And the way something had moved across her face when she did. Something that looked old and careful, like a window being opened in a room that didn't often get air. He went back to work. But something was different now. He just couldn't name what it was yet.
The birthday lunch happened 6 weeks later. It was not his idea. It was Marcus Webb's idea. Marcus from accounting, who had the particular gift of turning any occasion into an excuse for celebration and had apparently discovered through the mysterious intelligence network of of office friends that Darius's birthday was on the 18th and that Darius almost certainly would not acknowledge this fact himself. "We're doing lunch," Marcus announced, appearing at Darius's office door on the morning of the 18th with the confidence of a man who has already made the reservation.
The good cafeteria, not the sad one on three. I've already told Derek. Don't argue. I wasn't going to argue, Darius said. You were about to say that's not necessary.
That's not Darius stopped. Fine. Lunch. Marcus grinned. That's what I thought.
There were eight of them at the table. Derek came. Sandra Park came. Marcus brought his desk neighbor, a woman named Priya, who laughed at everything and made everyone feel like their joke was the funniest one she'd ever heard. A few others from the operations floor filled out the group.
It was exactly the kind of moment Darius had told Amara about not the close friends yet, but good people and maybe becoming something more than that without anyone deciding to officially make it happen. He was laughing at something Marcus said about a particularly chaotic vendor call when the cafeteria went briefly quiet. Not silent, just adjusted. The way a room suddenly recalibrates when someone with a certain kind of gravity walks in. Victoria Hayes walked to the end of the food line with her phone in her hand and what appeared to be half a thought completed.
The other half still assembling itself. She was not looking for them. She was not performing the CEO arrival. She was just a person who needed lunch and happened to be in the same cafeteria. Marcus noticed Darius notice her.
His eyebrows went up. Darius looked back at his food and then Victoria looked up from her phone, scanned the room the way a person does when they're deciding where to sit, and her eyes found the table, found Darius specifically in the way eyes sometimes do when they've located a point of reference. She walked over. Mr. Coleman, she said.
I hope I'm not interrupting. Not at all, Darius said and started to rise. She gestured for him to stay seated. Please. She looked at the table at the modest collection of food and the birthday card that Marcus had produced from somewhere store-bought, slightly crooked, signed by everyone present.