Week Two of what I liked to call All Work and No Play Makes Rachel Okay. I know that wasn’t how that line really went, but I was trying not to be self-defeating.

Wednesday came and I was still alive. Still sane, too.

Are you sure about that? Yeah, pretty sure.

Except that my eyes felt about ready to drop out of my head and roll, forever lost, under my desk.

And it was only about 2:00. It wasn’t miles I had to worry about going before I could sleep but hours. Hours and hours.

And right about then I thought I could feel the passage of every second.

I pushed the heels of my palms against my lidded eyes until the pressure granted me some relief. Then I pushed away from my desk, snagging my empty coffee cup with two fingers as I did.

It was all a matter of adequate caffeination.

That, and I didn’t know how I could get through the hours until Neil texted me that night.

I made me way between my row of cubicles and the one behind it. Made a left at the end of that narrow path.

“Rachel! Still burning that midnight oil?”

It was Dot, a secretary for some middle management executive whose last name I couldn’t quite remember. Evans? Tebbins? Something like that.

She was an older woman with bottle blond hair. We spoke sometimes when we ran into each other, just in that way acquaintances do.

“Burning the midnight oil. Burning the candle at both ends. Single-handedly drinking every last drop of coffee in Manhattan. All that.”

She smiled, watching me while I filled my mug from the pot on the narrow kitchenette counter. I mixed in one packet of sugar, making sure to avoid the false promise of Splenda and its ilk, then a dash of whitener.

“Just don’t try smoking,” Dot said, “It’s not worth it. So I hear you’ve been staying late, coming in early?”

I glanced at the clock over the break room lintel. A few minutes past two. I nodded at her.

“It’s admirable. And I don’t think there’s more than a couple men in the office with the willpower for it. But you’re going to burn out.”

I took a nervous sip of coffee. Still too hot. It burned a line down my throat. “I can’t stop, not yet.”

“Don’t stop, then. But take a break. Even the President takes breaks, and if he’s allowed to, then I think that you’re entitled to one every now and again, too.”

I knew I had to get back to my cubicle. My cubicle with my computer with the bright monitor. My eyes started aching again just thinking about looking into that brightness. And for at least another six or seven hours before I could call it a night.

“Well, if the President takes them...” I said, feeling like I was persuading myself.

“Just go ahead and do it,” Dot said, “You’ll feel better and you’ll be able to get more done.”

I went back to my cubicle thinking about what Dot told me as I walked. I only managed to slosh a little bit of coffee over the rim of my mug, too.

I sat down at my desk and spared a glance for the time. 2:10. I still had a few minutes left in this break.

Yeah, I’m going to do it. I’m going to take a break. I’m going to leave the office early tonight. I need it. I’ll get more work done instead of less. Recharge and all that.

If it sounded like I was still trying to convince myself, I was. It didn’t seem right somehow, letting myself have some time off. Even if it made sense to.

I still felt like Mr. Diehl would still somehow become aware of any little slip up. Construe any break as laziness. Something like that.

I looked at my screen again, winced, and looked away. I just couldn’t stare any longer.

That clenched it. Tonight was my night off.

I decided to risk adding a few extra minutes to my coffee break. I grabbed my phone and brought Suzy up in the messenger.

Hey. Free tonight. Want to do something? Just no movies. Eyes too sore to watch anything... Drinks? Food?

Suzy managed an H&M just off Fifth. She always had her phone on her for calls from corporate, dealing with long term clients, that sort of thing. It didn’t take her long to get back to me.

Busy tonight and tomorrow, sorry. Maybe Friday or the weekend?

I couldn’t wait that long. Not now that I’d committed to the night off. The idea of waiting an extra couple days, of watching the clock strike 9:00 PM here, was awful to me.

So I tried Lindsay. I tried Sharon. Not one of the girls in my circle was free that night.

I couldn’t exactly blame them. It was the middle of the week, after all. We all had jobs. They all had boyfriends.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit annoyed. Not a justified feeling, I give you. But still one I felt.

Then the idea: I can ask Neil. He wants to see me again.

That had BAD IDEA written all over it. But if I wanted to go out somewhere with someone tonight, what other choice did I have?

I could load up Tinder and spend some time swiping, but that just sounded exhausting as well as fruitless.

And a roll of the dice, too. With my luck I’d get some creeper and would spend half my night off trying to find the best way to escape my date.

Do it. Just do it.

So I brought Neil up in my messaging. I took a second to scroll through our last conversation.

I couldn’t help smiling a little. He really was fun to talk to.

So I started tapping a message, then stopped. Because I realized something.

Neil had always started our conversations before. Always sent the first message. If I sent the first one, and hours earlier than we usually began, how would he see that?

