The girls took their seats near the front, mostly because the room had filled up from the back and they didn’t have much of a choice.

Rebekah took out her notebook and started doodling on the empty pages that were supposed to be filled with lecture notes. She stopped midway when she felt a familiar touch on her left shoulder, fire shot through her body. She didn’t even have to look up to know Emile had sat down next to her.

“Good morning,” he said politely, waving to Akari as well, who eyed him suspiciously. He paid little attention to her as he immediately returned his gaze to Rebekah.

He pressed his body close to hers. With the chairs so ungodly close, it wasn’t hard to accomplish. It felt like the world was watching from behind them, but even if they were, they would see nothing out of the ordinary.

Rebekah’s body was on fire. All she wanted was to touch him, but she kept doodling and enjoying the safe, indirect touch. The smell, the proximity, his entire presence consumed her.

It was certainly confusing. No matter what she did, she couldn’t dissociate herself from this man sitting next to her from the man who made passionate love to her the night before. Her mind tried in vain to will away the lust building up inside her, but her body was on its own mission.

“Who is up next?” she asked calmly, but all she wanted was to scream, “Take me now!” She didn’t understand her emotions; she’d never had such incredible chemistry with anyone before. She had no control over his influence on her, especially not after last night. Part of her wished she had stayed the night, even though she knew she couldn’t…shouldn’t. No good would have come from it. She would’ve become emotionally attached.

But what was this then?

“Looks like it’s the Swedish embassy on living walls and green roofs,” he answered, flipping over the program around her neck. Had she spoken her question aloud? Keep it together, she scolded herself. His hands were close to her chest. She held her breath as he read the words. He could have looked at his own program, but he didn’t. Little, permissible gestures fueling the game nobody else knew was happening right under their noses.

“That sounds very fascinating,” she kept her voice flat.

“I once did a project with a living roof in Brazil. You want to see?” he asked excitedly.

“Really? Sure,” she replied. It seemed permissible.

He took out his phone and they sat huddled over the tiny screen showing him walking around in his overalls on a project site. It was bad quality and the footage shaky but she still smiled at the glimpse of his life beyond.

“You look so different when you’re not in a suit,” she said. She started allowing herself to glance at him, taking in his clean and formal attire, complete with spotless shoes and matching belt.

“I told you, my life-”

He was cut off as the conference chairman called the session to order and he quickly put away his phone, using the opportunity to shuffle closer to her even for just an instant. His body seemed to press against her side, calf to calf, thigh to thigh, hips, arms, everything conjoined.

Rebekah couldn’t concentrate. Of course she couldn’t. She could hardly focus on breathing normally―something she was failing at as her chest heaved heavily. She crossed her legs towards him, her right foot gently grazing the front of his leg. She could see him smile out of the corner of her eye as she pretended to look at the speaker.

Once again, Akari was long forgotten but not oblivious to the situation. However, unlike the secret lover to her side, she was genuinely interested in the talk and kept her attention on the topic at hand. Green roofs were on the rise in Japan and it had always been something she wanted to incorporate into her designs.

To try and distract herself, Rebekah returned to doodling on the notebook balancing on her lap. She was drawing random geometric shapes that swirled out in broken patterns and spirals in no specific order.

She almost jumped when his hand brushed up against her leg as he took the pen from her grip; although, it wasn’t much of a reach.

He wrote run away with me in between the shapes in a hurried scrawl.

You’re crazy, she wrote back. Rebekah paused, then added How?

Emile scribbled during the break – please!

No way! Rebekah wrote.

No one will know. You can leave first.

She took the pen and hovered over the page for a long time, looking straight ahead at the speaker she wasn’t seeing.  

705 she finally wrote. It’s closer.

He drew a smiley face and she quickly scratched out the writing and turned the page for a clean start.

Her mind felt like the chaos on that scratched out sheet.

The anticipation was killing her.

The talk was exactly fifty three minutes long. To Rebekah, it felt like fifty three hours, each one slowly creeping past in unbearable tension. Every now and then, one of them would shift positions, a stolen touch, an undetectable embrace in open view.

The conference photographer didn’t even have a clue.