The next morning he walks into work and comes toward Amy’s cubicle. Whereas other mornings she has been there to greet him this morning she is hunkered down in her cubicle. Her face is red and she has fresh tears coursing down her swollen face. Her eyes are horribly bloodshot.

“James and I broke up last night.”

Inside his mind Grady is leaping for joy. Were he able to conjure what was running through his imagination a sudden field of flowers would appear and take the place of the cubicles. He would then run through them extending his arms up over his head and leaping with abandon. Such things rarely happen in real life, however. Outside he remained calm.

“I’m sorry to hear that. How are you holding up?”

“How do I look?”

“Not too bad.”

“You are a terrible liar. I should have told you that the first day I met you.”

“Did I try to lie to you then?”

“Well, you were certainly hiding something.”

“You seem to be in pretty good spirits.”

“It’s a mask I put on. I have typed and retyped the same sentence to this e-mail about sixteen times. I can’t seem to stop crying.”

Grady steps into the cubicle and leans against one arm of her desk and crosses his arms. She turns to look at him. Her eyes are still a dazzling blue and he feels his heart strings tug and pull as she stares at him with those blue pools floating in a sea of redness.

“You’ll be all right.”

“I knew this was coming. He had been sending out signals.”

“Love is blind, they always say.”

“Well, whoever says those things is stupid. He’s the only person I’ve ever been with. We’ve been together for seven years. How does someone just start over after seven years?”

“You do it one day at a time. The same way you do everything in this life.”

“When did you become a philosopher?”

“Shortly after I decided to stop lying.”

He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. He squeezes her shoulder. She reaches out and touches his hand. He wonders if she feels the same electric shock running through her that he feels running through him. The world grays out for a moment as the shock runs through him. He lets go even though he definitely doesn’t want to and heads for his cubicle. He hides there until lunch.

At lunch time he heads for the lunchroom and is surprised to see Amy sitting there. Her face looks a little better but her eyes are still red. She is sitting in front of something that looks like a sandwich but she is barely touching it. She appears to have taken one bite and nothing else. He sits down across from her.

“You like me, don’t you?”

Grady nearly chokes on a piece of his own sandwich. He coughs. He wonders if someone were to look at him would he be surrounded by an inky black cloud. He manages to catch his breath and then takes a drink.

“You could have waited for a better moment to ask that.”

“Fortunately for you I know the Heimlich maneuver.”

“To answer your question, yes, I do like you. I wasn’t sure you could tell.”

“We women have a way of telling such things.”

“Do you now? That sounds useful. I apparently have no such ability.”

“Most men don’t. There are either those who assume no one is interested in them or the ones who believe everyone with breasts is.”

“I will make a note of that. Why are you asking? In my experience I tend to fall into the category of assuming no one likes me.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“Ah, well, I wasn’t always so devastatingly handsome. When I was younger I was a lot chunkier. I also developed a crush on this girl who lived down the street from me. When her best friend found he she told her and I got a message back she thought I was fat and ugly and I could stop thinking about her anytime I felt I was able to do.”

“That’s terrible. How old were you?”

“Oh, about fifteen. You know, right at the start of what should have been my dating years.”

“Well, you are a bit of a moody type. Maybe that turns people off.”

“Why thank you so much for being so frank and open. You are doing wonders for my self-confidence.”

“It shouldn’t matter. I like you too.”

This time Grady had managed to swallow more of his sandwich and then take a drink. This time the liquid goes right down the wrong pipe and he spews an entire mouthful of soda onto the floor of the lunchroom. Grady then descends into another fit of coughing. This time it seems to take much longer and Amy actually stands up with a look of concern on her face.

“You really have to work on your timing before you kill me.”

“Sorry about that. My mind is on other things.”

“Yes, well, back to your original statement. What are we to do about this?”

“I’m not sure. James just broke up with me last night. If I were to start going out with you now that would make you the rebound guy. Those never work out.”

“Never?”

“I haven’t heard of one that has, have you?”

“Not really, but I don’t know a lot of people.”

She smiles at this and he smiles back. It is nice to see her smile, he thinks to himself. He catches a glimpse of her crystal blue eyes and his heart melts all over again. He wants very much to reach out and take her hand. He wants even more to lean over and kiss her. Instead he carefully takes another bite of his sandwich.

“I think we should agree to give us a chance but to give it a little time.”

“That sounds wonderful, Amy, but I have no idea what that means.”

“I really don’t either, but it sure sounded like the right thing to say.”

“I guess your womanly instincts only go so far.”

“I guess so.”

They eat in silence. Both of them do an amazing job of sitting across from each other but not looking at each other. Several times she looks up and him and smiles. Several times he looks at her and smiles. The two of them manage to look completely ridiculous.

“Should I be asking you out or something? I am not very good at this sort of thing.”

“I don’t think so. We should at least try being friends for a little while.”

“I see. How long is that, essentially?”

“At least a week.”

“You recover fast.”

“I’ve always been a fast healer.”

This time she looks up at him and locks eyes with him. He stares back. Time seems to slip by at an agonizing pace. It is as if the lunchroom and the office around them simply vanishes. Grady stares at her and he loses himself in her eyes. He can see the delicate blue of he irises and the minute flecks of green that dot them as they near the pupil. Her eyes seem unnaturally wide and she is breathing heavier.

“I should probably head back to my desk.”

“You barely ate anything.”

“I’m not much in the mood to eat.”

He nods. He wants to say about a million things but they all seem to have jammed up in some doorway in his mind and he cannot get a single thought out. Instead he smiles and watches her pick up the remnants of her lunch. She stands and starts to walk past. She stops just as she is passing him and his heart feels like it may burst through his chest and he waits for her to say or do something. Instead she just continues on. He sighs and waits for his heart to either return to a normal rhythm or just explode and kill him. He figures at this point either would be acceptable. He finds himself suddenly without an appetite