Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

The problem with hating someone was that you had to keep noticing them to sustain it. And Cleo had been noticing Finn Walsh for the better part of two years — noticing every confident, infuriating, quietly hilarious thing about him — until she wasn’t sure anymore whether what she felt was hatred or something that had started as hatred and mutated into something else entirely while she wasn’t paying attention.

He noticed her back. That was the other problem.

“You looked at me first,” he said.

They were standing at the same open bar at the agency’s year-end party, and she had in fact looked at him first, but she was prepared to die on the hill of denying it.

“I was looking at the gin selection.”

“I was standing in front of the gin selection.”

“Coincidence.”

He tilted his head. Two years of this — their competing pitches, their heated conference calls, their elaborate professional politeness that everyone knew was just the surface of something else. Two years of her going home after their arguments and feeling more alive than she had all day.

“Cleo.”

“Finn.”

He handed her a gin and tonic, already mixed, with lime and extra ice the exact way she liked it. She stared at it.

“How do you know how I take my gin?”

“I pay attention to things that matter.”

That landed somewhere she didn’t want it to land.

“This is a very elaborate way to lose a pitch,” she said.

“I’m not here about the pitch.”

“Then what are you here about?”

He looked at her — direct, no performance, just him. “I’ve been trying to tell you something for approximately eighteen months and every time I open my mouth we start arguing.”

“Because you’re wrong.”

“About work, sometimes. Not about this.”

She drank her gin. It was perfect.

“Finn. We compete for the same contracts.”

“We could stop.”

“We work in the same industry.”

“Also not actually a barrier.”

“I find you deeply aggravating.”

“You find me interesting,” he said. “You’ve found me interesting since the first pitch meeting. You argued with me for forty-five minutes about the campaign direction and then you looked absolutely delighted when you won.”

“I was professionally satisfied.”

“You were lit up,” he said, and his voice dropped a half-register, and the party moved around them and she was standing very close to him without being sure when that had happened.

“This is a terrible idea,” she said.

“The worst,” he agreed.

“Someone will find out.”

“Probably.”

She looked at the gin in her hand. At the door. At him.

“Ask me something,” she said.

“What?”

“Properly. Ask me something, like a person, and I’ll tell you honestly.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Come have dinner with me. Not to argue about anything. Just dinner.”

“And after dinner?”

“Whatever you want.”

She finished the gin.

She handed him her glass.

She got her coat.

He was right behind her, and she didn’t mind that at all, and she thought: eighteen months. It had taken eighteen months and a perfect gin and tonic, and here they were, finally asking the question that had been under every argument.

She was going to enjoy being right about this one.

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So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.