Free One Night With Her Best Friend by Noelle Adams

 
One
     
    Kate Carlson crossed
another item off her list, leaving only two more tasks to complete.
    She
turned back to her keyboard and typed quickly, mentally gauging how long it
would take to get through her list and then finish getting ready for her date
that evening.
    She’d
showered earlier but had then made the mistake of checking her email one last
time—only to find her boss had sent nine emails in a row about an unexpected meeting
he needed organized for Monday.
    It
would have been nice to have a heads-up about the meeting before Friday
evening, but she’d immediately made a list of things to do in preparation. She
was the administrative assistant of one of the Senior Vice-Presidents of a
multi-national cooperation. She’d had much worse time-crunches than this.
    Her
wet hair hung around her shoulders, dampening the little satin robe she’d
thrown on after her shower and dripping onto the back of her desk chair. She
wouldn’t be able to concentrate on drying her hair and doing her makeup,
though, until she’d taken care of the meeting arrangements.
    She
wasn’t alarmed when the front door of her apartment opened without warning and
a man strolled in. She didn’t even turn from her computer.
    She
heard Aaron in her kitchen, opening the refrigerator and then popping the cap of
a bottle of his favorite beer, which she always stocked for him.
    As
he came into the living area, she hit send on an email and immediately pulled
up a new message window.
    “I
thought he was picking you up at seven-thirty,” Aaron said, coming to peer over
her shoulder. He’d changed after work and now wore a pair of beat-up khakis and
his favorite green shirt.
    “He
is. What’s your point?”
    “Your
hair is still wet.”
    She
muttered a curse as she typed, rereading this message twice before she sent it
to make sure it was free of typos. It was going to the office grammar-queen.
    “Crisis
on the forty-second floor?” Aaron always referred to her office by the floor
number—the executive floor of the corporate headquarters of her company.
    “Just
an unexpected meeting to arrange.”
    “Can’t
you do it tomorrow morning?”
    “I
could. But I don’t like things hanging over me, waiting to be done.”
    “Yes,
after fourteen years, I’m aware of that.”
    “After
fourteen years, I would think you’d get tired of mocking me because I happen to
be well organized.”
    Aaron’s
smile was distinctive. It started with his head tilted downward so she couldn’t
fully see his expression. Then he would lift his head and meet her eyes. The
slow revelation of that smile was like the sun breaking from clouds—warm, startling,
sometimes blinding.
     He
gave her his downward grin now, his hazel eyes affectionate when he lifted them
to meet hers. His thick brown hair was a rumpled mess, as it always was at the
end of the day. “I’m not sure ‘well-organized’ fully captures the extent of
your type-A-ness.”
    She
had the sudden urge to stick her tongue out at the man who’d been her best
friend since they were both fifteen, but she managed to resist the childish
impulse. “I just like things to stay neat and in order. What’s wrong with
that?”
    “Nothing.
You can make lists and cross them off to your heart’s content.” He nodded
toward the notepad on the desk beside her. The lined paper was an irregular
size—long and narrow, the perfect shape for making lists. Aaron had given her
one of those notepads as a joke in their senior year of high school, and she’d
loved it so much he’d kept buying them for her.
    After
a pause, he added in a different tone, “It’s just that, despite what you think,
your lists don’t really keep the world in order.”
    “Well,
they help. And what do you mean, despite what I think?”
    “Don’t
worry about it.”
    She
knew that casually dismissive tone well. “I will worry about it. Don’t
bring it up at all if you’re not going to explain it. What do you mean?”
    “I
mean that