Neil stayed in the back of my mind. Stuck there like a song. An ear worm, my brother once told me those songs were called.

Unfortunately for me, I also recalled my brother telling me the best way to get rid of one of these ear worms was to listen to that song again.

It was a song I didn’t dare put on repeat.

It was Friday at the office. I sat at the desk of my high-walled cubicle. Half a cup of old, black coffee sat near my left elbow, mostly forgotten.

My computer screen glowed at me. If I stared much longer, I thought that tiny copies of the Google Analytics graphs might burn themselves onto my eyeballs.

And I didn’t want to go through eternity with a pie chart showing that the largest consumers of online streaming of Rom-Coms was middle-aged men by a surprisingly large margin.

Don’t take a break now. Remember what Mr. Diehl said.

I grabbed my cup of old coffee and swallowed down the rather cold bit of liquid left inside it, grimacing as I did. The office coffee would never win a taster’s choice award. But at least it had caffeine.

I had no trouble remembering what Mr. Diehl told me that day in his office.

“Miss Smith,” he’d said, glancing down at the contents of some manila folder. He held it so that only he could see it. “You’ve been slipping.”

“Slipping?” I replied. I was aware that I’d started blinking rapidly, but couldn’t make myself stop.

“Yes, slipping. And I can’t say that I’m not surprised. I advised the hiring committee that the workload was too much for a woman. Especially a young woman like yourself. Hindsight’s 20/20, I suppose.”

“Sir, I assure you, I’ve gotten everything in ahead of schedule. This last weekend I had a... a personal errand to run and that got in the way of my latest report...”

He slapped the folder shut and dropped it on his desk. “There isn’t any room for personal weekends. Not at this point in your career. Too emotional. No accountability. I told them that, but would they listen? No!”

“Sir, it won’t happen again,” I said. I said it even though I boiled on the inside. I could practically feel my Intro to Women’s Studies professor, a woman named Dr. Kennedy, glaring at me and shaking her head in disapproval.

And she would be right to, I knew. But I couldn’t rock the boat, not yet. Let me get secure, then I’d put men like Mr. Diehl in his place.

The man in question leaned across his desk. This close, his cologne and the aroma of the two packs of Camels he smoked every day mingled. I suppressed the urge to wrinkle my nose.

“May I suggest to you, Miss Smith, that you show the firm that you’re serious about this job. Double down. I don’t want to have to see you in my office again regarding a matter like this. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” I replied.

I did a week’s worth of work over the next two days. A week’s worth of my work, which was really like two weeks’ worth of most other people’s.

And I knew I was going to be in the office until the clock at the bottom corner of my screen read at least 9:00 PM. Maybe later. And I’d be seeing that same clock on that same screen the next morning when it read 7:00 AM.

After just two days, I thought that my heart pumped nothing but coffee with a bit of blood mixed in to keep the pretence up.

After a week of this? Two weeks? A month? I didn’t know. But it had to be done.

Why? Because Mr. Diehl wanted me to quit. Or wanted an excuse, any excuse, to fire me. And I intended to prove him and any other men like him wrong. I would accept nothing less.

So I lowered the brightness on my monitor a little and got back to my analytics, checking my email at regular intervals to see if any new requests came in while I did.

And I tried not to think about Neil.

The clock read 4:30, then 5:45. The next time I glanced down, it said 8:15. Only the barest amount of muted twilight remained in the Manhattan sky, glowing like a bruise in the west. The island already swam in a sea of artificial light.

My eyes ached. Burned, more like. The pads of my fingers were numb from typing.

In some row behind me, the polisher the janitor used on the floor hummed and the air took on a chemical tinge.

I estimated that the work I wanted to get done would take at least another 45 minutes. Then it would take me at least that long to get back to Bushwick.

If I got ready for bed quickly, wolfed down a bit of cold pizza or whatever was in the fridge, I could steal maybe five and a half hours of sleep before my world shrank down to this little cubicle for another 14 hours.

But I was going to do it.

My phone buzzed against my desk, its glow joining that from my monitor.

I snatched it up, figuring it was going to be Suzy or Lindsay or someone asking if I wanted to grab a drink.

Did I want to? Of course! Was I going to? Definitely not.

But it wasn’t Suzy or Lindsay. Not my mom or dad or brother, who liked to link me to the latest Star Wars movie trailers and buzz even though I told him not to.

No, this message came from Neil.

My breath caught in my throat. My upper teeth sank into my lower lip.

My first instinct was not to delete the message unread and block his number. It was to open it up and see what it said.

