Alice sat at her desk with her monitor angled away from the door, her fingers resting on the keyboard without pressing any keys. She had been staring at the same spreadsheet for twenty minutes, a column of numbers that should have commanded her full attention. They did not. Her eyes kept drifting to the glass wall that separated her workspace from the corridor, waiting for the shape she knew would appear.
She did not have to wait long.
Dayo walked past her door at ten minutes past nine, later than his usual arrival but still carrying the same energy she had been watching for weeks. It was not the controlled precision she was used to. His shoulders sat lower. His stride was looser, the gait of a man who was not calculating every step. And his face — she caught only a glimpse as he moved toward his office — held something she had never seen on him before.
A smile that reached his eyes.