He’d see it as me showing interest, of course. That I wanted to see him in person again, too.

Well, don’t you?

I did, I had to admit. However, it was definitely possible to want something that was no good for you. Just look at smokers or drinkers.

Am I really comparing Neil to addictive drugs?

He was addictive, though.

So I messaged him.

Take me out tonight?

With my luck, he’d feed me a line similar to Suzy’s. You know: job, commitments. Can we go on the weekend instead? That sort of thing.

While I waited, I went to Google and brought up a list of current happenings in the city that night.

A lot of hipster stuff. Microbrew tastings while playing Classic Risk. How to Pick a Vape. Special on Avocado and Mushroom Cap Burgers.

Nothing that got me excited at all. It was no wonder no one went out during the week (well, that and work nights).

Then something caught my eye.

By then I was well and truly finished with any vestiges of break time. So I made a note of the info on my phone and closed the Chrome browser window down.

This brought up Word and my analytics software. Immediately, that dull, hot ache started up again behind my eyes.

Hours to go. Hours and hours. Except I had something to look forward to. Something to take my mind off things.

But I still ripped off five pieces of masking tape from the black dispenser on my desk and put them over the clock at the bottom right of my screen.

It wasn’t perfect; I could still make out white, smudged digits. And I felt like if I stared hard enough I could make out what those digits were.

And there was always my phone, too. I had but to tap the home button to bring up my lock screen with the time on it.

However, it still worked out. Tapping that home button turned out to be too much trouble, and glancing down at that smudged time, I never stared hard enough to make out what it said.

I think because something else pushed concerns about the day dragging on out of my mind.

Not something, but someone.

I’m seeing Neil again tonight.

***

I LOOKED DOWN AT MYSELF.

“I should change,” I muttered.

An old lady walking a tiny dog on a thin lead shot a glance at me and then looked away.

I smiled. I’m talking to myself. I’m becoming one of those people that other people pretend don’t exist. The kind of people who talk to themselves on the street, or lecture you on the subway.

Am I a Person of New York?

I’d never really followed that photo series, but Suzy and Lindsay talked about it sometimes.

It’s just nerves.

It wasn’t just nerves though. It felt like someone ran a high voltage line right into the pit of my stomach.

Excitement, worry, nerves... It all turned into one chaotic ball within me.

I hoped my work clothes were okay. A pencil skirt, a light blouse tucked into it and a blazer over that. Sensible matte black flats.

I wanted to feel sexier. Maybe if I undo a couple of the top buttons...

And then Neil showed up. Sauntered up, more like. I saw him coming down the street, the city lights splashing against his jacket.

He smiled when he saw me see him and that chaotic ball in the pit of my stomach started doing somersaults.

“Now, I just want to set some ground rules...” I started.

He smiled, then he grabbed me around the waist and pulled my body against his. My hands ended up on his chest. I immediately thought about how firm and well-built he felt.

Also how warm he was. How I could feel the steady thump-thump of his heart.

And of course I thought of that night a few weeks back where we shared my bed.

I swallowed hard.

“Rule one: no hugging,” I said.

Just as he released me I realized that sometime in the last few moments some capricious thing had replaced my knees with jelly.

Somehow, I managed to not tumble over.

If he’d kissed me I’d be laid out flat on the pavement! I tried not to think about it.

“How many rules are there?” Neil said.

“I’ll let you know when I get to the end,” I replied.

“You don’t know how many there are.”

“I don’t know. But I’ll let you know when I do, okay?” I said.

I could feel myself smiling. How does he do that? How does a little flirting make me feel so good?

I continued, “So, I know it’s the middle of the week, but I found something for us to do.”

Neil held up one hand, forestalling me. “Already figured out.”

My flirty good feelings became shot-through with nerves again. But I was really looking forward to it.

In fact, between us, I may have stopped doing actual work around the 8:30 mark so that I could do a bit of research.

Neil sensed my apprehension. He smiled again, and that made some of that bad, electrical nervousness disappear again.

“You’ll like it. I promise. I saw it and it gave me that same sense of potential as the speed dating did. In fact, I’ve never done this before. And I’m a little nervous, but in a good way. Come on, let’s go.”

He offered the crook of his elbow and I accepted it.

“So, what is this thing that can make even you nervous?” I said. I liked the smooth warmth of his jacket sleeve against my fingers. And the firmness of the arm beneath the jacket.

I felt better than I had since, well, the last time I saw him in person. Still nervous, of course. Still a bit apprehensive. But all that seemed like background noise, like a radio not quite properly tuned into a station.

“Trivia night, actually,” he said, “It’s a couple blocks over at a place called...”

“Doolie’s. A place called Doolie’s?”

He looked at me, “Yes. Don’t tell me that’s what you found, too?”