I leaned back in my chair and looked down the narrow walkway between my row of cubicles and the one next to it, as though Mr. Diehl or one of his cronies might be standing there, waiting and watching for any opportunity to tell me I wasn’t working hard enough and that I should grab a cardboard box to load my personal belongings into.

But of course no one was there but me and the janitor. And the janitor was a short old man in dark blue fatigues who spent his whole shift listening to music on an equally old Walkman. I knew this because I’d seen him last night when I finally got out of work. At 9:30 in the evening.

I leaned back into my cubicle, cradling my phone in my lap.

“I can’t. I shouldn’t.”

It’s crazy to talk to yourself, I thought. Then: No, it’s only crazy if you answer back!

I wished then that the message had in fact come from Suzy or one of the girls. Letting them down was hard, but something I’d already prepared for.

I thought my night with Neil was a one and done deal. And I thought that was what he thought, too.

Clearly, one of us was misinformed. And it wasn’t me.

I sat there until the lock screen on my phone went dim. Then I hit the button to light it up again.

Don’t open it. And sure as hell don’t answer it.

The screen went dim again. Annoyed, I thumbed the key and brought it back to life. I repeated that cycle a couple more times.

Gradually, I became aware of a hum. It took me a second to realize the hum came from the fans cooling my computer. I wasn’t certain I’d ever been quiet enough in the office before to notice that sound.

So I put the phone down on my desk and tried to get back to work.

Except I couldn’t.

The damn thing was like a magnet for my eyes. A precious shiny that some magpie instinct within me couldn’t ignore.

At first I expected him to blow up my phone with more texts. Demanding to know why I wasn’t answering.

Maybe even a dreaded phone call. I much preferred texting to talking. I think most of my generation was like that. Something Mr. Diehl probably sneered at on a regular basis.

Curiosity killed the cat eventually. Me being the cat in question.

I’d tried typing the same sentence for a report out three times. My fingers kept hitting the wrong keys.

What does it say? What does it say? WHAT DOES IT SAY?

I had to know. It was like an itch on that one spot on your back that you can’t reach, slowly driving you (me) crazy. The name of this itch was Neil.

So I pushed back from my desk, grabbing my phone as I did. Again, I hid it conspiratorially in my lap. I didn’t let myself glance back out of my cubicle again, however.

But what if the janitor’s reporting to Mr. Diehl?

I ignored that.

I chewed my bottom lip, flipping my phone over and over in my hand, watching the streak of fluorescent light reflected on its slick surface move.

Before I could stop myself, I entered my passcode and brought up my messages. My greedy eyes moved so quickly I had to go back a second time and read with deliberate slowness.

You’re on my mind. Tell me that I’m not on yours and I’ll leave you alone.

I sat back in my chair, contemplating this. I knew that I shouldn’t write back. That if I did I opened myself up to who knew what other trouble.

Still, it had been a really great night. I’d wanted to return to that hotdog stand every day since. But I didn’t, because I thought that Neil might also be there.

And the time spent walking around, then in the park. It was all so good.

And the sex. I couldn’t forget about that. My body wouldn’t let me. I dreamed about it these last few nights.

Well, more like I woke up gasping for air, the sheets tangled around my ankles and my body some combination of hot, sweaty, and wanting.

Dreams couldn’t quite cut it, no matter how real they seemed.

So can I really tell him that he hasn’t been on my mind? Of course I could, but that would be a lie. A lie that would save me who knew how much extra trouble.

During all this cogitation, my phone went to sleep again. I woke it, my thumbs busy tapping out a reply.

A reply that I deleted.

I wrote another one. Then I deleted that one, too. I created a third, then sent it to the delete button guillotine as well.

Just don’t, then, I thought. I couldn’t not send one, though. I was compelled.

I thought then that maybe my other replies had been too long. Too, I don’t know, complex I suppose. Best to keep complicated things like this as simple as possible.

Since they tended to complicate themselves with no help required from me.

This time I tapped out the reply and didn’t delete it.

Maybe you are.

Three words. I still agonized over sending them, the pad of my right thumb hovering over the little button that, once pushed, couldn’t be un-pushed.

I pushed it. My heart leapt immediately into my throat, and I could do nothing but watch my screen for what felt like half an hour but was in fact more like 30 seconds.

No reply came. Not right away. My heart slowed. That coppery tang at the back of my throat relented. The muscles in the small of my back relaxed (when had they tensed?).

“Maybe he won’t reply,” I murmured.

Maybe I waited too long. Maybe he’s realized that I’m definitely more trouble than I’m worth.

I set the phone down beside my keyboard. I watched it, but the screen remained dark.

Good, maybe he gets the message that this isn’t a good idea.

