One evening

Disclaimer: The conversations, the characters and the locations described in the narrative are fictional and nothing more than an imagination of the author.

“You set to leave?”, he asked, in an a loud, sweet and mock British accent.

“Hmm hmm” she replied, while wrapping up her work for the day.

“But, you have a minute?” he questioned again.

She answered back, “Yea, what is it? Can’t stay long, my ride is almost here. So..”

“Of course! This should take only a minute or two. If you are in a hurry, I will come straight to the point. Not that I always beat around….”

“Hmm yea, I know that” she said, “and is this what you wanted to say to me, in so many words, that you are always to the point?”

He smiled and spoke back, “Say what, I will walk you out” and grabbed her cell-phone and novel she was reading during her lunch hour and started rushing towards the door. She switched off her computer monitor and mechanically announced everyone around ‘Good night’ and followed him through the door.

She thought, “Where is he running to, with my mobile and book”, for he was of a fast walking nature, a concept he was often ridiculed with. Once outside the always lit, always bright work room, she noticed how much cold and dark it was outside, in the real world. She pulled on her shawls more closely to her neck and zipped up her leather jacket. She had never felt adequately warm during winter times. No matter, how many layers she wore, how close to the heating vent she sat, she always felt chill. She was making a mental note to herself that she should remember to get her gloves to work the next day. She thought to herself, that she wouldn’t mind if people made fun of her for wearing a glove just to walk between the office and the parking lot. She felt cold. They were already near the sign-off desk and she noticed that he was entering the time-of-exit against her name. She peered in to look at the status of her colleagues. Some had left as early as early evening. She sighed, thinking why she did not have those privileges, while next to her he stood smiling gently and curiously watching her. She tried to organize her expressions but gave up realizing that it was a tough act at that time of the day. Her personality was that she would never let her façade down when she was at work, fearing that she may let slip something of how she ‘really’ felt about some of the people she work with, in an imprudent moment of tiredness. But she was amazed at how she was able to relax when around him. There was something about him.

“Looks like Boss-Man is still in” she heard him say. She looked up and smiled at him and said, “You know better” and added with a sarcastic intone, “His car is not here, you giving him a ride?” He simply said, “Mmm”. “Anyway”, she continued not noticing a glint of a different emotion cross his face, “did you say you had something to say or ask me?” “Oh, yea, about that, never mind” he said some what abruptly. She looked up, abandoning her search of her pickup car, an activity she was importantly pursuing the moment she stepped out of the passage way gate and asked, “What?”

He said, “The thing is I really want to do something. I really want to do. But I keep postponing it, hoping once I get it over with, I wouldn’t have anything to look forward to. Or it could also be that, the outcome of that thing, if it is in a way that I’m anticipating it to be, it would be very painful for me and I don’t think I could accept it…”

“Then why do you expect it” she murmured, and though he heard it, did not stop to consider it.

He continued, “…I don’t know. I keep thinking about it and now, right at this moment” he pressed his right hand index finger into his left palm and continued, holding his hands that way, “I feel like I should do something about it. Something really compels me”. He stopped short of breath, and they looked into each other’s eyes. She resisted hard the temptation to smile, or blush as her heart promptly reminded her, and which she casually ignored and said, “You think too hard about it” in an accent mocking his.

For that, he pulled his eye lids close, as in an attempt to close the eyes, and stared at her at an angle. She smiled, for his reaction and also for the reason that she saw her husband slowly coming into the driveway, and said, “if I were you, I would hold on to that ‘I feel like I should do something about it’ thought and make some sort of appointment, or something of that sort, I don’t know, from which I cannot back out.’ He looked at her puzzled, as if what she said was incoherent and he couldn’t make a bit of a sense from it.

She pulled open the door, and both gave an involuntary shiver at the sudden gush of cold air and she said, “It’s like making a baby. Making the decision is difficult, but once that’s made, in one way or the other, the baby is coming out. There’s nothing one can do about it.” With that she stepped outside and rushed to the waiting car. Once on the road, she looked back once and waved good-bye and on seeing his stilled puzzled look, thought “Baby? Stupid!” and got in the car and drove away. He was standing there with his index finger pressed inside his left palm and staring at the spot from where she was waving him a moment ago. Slowly he turned and walked inside, smiling genuinely for the first time that evening and thought, “Baby? Stupid!”

And by the time he walked back to his desk, his further course of action very clear to him, as if he had found a note saying exactly what to do. He opened up his Outlook and typed, “I would like to have dinner with you on Friday, this week. Make it a free evening” and clicked Send.