Page 9 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

“Thank you,” I mouthed.

“Is that Victor? Hi Victor,” Amani cooed. She liked to call him my ghost, because she never saw him, and things just appeared out of thin air for me.

“Amani,” Victor acknowledged while collecting various mugs off my desk.

“God, I love his strong and manly voice,” she sighed, “wait, can he say my name again? I want to record it.”

Victor just raised his brows at me and I replied with a shrug. “Up to you.”

His shoulders rose and sagged in a silent sigh before he nodded.

“Amani, queue up your voice recorder.”

“Oh my god, this is happening. Okay.” She fumbled around on her computer, a huge grin splitting her face. “Okay, go.”

Victor looked at me, his eyes so focused, my lungs constricted and the air spasmed from my chest.

“Amani,” he said, voice dropped to a low rumble.

“Goosebumps!” Amani shrieked from inside my computer.

I didn’t break eye contact with Victor though. Something thick hung in the air between us and maybe, just maybe, if I looked at him long enough, it would crystalize. It would turn into a truth. Something we could both acknowledge.

Because another woman had just declared her preference for his voice. Because she liked the way he said her name. Because he had said it again when she’d asked him to.

It was nothing.

A miniscule favor.

Silly.

And yet, I still couldn’t force the air back into my lungs.

“If he ever wants to join the team, he could totally do some voice overs for our social media,” Amani said on the other side of the screen.

I looked away. And oxygen flooded back into the room when Victor turned his back.

“He has a full-time job,” I whispered, voice breathless.

“If we’re talking about hiring people, I have some actual requests,” Monica finally chimed in, and I had never been more grateful for her hands-on attitude. I okayed whatever new hires she suggested over the rest of the meeting, and probably agreed to a few more requests I than I should have, but my thoughts were swimming away from me.

For once, I doubted even the ADHD meds could have caught them or slowed them down.

Victor had never shown even an ounce of interest in anyone. Amani… He had only ever acknowledged her in my meetings. They hadn’t spoken more than three sentences at a time to each other. He couldn’t actually be interested in Amani, could he?

It would have been far easier to convince myself that he was just being polite if Victor had ever been polite. Del had waltzed into our lives, and I’d had to constantly remind him to dial down the hostility, even if she eventually grew on him.

Amaniwaspretty. She had light brown skin with warm olive undertones, and her hair was dyed silver gray. She also sported about as many piercings as Victor did tattoos, so that probably meant their tastes matched.

I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the plate of chicken pasta. I couldn’t eat a single bite. A strange kind of nausea nested at the bottom of my ribcage, chewing at my insides, and coating my tongue in a bitter taste. Maybe I was getting sick.

CHAPTER FOUR

Once upon a timeI had planned to lay low at Cordelia's place for a few weeks until my chance to get out of the country cleared up. Now, however, my skin was crawling at the thought of leaving even if only for a few hours.

“Are you sure?” I asked for the third time in about fifteen minutes.

“Go,” Cordelia rolled her eyes at the snack bowls she was meticulously arranging on the sofa table, “they’ll be home soon.”