Besides, I had work to do. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to reset myself. The pressure was nice. I could feel myself slipping back into that work mindset.

I even started typing.

It is clear that there is a definitive point of diminishing returns when services like Google AdWords are employed. See figure 12.2, where our profit-to-cost ratio begins shifting whennnnnnn

My finger stayed on the N key, casting a long string of nonsense sound across my previously professional Word document.

The cause of this written stutter? My phone buzzed, the screen brightening. As I watched, it buzzed again, turning a few degrees in a slow, counter-clockwise circle.

The little message icon appeared on that screen. A message icon followed by NEIL.

I snatched the phone up. I read his reply.

I thought so. You are still at work?

I couldn’t stop a thin-lipped smile starting at the corners of my mouth. A bit presumptuous, aren’t we? I thought. Still, there was something endearing about such casual confidence.

Something challenging. My thumbs moved quickly.

Yes, still at work. No time for any shenanigans tonight... Sorry.

My phone kept trying to autocorrect shenanigans to “she again” and it took my three tries to force in the right version. I sent it.

I figured he wouldn’t reply right away. Guys like him liked to keep girls like me waiting. Some sort of dominance thing, I figured.

I started to put the phone down. It vibrated against my palm. The phone hadn’t even had time to lock itself, yet.

I understand. Do me a favor.

My smile quirked up at that. Not a please, not a request. Something more like a command or an order. Except I didn’t bristle at it like I thought I might. Like if someone like Mr. Diehl used similar language.

No, I was curious.

Depends on what it is.

I shot that one back as quick as my thumbs could manage. I spared a quick glance for the time. 8:37.

Instead of groaning, inwardly and outwardly, at that, it didn’t faze me.

Because, I realized, I was enjoying myself. I liked talking with Neil. I liked the jittery sense of anticipation in the pit of my stomach, waiting for his next message.

If he called me I thought I might even like that, too. Cut out that reply wait time, that little drip of dread that maybe he put his phone down and didn’t feel like typing anymore that night.

The reply came.

Text me when you get home to let me know you got there safe, that’s all.

“Oh,” I said. The office was so quiet that even a single syllable spoken at normal volume sounded loud.

The more cynical part of my thought he might finally show his true colors. That he might ask me about what I was wearing. Or to send him pictures. Or to send me pictures.

I stayed away from the whole online dating thing, and especially things like Tinder. But my friends didn’t.

They all regaled me with the stories of the pictures they’d get, completely unsolicited.

Suzy liked to reply to these pictures with one she kept on her phone for just such cases. It was an image of a hotdog dicer.

But no, Neil had to send me something like this. Something for more insidious and sinister.

Something sweet.

So I replied.

Maybe. I’ll think about it.

I waited for him to send something else back. My friend Lindsay had shared a somewhat similar story at our last girl’s night. She’d talked with a guy for a while. He seemed nice, he seemed cool. She’d met him on some site called Cupid or something schlocky like that.

Then one night she gave a noncommittal reply to one of his texts and went to bed. The next morning she woke up with a total of 34 unread messages, all from the same guy.

The words “bitch” and “tease” featured most prominently in those messages. I knew because she showed us all while we sipped at our cosmos and Manhattans.

All because she hadn’t given the guy a definite yes or no.

But Neil didn’t message me again. I even checked my phone a couple times. Fine, I’ll be honest. I checked it every couple minutes until I left work for the night. And on the train ride home.

I sat in bed, my covers bunched up over my waist, a couple pillows propped up behind my back. I held my phone in both hands, open to the message screen.

I thought about just putting it down on my nightstand and going to sleep. It was already past 10 and I needed as much sleep as I could get.

But I knew that if I just put the phone down I would end up awake all night, wondering what I should do.

Yeah, you’re doing this for peace of mind. So you can sleep. Keep telling yourself that.

So I replied.

Home safe and sound. Happy?

The message disappeared into the ether of wireless telecommunications. The reply came back so quickly I started, my body tensing.

Okay. Goodnight.

To which I shot back a:

Night.

Then I forced myself to place the phone on my nightstand. I reached up and twisted the little knurled lever on my lamp until that clicked off, leaving me in the darkness of my bedroom.

Despite my earlier reasoning, I didn’t go to sleep right away. I looked out at my phone where it lay. A little bit of light reflected in a white smudge off the screen.

No reply came.

***

MOST PEOPLE EMPLOYED at offices took Saturday and Sunday off.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to get everything done that I wanted to do. Where so many others got that inexplicable joy of sleeping in, when my phone alarm went off I swung my feet over the side of my bed and gasped a little when my bare toes touched the chilly floor.

