Page 19 of Meet Me in a Mile

Nineteen

Lydia

W hoever composed phone alarms had summoned the melodies from the pits of hell. Lydia shifted in bed, her eyes still closed, trying to figure out which direction the horrible noise was coming from. Her hands felt beneath her pillow and traced under the sheet, searching for her phone.

Her eyes shot open, the weight of the world rushing up to greet her as memories from the weekend washed over her. She groaned, pressing her face into the pillow. It was Tuesday. It had been three days since she’d fallen into bed with Luke again, and this time, she hadn’t been able to shake him. That was three days of thinking about his hands everywhere. Three days of reliving the desperation she’d felt. Obviously they were doing a terrible job of keeping things professional, and her dreams since then...

Lydia finally found her phone beneath the sheets and silenced it before rolling over and blinking at the screen. There was a text from Luke.

Meet me at the youth center tonight.

Lydia climbed out of bed and responded while she brushed her teeth. Why? You want me to watch the children destroy you in basketball?

It took Luke a while to respond. She was already heading to the train for work when he did. Ouch! You wouldn’t be talking such trash if you’d ever faced them on the court.

Lydia smirked, walking into the subway station. You’ve never seen me on a court. I could take them and you.

Those are big words coming from a woman who can barely handle a burpee.

Lydia snorted. He wasn’t wrong. Sure, she might have crushed that last eighteen-mile run and beaten Luke back to the gym. Physically, she might even look like a runner now. But a couple burpees were still her Achilles’ heel.

She sent him a thumbs up as she walked into the office building and rode the elevator up to Poletti’s. How exactly were they going to train at the youth center? She’d been kidding about basketball. She would, in fact, probably sprain her ankle if Luke got her out on that court. Either that or she’d be trampled by preteens.

She was still mulling that over a few hours later, when Jack knocked on her door. “Hey, running buddy,” she said.

“Ah, you beat me to it.” Jack leaned against her door frame with all the grace of a model posing for Vogue , his hair brushed back, the top two buttons of his shirt undone.

“It was bound to happen one of these days.”

Jack chuckled. “So I was thinking we meet up after work and keep hammering out the logistics of our proposal?”

“Oh, I can’t today,” Lydia said. She wasn’t exactly disappointed, but part of her wished she had the time to stay back with Jack and meet up with Luke. “I’ve got training.”

“Right, no worries. How about right now? We could do a working lunch.”

“Sure, that works.” Lydia grabbed her lunch bag and her laptop, and headed down to the empty conference room. Jack popped down to his office to retrieve his things, returning a few moments later. “Do you want to start sketching out the redesign of the first floor?” she asked.

“You know what, I think you had such a great handle on that,” Jack said, sitting down. “It would make more sense just to tack my ideas onto your original sketch. Give me a second, I’ll send you through my stuff.”

Lydia waited for it to pop up in her email.

“Gosh,” he said. “I love this rooftop garden you designed.”

“Pretty sure you wanted to make it a rooftop terrace way back when you first looked at my sketches.”

“Do you think we still can?” he asked, wrinkling his nose like she might reject the idea.

“Why not?” She shrugged. “We can have a little of both.”

“It’ll be functional and still tackle the heat island effect. The judges are going to eat that up.”

“Do you want to get started on outdoor stuff?” Lydia asked. “You can tackle the roof and the outdoor yard.”

“Can you send me your working file for the rooftop? I think I can just make some tweaks.”

“Oh,” Lydia said. “Uh, sure. One second.” She’d assumed Jack was going to build off of his own design, but she supposed this worked too. “On the way to your inbox now.”

“Perfect,” Jack said. His phone started to buzz on the table. “That’s a client. I’ll be right back.”

“No problem,” Lydia said as he snatched up the phone and darted from the room.

Jack had barely left when Kirsten barged in. “I see you’ve traded me in for a new lunch buddy.”

“This is a working lunch,” Lydia said. “You know I could never replace you.”

Kirsten stuck her tongue out. “I know. I actually worked really hard to make this whole situation happen.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes. “I knew you were meddling.”

“Well, I maybe just explained how people were feeling about the leadership team handling the proposal submissions, and Jack agreed. All he needed was a little push in the right direction. Everything else was his idea. Adorable, right?”

Lydia smiled at the memory of Jack standing up at the front of the room, talking her into being his partner. “I wish he would hurry up,” she said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “We’ve only got an hour and I can’t stay tonight.”

“He’s talking to the Marshalls. They called for Marco but he’s not here this afternoon, so I forwarded the call to Jack.”

“Never mind then,” Lydia said. Jack would probably be tied up for a while, knowing Mr. Marshall.

“Sorry,” Kirsten said. “I didn’t know you guys were doing this right now or I would have sent the call to voicemail.”

“It’s fine,” Lydia said. And it was. They still had close to a month to combine their proposals. That was plenty of time. They’d just have to squeeze in a few more of these working lunches.

Lydia opened the file she’d just sent Jack and started working on the rooftop redesign.