The accounting situation happened on a Monday and Eric was in a terrible mood for the rest of the day and did an extremely poor job of hiding the reason.She'd been on her way back from the printer the second tray was behaving after the maintenance visit, which was a small but genuine improvement in her daily life when one of the men from the accounting department fell into step beside her in the hallway. She knew his face, had exchanged pleasantries with him at company events, knew his name from the internal directory. He was pleasant and professionally unremarkable and had apparently decided, somewhere between the water cooler and the hallway outside her desk, that he was going to ask her to lunch.He did it smoothly enough. Casual, low pressure, the way people asked when they weren't sure of the answer and wanted to preserve the option of treating it as something other than a rejection if the answer was no."I appreciate it," she said, keeping her voice warm and her stride unhurr
Last Updated : 2026-03-09 Read more