Out in my kitchen I heard the final few burbles of my coffee maker.

It was 6AM Saturday morning. Late enough in the year that out in the east the sky hinted at day without showing any real light yet.

Only a few months of this. They’ll notice how invaluable you are and recognize it.

It was the most coherent thought I could muster without a drop of caffeine in my system yet.

However, despite all that, after I finished rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands I saw my phone.

Saw it and picked it up. A spark of anticipation climbed up the front of my stomach. I thumbed the home button and the screen glowed to life. I squinted at the sudden brightness.

Squinted and saw no new messages or calls.

“Of course,” I said, my voice froggy with morning dryness.

Neil was probably still in bed. After all, it was early Saturday morning. Why would anyone get out of bed early if they didn’t have to?

Still, I wished there had been some message. Even though I knew that I couldn’t spare the time for any of that.

It would have been nice.

I wolfed down a bowl of bran flakes, poured as much coffee down my throat as I could, poured the remainder in a Starbucks travel mug, and went to catch the train.

I was at the office by 7:30. The morning sun helped a little as I emerged from the subway station into its brightness.

But that light gave way to the unrelenting hum of the long fluorescent tubes in the office.

The texts began again that evening.

I leaned back in my chair, rubbing one eye with my thumb and one with my middle finger. The glow from my monitor had at some point in the last seven hours turned into some sort of drill.

And that drill had during those hours pushed deeper and deeper into the back of my eyes.

My phone buzzed beside my keyboard.

It was like a jolt of caffeine direct to my brain, the way that sound broke me from my working daze.

I snatched it up, fumbled my passcode, and managed to enter it successfully. I read the message. It was Neil. Of course it was Neil.

At work again?

I glanced up at my computer screen and back down again almost instantly. Even that brief brush with brightness left my eyes throbbing.

Where else would I be?

My thumbs tapped the message out quickly and cleanly. Then I realized I was smiling, waiting for his response.

Even though I knew I still needed to put in probably 45 more minutes of work before closing down my workstation and heading home.

He replied.

I can think of a few places.

My eyes widened a bit and I read the message again. Was it just me or did he sound flirty? I had to agree with the people who said that all this instant messaging was easy to misinterpret.

Easy to project your own feelings onto.

But did that mean that he was flirting, or did it mean that I wanted him to be flirting? Both?

I looked around my cubicle. Saw the three gray walls, one obscured by the painfully glowing computer monitor. The one on my right had a cork board pricked full of pushpins holding in various memos and forms. The left hand one remained blank.

I’d intended to get one of those cheesy pick-me-up posters. The one with the kitty hanging onto the branch with the caption that went something like Hang in There, Babe! had been my top choice.

A shelving unit ran around the three walls, mostly full of office stationary and supplies.

When I first started I thought my cubicle had been large. But I lost that illusion quickly. It pressed in around me.

A three-walled prison. The fourth wall was imaginary put possibly the most dangerous.

I thought of it as the You’re Fired wall. The one that if I broke I lost my job. The one that kept me at this desk for hours every day of the week.

Like where?

I sent my reply and waited. When he replied this time I experienced that same jolt of excitement. Not lessened, maybe even intensified.

The two of us on the town. Come out with me.

I started tapping out a reply.

Ok, just tell me what time and pl

I stopped. Scanned the words again. What am I doing? I can’t! Because I know if we go out we’ll probably stay in, too. And as nice as that sounds I just can’t afford to.

I tapped the little delete key until my well-intentioned but ill-formed message disappeared.

I replaced it with a much less exciting but far more practical one, which I sent after some hesitation.

Can’t. Too much work to get through.

Again, I braced myself for the barrage of texts calling me ungrateful. Telling me to smile more. Telling me I was being stupid.

And just like before, those messages never materialized. Instead, he sent a joke about New York.

I actually heard someone say Hey, I’m workin’ here! Today.

I laughed, then covered my mouth. I was the only person in the office again and it always surprised me how loud any noise was. I guess on a normal day all the sounds just kind of blended into general office noises.

I bit down on my bottom lip to stifle any future giggles and sent my reply.

There’s no way. No one actually says things like that.

He replied that it was God’s own truth. The conversation was easy and fun and before I knew it 20 minutes slipped by.

When I noticed, I told him that I really needed to finish some things up.

OK. Send me another text to let me know you got home safe.

I bit down on my lip again, this time to stop a smile instead of a laugh. I was only halfway successful. There was something very sweet about that. About him being concerned with me.

That evening, when I got home, I did send him a text letting him know I was home and fine.