“I guess there really isn’t a lot happening during the week. Even in New York,” I said.

He sighed and shook his head, “Not unless you want to play board games while testing out your new vape and sipping on some godawful microbrew.”

I stopped in my tracks.

“Everything all right?” Neil asked, concern knitting his eyebrows together.

“Yeah, it’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t appear to be nothing. Tell me.”

It was my turn to sigh. I glanced around the street, at the fleets of yellow cabs passing by on the road, at the Dolce and Gabbana store we stood beside. “We must have looked at the same sites online or something. Because I saw those things, too.”

He shrugged. “Great minds think alike, don’t they? Let’s go. I want to make sure we get a decent table.”

***

“SO WHY DO YOU WORK like this?” Neil asked.

“I operate out of spite, really,” I replied.

Doolie’s was a large pub with a central, circular oak-panelled bar in the middle. Various TVs circled this bar, displaying various sportsball events.

I was never much into sports, and when my brother jokingly called the various games “sportsball” I picked up on it. Stole it, really.

The place smelled hoppy from years of beer, with an undercurrent of French fries and pub nachos.

It seemed clean, though. As clean as a New York restaurant could be, anyway. And warm, too. Lots of soft lighting.

Which was good. What girl wanted to go out with a guy where he could see her under the harshness of fluorescents? You didn’t go on dates to the library for a reason. Well, many reasons. But that was one of them.

The corner section Neil and I sat in had been reserved for the trivia night, and three of the TVs on the bar were reserved for it.

Right then all three of the screens showed the same message.

TONIGHT’S TRIVIA HOSTS, THE “QUIZ KINGS,” ARE DONATING ALL PROCEEDS TO LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTERS. PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY.

Below that was the stated target: $2500. And below that was the current total: $50.

There was space enough around the tables in our corner for 50 participants, easy. However, there were only about 15 people there.

They’re never going to raise anything close to that.

“Spite for what?” Neil asked.

“Hmm?” I replied, still looking around the bar. The trivia started at 9:30 and it was coming up to that.

“You said you operate out of spite.”

“That. Right,” I said, “Right now? Spite for my boss. He’s one of those old school guys who doesn’t think a woman should do more than answer the phone. Or apply radium to watch dials. I don’t know. So I have to work twice as hard and twice as long as anyone else in the office for half the recognition. The spite keeps me going.”

I found that the soft, warm lighting of the room only added to Neil’s charms. I looked at him, then switched to the TVs.

“It’ll burn you out, you know,” Neil said.

“I’m hoping he’ll relent before that happens.”

Neil shook his head, “No. I know that type of manager. He’ll take everything you give him and ask for more. Until you don’t have anything left. Then, when the burnout really sets in, he’ll let you go for slacking off.”

I bristled, “Slacking off for me would be normal for anyone else.”

He smiled. “I’m sure it would be. But he’ll still do it. Flagging work performance or some such on your review. Mark my words.”

I sat back. The thin padding of the chair dug into my back just beneath my shoulder blades.

I wanted some snappy comeback or retort. One that really expressed my rage at the mere suggestion that something like that could be the case.

But he’s probably right. That little epiphany squelched any chance of a good comeback.

“I don’t want to talk about work right now,” I said.

Which was good, because a middle-aged man in a light blue chambray shirt and jeans only a bit darker cleared his throat by the bar.

“Ladies and gents, I’m Stan the Quiz King. The rules are simple: no phones out during the trivia. Mark your answers on the sheets provided and hand them in at the end of the round. Scores will be tallied and displayed on one of the screens. Let’s begin.”

A waitress came around and took orders. I asked for ice water. No caffeine this late; I couldn’t risk not getting to sleep. No alcohol, either. The last thing I wanted was to show up to the office hung over.

Neil ordered a draft beer.

“I’m going to apologize in advance for how terrible I am,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Neil replied.

The first question was: What does CRT stand for when talking about television sets?

Stan the Quiz King repeated this question out loud.

“I know this!” I said. Then I clapped my hands over my mouth when I realized how loud I said it. Neil winked at me. “Shut up,” I shot back at him.

I grabbed the sheet and a pen and I scribbled down the answer. That was Cathode Ray Tube, by the way.

“Don’t ask me how I know,” I said.

“How do you know?” Neil responded immediately. That earned him a sock in the arm.

We both laughed. He had a nice laugh. Rich and deep.

The next question popped up: In what year was the Byzantine Empire capital of Constantinople conquered by the Turks?

Stan repeated the question, stumbling over Byzantine.

I glared at the TV. “What? Who knows this sort of thing?”

“I’ll write this one down,” Neil said, “That way they don’t have to try and decipher your chicken scratch.”

“It’s perfectly legible!” I said.

