The invitation came three days later, delivered with the particular awkwardness of someone who had clearly rehearsed the phrasing more than the moment warranted.
"So, this is going to sound sudden," Leo said, leaning against her doorframe with the specific posture of a man trying to appear casual and failing at it slightly, "but the studio's doing this thing on Friday — small anniversary party, nothing fancy, mostly just an excuse for everyone to drink bad wine in the break room and pretend the budget review didn't happen — and I was wondering if you wanted to come. As my, uh. Plus one. If that's not weird."
"Is it going to be weird?" Zoey asked, already fairly certain of the answer.
"Only if you make it weird," Leo said, which was, Zoey reflected later, not remotely reassuring, but she said yes anyway, because some part of her — the part that had stopped taking notes on his motives weeks ago — simply wanted to go.
The party was held in the studio's main workspace, tables cleared away and replaced with a folding table of cheap wine and a slightly better spread of cheese than the wine deserved, string lights hung with more enthusiasm than skill across the exposed beams. Zoey recognized several of the faces from the show's storyboards pinned around the room — actual, three-dimensional versions of the people whose sketches she'd seen tacked to Leo's corkboard for weeks now.
"This is Zoey," Leo said, for what felt like the tenth time that evening, to a rotating cast of animators and production assistants who all seemed to regard her with the particular, delighted curiosity of coworkers who had clearly been hearing about her for a while.
"Oh, the Zoey," said one woman, a colorist named Priyanka, with a grin that suggested this was already an established phrase around the studio. "Leo talks about you basically nonstop, it's honestly kind of embarrassing for the rest of us."
"I do not," Leo said, going faintly red, in a tone that suggested he absolutely did.
"He does," confirmed a second animator, unhelpfully, before Leo could steer the conversation elsewhere.
Zoey filed this away — not in the notebook, not anymore, but somewhere warmer, somewhere she was slowly becoming less afraid to keep things — and let herself be tugged along through introductions, growing steadily more relaxed as the evening wore on and the wine, cheap as it was, did its slow, familiar work of softening her usual careful edges.
By her third glass, she'd stopped bracing for anything. By her fourth, she'd started leaning slightly into Leo's side without quite noticing she was doing it, laughing too easily at things that weren't especially funny, watching the way the string lights caught gold in his hair whenever he turned to introduce her to someone new.
"You're doing great," Leo murmured at one point, close to her ear, the warmth of his breath making something low in her stomach flip pleasantly. "Everyone likes you."
"Everyone's had four glasses of wine too," Zoey said, and he laughed, low and warm, close enough that she could feel it more than hear it.
By the time they left, considerably later than either of them had probably planned, Zoey had crossed the specific threshold from pleasantly warm into genuinely unsteady, her feet less reliable than they'd been an hour ago, her filter considerably less intact.
"Okay," Leo said, catching her elbow as she stumbled slightly on the curb outside, "I think that's my cue to get you home."
"I'm fine," Zoey said, in the exact tone of someone who was not, in fact, entirely fine, and let him tuck an arm around her waist anyway, telling herself it was purely for balance, and finding, as they walked, that she didn't particularly want to examine why it felt like considerably more than that.
The walk back was quiet, easy, Leo's arm a steady warmth at her side, and by the time they reached the elevator in their building, something in the small enclosed space seemed to press the whole evening's accumulated warmth into something denser, more charged. Zoey leaned back against the elevator wall, looking up at him with the loose, unguarded honesty of several glasses of wine, and found herself saying, before some more sober version of herself could intervene, "Your coworkers are wrong, you know."
"About what?"
"It's not embarrassing. That you talk about me." The words came out softer than she meant them to, closer to a confession than she'd intended. "I like it. I don't know why I like it so much."
Leo went very still beside her, something shifting behind his eyes — surprise, and underneath it, something warmer, more careful, like a man trying very hard not to misread a moment that mattered too much to get wrong.
"Zoey," he said, quiet, and there was a whole conversation contained in the single syllable of her name, a question he wasn't quite asking outright.