Well, not fine, but safe and sound. My eyes throbbed. My body ached. And I could barely stand the thought of getting up to do it all again on Sunday.

But I also knew I would have felt worse if he hadn’t texted me again.

***

WE TEXTED BACK AND forth like that the rest of the weekend and into the following week. It seemed like every time the weight of my work dragged me down there was a message waiting for me on my phone to lighten things up, at least a little.

By the following Thursday our little text conversations became the highlight of my work day. Which really meant the highlight of my whole day, since I didn’t do much but work those days.

He told me how he did a lot of his growing up and school over in Europe. I told him I’d never been over there. Maybe in a few years when I had a lot of vacation time (and pay) banked.

I learned that he had no brothers or sisters, and that Neil and his parents had never been close.

You’ve heard of helicopter parents, right?

He asked in one text. When I answered that I had he replied with another message.

My parents were more like astronaut parents. High above, never really seen. But I knew they were there. And that every now and then they deigned to look down on and at me.

I told him that I tried to be close with my family. My dad the bricklayer. My mom the receptionist at a dental office called Family Smiles. My brother the failure-to-launch nerd currently attending community college for some credits he needed for his computer programming degree.

Neil told me he was pretty high up at a downtown firm. But not exactly how high or for which firm. Only that he’d found that he liked keeping his personal life and his work life as separate as possible.

Work life and personal life? There’s no difference for me.

I sent that back to him, smiling at what seemed like dim memories of college and high school when work didn’t consume pretty much every waking moment.

In short, we got to know each other over the span of a week. I started to realize that it really did help to talk to him like that. That it made getting through my long days that much easier.

That I had come, in part at least, to need him.

Then he sent me this one:

Do you actually enjoy your job?

I sat back in my chair, frowning at the screen. I had to say that no, I didn’t. But it wasn’t about enjoyment or having fun. It was about building myself up, becoming the person I wanted to be, getting the life I wanted to have, all that.

I shot the same question back at him. He replied.

I used to.

And then that Thursday came. It was late, coming up on nine. I was just about done. Then he sent me this message:

I’m going to call you.

Not can I call you. Or would it be okay to call you. Just that statement of fact. My first reaction was to type out a message saying I was still at work, that calls weren’t okay. But I’d already told him that there was no one here but me and the janitor.

And I knew him well enough now that I knew that he’d call bullshit to any excuse like that.

Besides, he didn’t give me much time to reply either way.

My Samsung started buzzing on my desk. So much that it rotated against my keyboard and that started rattling, too.

I smoothed my annoying and errant lock of hair from my forehead to back behind my ear. Why? It’s not like he can see you.

I answered, “Hey. Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with texting?”

“I wanted to hear your voice again. Why are you whispering?”

I realized he was right.

“Because... Because I don’t know why,” I said, forcing my voice up to its regular volume.

I couldn’t help pushing my chair back a little and leaning out of my cubicle, searching for accusing eyes.

“It is nice to hear you again,” he said. I got the distinct mental impression of his smile. It was a nice smile.

“You, too,” I tried to sound begrudging, but I thought my own smile, which I couldn’t repress, also came through in my voice.

“Listen, I’m not going to keep you long. I know you just have a few things left over to do and then the train ride home. I have a couple things I want to say to you. Actually say and not just type,” Neil said.

I perked up in my chair, my spine stiffening. I found myself holding my breath, and I swallowed hard against that urge.

“Oh? What’s that?” I said, trying to sound casual and probably failing miserably.

I found the cable connecting my keyboard to my computer and I fidgeted with it between my fingers.

That spark of excitement that normally confined itself to my stomach shot upward, surrounding my heart and sending it into a beating frenzy.

Get a hold of yourself! It’s not like he’s asking you to marry him or something.

“First,” he said, “That it’s really come to mean something special to me, our talks this past week. And second, I have a favor to ask.”

“No, we absolutely can’t go out again. You know how busy I am...” I started.

“It’s not that. Though it sounds to me like maybe you’re protesting just a little too much.”

Heat rushed up my neck and into my cheeks, and I became very glad that no one, especially not Neil, could see.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Instead of a text tonight, give me a call instead.”

“Oh,” I said, relaxing a little. I pulled myself closer to my desk so that I could prop my elbows on it. My phone started getting quite warm. I hated how cellphones did that.

“Tell me you will,” he said. I could still hear that smile.

“Okay, fine,” I replied. Then, because I had to get a joke in to relieve some of that tension, I added, “So long as it isn’t past your bedtime or anything.”

That earned me a chuckle from Neil. “It won’t be. Now hurry and finish up so that you can call me. Bye.”

The call ended.

I worked quickly.