Neil put his hand over the answer sheet and slid it over in front of him. He peered down at it, squinting, then looked back to me, “To who?”

“Well, me. And my mom.”

He squinted again. “It looks like it says Catrub Baytulls.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t you. You tell me; you wrote it.”

I crossed my arms and gave him my best death stare. Well, it wasn’t my best. A really good death stare didn’t involve trying to suppress a laugh.

Then Neil said, “Don’t worry; we all have our failings.” He coupled it with a smile.

I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I laughed. It was good. It felt good. I liked that he made me laugh.

“Well,” I said, “Go on and write down the answer to this one. Before they change over to the next question.”

He did. I leaned over so I could see, scooting my chair closer to his. The answer to that question turned out to be 1453. I didn’t move my chair back to its original position.

This close, our shoulders touched above the table and our thighs below it. If Neil noticed, he didn’t say anything. He also didn’t tell me to move away.

Good job keeping things platonic, I thought.

In between rounds the waitress came by with the donation box, which was tallied when she returned to the bar with it and the total updated.

The first time it did, I slipped a $20 into the slot. Neil put something in as well, but I didn’t catch it because I was reading the scoreboard.

There were only three teams that night, and we were in second.

We complemented each other well, I had to admit. At least on the level of trivial knowledge. I got a lot of the lifestyle and, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, the nerd questions. Neil had a surprising depth of knowledge in history, current events, and politics.

We played five rounds of trivia that night. Normally, so the Quiz King told us, there were eight to ten. But tonight being a school night and all, they were cutting it short.

I knew it was getting late, but I started to feel so good. And I haven’t even had anything to drink!

It was a silly thought, but I started glancing at Neil and wondering if I was getting drunk on him. The sensations were certainly similar.

A pleasant warm fuzziness in the head. A similar heat low in the stomach. Relaxation of the muscles. A general disconnection from whatever ailed you. In this case, what ailed me were constant thoughts and worries about work.

During the fourth round, on a question about the capital city of Australia (Canberra, not Melbourne, he was quite emphatic) Neil put his hand on my thigh.

My breath caught. I realized that for the last half hour or so I’d been secretly wishing for him to do something like that.

He squeezed. Things happened. Inside of me, that is. The least of which being a new burst of heat much lower than before and the breath catching in my throat.

I realized then that I needed to make a decision. About how the rest of my night was going to go after we left Doolie’s.

Did I beg off, catch the train, and go back to my Bushwick apartment alone? Or did I have company for the rest of the evening?

“Having fun?” I said, feeling like I needed to say something, anything to get my mind off my own inner workings.

“More than I thought I would,” Neil said, “And I’m thinking that’s your fault.”

“My fault?” I said.

Those inner workings I mentioned earlier? Haywire. It was supposed to be an innocuous question, but he’d turned it into a flirt.

I felt particularly vulnerable to flirting at that moment.

He didn’t answer my question though. Instead he smiled at me then wrote down the answer to the current question.

He only needed one hand to do the writing.

That round ended. The waitress made her way between the tables, taking drink orders and offering the donation box again.

I didn’t realize that she’d come to our table at first. I was too absorbed in Neil. I could feel myself smiling awkwardly at him, wishing I could think of something cute or funny to say.

Or at least something not stupid or clumsy sounding.

“Aren’t you two just adorable!”

We both looked at the waitress who’d said this.

“That’s her fault,” Neil said, “I was going for smouldering, but she threw off the balance.”

“Sorry, I can’t help it,” I added in, deciding to lean into the jokes.

“You guys want a picture?” the waitress asked. She was cute. Her curly hair bounced on her shoulders and the name tag on her shirt read Carly.

“Sure,” I said. Why not? At least then I’ll have photographic proof that I went out. With a man. That should shut the girls up.

So I dug my Samsung out of my pocket and brought up the camera. I handed it to Carly, saying, “Just tap the button near the bottom.”

I scooted my chair around the table so I could lean closer to Neil. He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. Close enough to catch the masculine scent of his cologne.

“Smile!” Carly said. She tapped the phone, squinted at the proof, then tapped it again. “Two, the second one for luck.” She handed back the phone and went back to taking donations and drink orders.

I checked the screen above the bar. Of the desired $2500, they’d raised $200 by that point. And with only one round remaining, and no new players, I couldn’t see them getting much closer to their goal.

I wasn’t filthy rich or anything, and I’d already donated once, but I slipped another $10 into the box when it came by.

The final round came and went in a whirlwind. Neil and I placed a close second, which we were both proud of since the winning team had seven people on it and we were only two.

Quiz King Stan handed over a gift certificate good for one order of buffalo wings at the bar as a consolation prize.

Then we started for the door. The first few threads of panicked indecision wrapped themselves around my heart.