10. REEMA

"It's Monday and I've only got one week left," I tell Leo. "You said Finder would work!"

"If I don't find you a fake boyfriend by this Friday, Jamaica is off."

"What? No! That's not what I meant. Stop being so dramatic."

Okay, yes. I would love for him to cancel Jamaica because it would solve everything, but there is no way I am going to ask him to do that. Wyatt and Leo have been trying to adopt a baby for a while. Lately, the stress has been wearing them down. Truthfully, they need Jamaica.

He opens the dating app again. That very distinct Finder welcome ping goes through the office. I whip my head around, hoping no one has heard it. Thankfully, all heads are down. Other departments are busy with their own deadlines coming up, but what about him? My eyes flick over to Coleman. He's got his headphones on. Good.

Leo walks over to my desk. He waits while I finish my task. A few minutes later, I grab his phone, the one he's been holding out for me so patiently.

"Your dating profile is optimized," he says.

I thumb through it quickly. "These are… old photos."

My hair is out, cascading down my back in perfect waves, bathed in molten sunlight in this selfie by the beach. There are designer sunglasses perched on my head, and I've got expertly applied make-up on. In another photo, I've got on a slit-dress that practically showcases my whole healthily tanned leg. In that photo, I'm surrounded by college friends who join me in posing the exact same way, with our backs arched for a maximum bum popping silhouette. We're not fake-laughing, but really laughing. I remember that moment. Someone had cracked a champagne bottle open, and the froth had gone everywhere.

"You haven't taken new pictures of yourself. Did you want to come over tonight for a photoshoot?"

I can't. I'm driving back to work, parking in the lot, and recruiting again. Even though I'm insanely ahead of Coleman's portfolio on the scoreboard, I can't stop myself from widening the gap, just in case.

"Sorry, I can't," I say, ignoring the flare of guilt inside me. It isn't the first time Leo has invited me to hang out, and I keep turning him down. I can't afford outside dinners, and inviting him over to my place is not an option, because nobody can see where I live. I couldn't bear it if they did.

He sighs. "If I didn't take so many creeper photos of you working beside me all the time, Wyatt wouldn't think you actually exist."

"What creeper photos?"

"Yes, what creeper photos?" he parrots.

I groan.

He grins. "Back to the profile. Don't worry about that. People catfish all the time."

"How? You promise one thing, and then what? Show up looking like another? Who wouldn't walk away?"

I feel Leo appraise me up and down. My muscles lock up. The cafeteria incident has stuck to me since it happened. Every morning I can't avoid what I look like in the mirror now. I've come to realize most of my clothes are frayed, faded, and linty. I've got the closet of someone I don't want to be.

"You don't have to be nice," I say to him when he keeps quietly studying me. I'm pretending it doesn't matter, and if I pretend hard enough, it won't.

"This isn't me being nice." Leo shuffles some papers away from my desk, so he can perch on the walnut edge. At this angle, he's facing me. "A good face-mask and some better clothes—" His expression softens. "Or not. Who cares since you're great. The day my desk got assigned to this cubicle was the best moment of my life. Your heart is bigger than anyone I know."

I reach over and squeeze his knee. At the same time, Finder pings again. I really need to tell Leo to turn the notification sound down!

He takes his phone back from me to see if it's a match. From his lack of reaction, I know it's not. The pings have been push notifications, poking us to upgrade to a premium version of the app. Real soul-crushing for the confidence that realization was.

Leo puts the phone away. "No one is going to run from you. You give men too much credit. The promise of fucking is a very powerful motivator for us."

"Hey!" I hiss. "I didn't say I would sleep with this person."

"How about a good tuggie?" He keeps his hand down low so no one else can see. Then he mimics a jerking motion.

At my very offended expression, he grins. "We don't have many options. Use your hands. I'm not saying he has to enter you."

This is my life. Discussing tuggies.

"Go away." I use my hands to bat Leo away. "I have to get back to work, and you are distracting me."

Even with my secret forty-five million portfolio, I can't relax. What if Coleman is landing a proper whale right now? Not super likely since they are so rare, and the largest one was landed by Mr.Davies when he first started this business seven years ago, but still. I can't stop hedging my bets. The roof above my head is at stake with this bonus. It decides whether I sleep properly at night.

Leo slides off my desk. "This visit has been nice. When will I see you again?"

"Find me someone to bring to my sister's wedding, and we'll huddle around your desk for ten minutes next time."

He shivers. "You spoil me."

For the next two hours, I work without a break. Then I get up, only so I can refill my coffee. The two-minute walk isn't enough to stretch my cramped muscles. It feels as if my body is ruined these days. I'm stuck in the same position—at the office and then at the parking lot—for hours. Tell me it's going to be worth it. It has to be. At this point, I'm barely treading the exhaustion I feel crowding in on me. If I pause to look down at my hands, I'll see they are shaking.