The elevator doors opened before either of them could say anything more, and the moment, fragile as it was, dissolved into the practical business of getting her safely down the hallway, keys fumbled out of her bag, Leo's hand steady at the small of her back the entire way.
At her door, he lingered, close enough that she could have closed the last small distance between them without any real effort at all, close enough that some reckless, wine-warmed part of her badly wanted to.
He didn't let her.
"Drink some water," he said instead, gently, brushing a strand of hair back from her face with a tenderness that felt, somehow, more intimate than anything more obvious might have. "And sleep. We can talk tomorrow, if you want. When you're — feeling more like yourself."
"I'm feeling plenty like myself," Zoey said, though even she could hear how unconvincing it sounded.
"I know," Leo said, softly, "which is exactly why I'm not doing this tonight." He pressed a soft, careful kiss to her forehead instead — nothing more, nothing that could be misread or regretted in the morning — and stepped back before either of them could reconsider. "Goodnight, Zoey."
She watched him disappear into his own apartment across the hall, the door clicking shut with a gentleness that felt, somehow, louder than a slam would have.
She woke the next morning with a headache, a mouth like sandpaper, and the distinct, mortifying sense that she had said something the night before that she could not, no matter how hard she tried, fully reconstruct.
I like it. I don't know why I like it so much.
She sat bolt upright in bed, the fragment surfacing with sudden, horrible clarity.
"Oh no," she said, out loud, to her empty apartment, for what felt like the hundredth time in this entire, increasingly unmanageable saga. "Oh no, no, no."
She lay back down, pulling a pillow over her face, replaying every half-remembered fragment of the previous evening with mounting horror — the elevator, the way he'd gone still beside her, the soft, deliberate kiss to her forehead that had felt, even through the fog of too much wine, like the single most significant thing that had happened to her in years.
She had no idea, lying there in the unforgiving morning light, exactly how much she'd given away.
She only knew, with the particular dread of a woman whose careful professional distance had entirely, irreversibly collapsed sometime around her third glass of wine, that there was no putting anything back the way it had been before.
You've reached the end of this chapter
The invitation came three days later, delivered with the particular awkwardness of someone who had clearly rehearsed the phrasing more than the moment warranted.
"So, this is going to sound sudden," Leo said, leaning against her doorframe with the specific posture of a man trying to appear casual and failing at it slightly, "but the studio's doing this thing on Friday — small anniversary party, nothing fancy, mostly just an excuse for everyone to drink bad wine in the break room and pretend the budget review didn't happen — and I was wondering if you wanted to come. As my, uh. Plus one. If that's not weird."
"Is it going to be weird?" Zoey asked, already fairly certain of the answer.
"Only if you make it weird," Leo said, which was, Zoey reflected later, not remotely reassuring, but she said yes anyway, because some part of her — the part that had stopped taking notes on his motives weeks ago — simply wanted to go.
The party was held in the studio's main workspace, tables cleared away and replaced with a folding table of cheap wine and a slightly better spread of cheese than the wine deserved, string lights hung with more enthusiasm than skill across the exposed beams. Zoey recognized several of the faces from the show's storyboards pinned around the room — actual, three-dimensional versions of the people whose sketches she'd seen tacked to Leo's corkboard for weeks now.
"This is Zoey," Leo said, for what felt like the tenth time that evening, to a rotating cast of animators and production assistants who all seemed to regard her with the particular, delighted curiosity of coworkers who had clearly been hearing about her for a while.
"Oh, the Zoey," said one woman, a colorist named Priyanka, with a grin that suggested this was already an established phrase around the studio. "Leo talks about you basically nonstop, it's honestly kind of embarrassing for the rest of us."
"I do not," Leo said, going faintly red, in a tone that suggested he absolutely did.
"He does," confirmed a second animator, unhelpfully, before Leo could steer the conversation elsewhere.
Zoey filed this away — not in the notebook, not anymore, but somewhere warmer, somewhere she was slowly becoming less afraid to keep things — and let herself be tugged along through introductions, growing steadily more relaxed as the evening wore on and the wine, cheap as it was, did its slow, familiar work of softening her usual careful edges.
