she goes through Nauta's contracts, looking for clauses or paragraphs that explain what doesn't add up — and her problem is that all of it has two possible readings, and both fit: either she's spent a long time oblivious, failing to notice the flood of signals Olga sends out every day without being able to help it, or the kiss is making her see things that aren't there — just a nervous, exhausted woman who had a bad day — and not being able to tell which one it is is what's putting her in a bad mood.

Olga comes back at a quarter to three and pokes her head into the doorway to announce she's back, holding up her pharmacy bag very visibly, as if she needs an alibi to prove to her boss she wasn't lying when she said she had to go.

The next two hours pass like the first ones of the morning: emails, the occasional exchange of words, and the same friction in the air.

At five, Marina shuts her laptop and walks out with her coat on, ready to tell Olga to head out too — but her assistant seems to have heard her coming and already has her computer off and is putting on her coat.

"So," Marina begins.

They both stand there, facing each other. This is the moment they should wish each other a happy new year and say goodbye, but something that would have been easy yesterday now feels like a high-stakes transaction.

"Happy New Year, Olga. Get some rest over the holidays — you've earned it."

"Same to you. Happy New Year, and…" Olga stumbles. "I hope everything goes really well."

The normal thing now would be to exchange the customary cheek kisses. Olga knows it, and she's certain she would have done it if it weren't for yesterday's slip — but right now she can't, she can't bring her lips near that skin again, because the desire to do it again is something that's been consuming her for the past twenty-four hours and she can't afford to make the same mistake.

Her arm moves, and her hand goes out to shake Marina's. The gesture doesn't surprise Marina — it seems like the logical thing given the distance between them — but when she takes her hand and watches Olga hold her breath, she keeps her hand clasped a couple of seconds longer than necessary, her eyes fixed on her, her mind filing that detail away alongside all the others. If she had doubts before, they're starting to dissolve a little now, and the awareness that Olga might feel something for her leaves her so thrown off that instead of asking and putting her doubts to rest, what comes out is a smile that pulls at one corner of her mouth — and she watches Olga's gaze drop to her lips.