When I get back to my desk, I see Leo's face glued to his phone. He's on Finder for me again. Why am I okay with him taking care of this for me? He promised me he had time, but also I wouldn't know where to start. Dating apps exploded after I got with Harry. I have no idea how to put myself out there, and me fumbling for a week without help isn't going to land me a date in time.

And if this whole thing doesn't work…

No, it will. It will.

An hour later, Leo packs up his bag. He's got to meet Wyatt at the adoption agency soon, so he is leaving work early.

I watch him stand up, then sit back down. Strange.

At the same time, a message pops up on my screen. Mr.Davies is chatting with the whole client recruitment team online. He's promising to send new leads soon. I'm now watching my inbox like a hawk. As soon as that email comes in, I'm going for the best one. Across the aisle, Coleman is doing the same. Steel green eyes meet mine. Both my hands get involved. My imaginary weapon is a shotgun. The corner of his mouth twitches when I pretend-fire off three rounds, each one making my shoulder recoil. He's shaking his head at me.

"Reema?"

That's Leo calling me.

He says my name again.

I blink. "Sorry. Satan distracted me."

"When are the two of you going to fuck and get it over with?"

"Excuse me?! Not if he's the last man on earth!"

"Remember when that massive filing cabinet toppled onto the intern's desk? He walked over and straightened it without any help. Sorry, but your Satan is jacked, so not if he's the last man on earth…? Let us not lie, darling."

"I don't remember that happening." I definitely don't recall watching his arms bulge as he pushed that cabinet up. Nor can I hear the soft grunt he made when he did it, or how he came over to my desk afterward to poke my cabinet as if actually worried it would happen to me next.

"Knowing you, Patel, you'd keep working even buried under a tonne of weight."

"Stop pretending to be all chivalrous. No one is watching, Coleman."

"I bet your hardheadedness would dent the metal."

"Get away from my cabinet!"

"Stop harping in my ear. I'm almost done."

"Why do you even care?"

"I don't. But you'll whine when you get hurt, saying that's why you weren't good enough to win."

"For all I know, you're sabotaging the thing to fall on me."

"If anything is going to crush you, it will be me. Then you can cry about it later."

Leo clears his throat.

"Aren't you going to be late for your meeting?" I wonder.

"I've got a few minutes…" His voice trails off and goes whisper soft. "And you don't have to answer, but I've been thinking lately. Why did you lie and tell your family you had a boyfriend in the first place? I think I know, but I also might not be sure."

The topic rattles clumsily between us. From his resigned stance, I can tell he thinks I won't answer him. He's right in that I don't want to talk about this. Not because I don't trust or care for Leo—I do—but because this is my own thing.

I'm so embarrassed, and when that happens to me, I squirrel and package away the cause. It hurts to bring it back out into the open. But here is Leo, the one who so tirelessly is trying to find me a date, asking me with genuine sincerity.

My throat is desert-dry, and by contrast, my palms are moist.

"Pressure to be doing good in life is the simple answer," I say slowly. I've turned back around. My mouse is clicking randomly. The screen in front of me could, for once, say anything. I don't see it. "You know my routine. I do the same thing every day, and I'm good with that boringness, but any time my family called me, they would hear about my life and keep making these sympathetic sounds." I change the tone of my voice, extending the vowels when I say, "Reema, I hate you have to go through it all alone so far away in another city. You've got nobody with you. Why don't you move back home? What kind of life must you be living? Do you truly have no one? Isn't there anyone? It's so sad. I'm worried about you."

Succinctly and with repressed anger, Leo says, "That's bullshit."

"They want the best for me."

"Being in a relationship isn't everything."

"Tell that to the Indian culture. If I'm not married and popping out babies, my life isn't moving forward."

"So you told them you had a boyfriend to shut them up?"

I shrug, feeling my face burn, admitting this out loud. What kind of grown woman needs to lie to her family like this? Why can't I stand proudly and declare, This is me. This is my life.

But no, I didn't do that. I said whatever I could to make them stop talking like that. To make it so they weren't concerned enough to visit the city I live in. My excuses have run so ragged trying to avoid that from happening at all costs. I needed to give them some reassurance that I was thriving, so that's what I did.

Leo gets up. Is he going to say I put myself in this situation? That it's better to share the truth and come clean before the wedding starts next week? How lying to your family isn't the answer?

He stops by my desk and nods. "Makes sense."

He says he'll see me tomorrow and leaves, promising to have date options by then.

I'm speechless.

He said… it makes sense?

A friend's complete acceptance. I wrap the feeling around me like a shawl. It keeps me working hard for the rest of the day, and even if my very bones feel aged by the time I'm logging out, I'm smiling.

But then the elevator incident happens.