By her third glass, she'd stopped bracing for anything. By her fourth, she'd started leaning slightly into Leo's side without quite noticing she was doing it, laughing too easily at things that weren't especially funny, watching the way the string lights caught gold in his hair whenever he turned to introduce her to someone new.
"You're doing great," Leo murmured at one point, close to her ear, the warmth of his breath making something low in her stomach flip pleasantly. "Everyone likes you."
"Everyone's had four glasses of wine too," Zoey said, and he laughed, low and warm, close enough that she could feel it more than hear it.
By the time they left, considerably later than either of them had probably planned, Zoey had crossed the specific threshold from pleasantly warm into genuinely unsteady, her feet less reliable than they'd been an hour ago, her filter considerably less intact.
"Okay," Leo said, catching her elbow as she stumbled slightly on the curb outside, "I think that's my cue to get you home."
"I'm fine," Zoey said, in the exact tone of someone who was not, in fact, entirely fine, and let him tuck an arm around her waist anyway, telling herself it was purely for balance, and finding, as they walked, that she didn't particularly want to examine why it felt like considerably more than that.
The walk back was quiet, easy, Leo's arm a steady warmth at her side, and by the time they reached the elevator in their building, something in the small enclosed space seemed to press the whole evening's accumulated warmth into something denser, more charged. Zoey leaned back against the elevator wall, looking up at him with the loose, unguarded honesty of several glasses of wine, and found herself saying, before some more sober version of herself could intervene, "Your coworkers are wrong, you know."
"About what?"
"It's not embarrassing. That you talk about me." The words came out softer than she meant them to, closer to a confession than she'd intended. "I like it. I don't know why I like it so much."
Leo went very still beside her, something shifting behind his eyes — surprise, and underneath it, something warmer, more careful, like a man trying very hard not to misread a moment that mattered too much to get wrong.
"Zoey," he said, quiet, and there was a whole conversation contained in the single syllable of her name, a question he wasn't quite asking outright.
The elevator doors opened before either of them could say anything more, and the moment, fragile as it was, dissolved into the practical business of getting her safely down the hallway, keys fumbled out of her bag, Leo's hand steady at the small of her back the entire way.
At her door, he lingered, close enough that she could have closed the last small distance between them without any real effort at all, close enough that some reckless, wine-warmed part of her badly wanted to.
He didn't let her.
"Drink some water," he said instead, gently, brushing a strand of hair back from her face with a tenderness that felt, somehow, more intimate than anything more obvious might have. "And sleep. We can talk tomorrow, if you want. When you're — feeling more like yourself."
"I'm feeling plenty like myself," Zoey said, though even she could hear how unconvincing it sounded.
"I know," Leo said, softly, "which is exactly why I'm not doing this tonight." He pressed a soft, careful kiss to her forehead instead — nothing more, nothing that could be misread or regretted in the morning — and stepped back before either of them could reconsider. "Goodnight, Zoey."
She watched him disappear into his own apartment across the hall, the door clicking shut with a gentleness that felt, somehow, louder than a slam would have.
She woke the next morning with a headache, a mouth like sandpaper, and the distinct, mortifying sense that she had said something the night before that she could not, no matter how hard she tried, fully reconstruct.
I like it. I don't know why I like it so much.
She sat bolt upright in bed, the fragment surfacing with sudden, horrible clarity.
"Oh no," she said, out loud, to her empty apartment, for what felt like the hundredth time in this entire, increasingly unmanageable saga. "Oh no, no, no."
She lay back down, pulling a pillow over her face, replaying every half-remembered fragment of the previous evening with mounting horror — the elevator, the way he'd gone still beside her, the soft, deliberate kiss to her forehead that had felt, even through the fog of too much wine, like the single most significant thing that had happened to her in years.
She had no idea, lying there in the unforgiving morning light, exactly how much she'd given away.
She only knew, with the particular dread of a woman whose careful professional distance had entirely, irreversibly collapsed sometime around her third glass of wine, that there was no putting anything back the way it had been before.
You've reached the end of this chapter