“It’s weird to think that no one’s looked at these in so long. Why do you think no one wanted the job? It’s pretty fucking fun, honestly.”

Aiden shrugs.

“Maybe some special force of the universe was keeping it open just for me,” he answers, and I roll my eyes.

He brought sandwiches for us, as it turns out. There’s only one chair, and it felt awkward when only one of us sat down, so we’re both cross-legged on the carpeted floor. We both finished eating a while ago. Aiden has balled up his sandwich wrapper and is absent-mindedly rolling it about on his palm. We’ve been hanging out like this for longer than I’d planned, but I’m not complaining.

“So.” I poke Aiden’s foot with my finger. “Which ones are your favorites? Of the photos.”

“Hmm.” He leans his head back against the wall, thinking. “The landscape ones, where you can see all the nature. It looks so peaceful. Quiet.” Now he pokes my foot. “Which ones are your favorite?”

I think it over before I answer.

“I like the holiday ones the best. The town looks so busy, and there are so many people holding presents, everybody smiling. Everyone is just so - together. It’s sweet.”

Aiden’s lip quirks.

“I should have guessed,” he murmurs, half to himself. “I feel like I remember you handing out little paper hearts to everyone on every Valentine’s Day in high school.”

“Yes, with fun-size boxes of Nerds attached.”

“I never did any of that shit.”

“Not a romantic, then?”

Aiden huffs out a soft laugh.

“You know, it’s funny, I actually am. I didn’t realize it back then.”

This gives me pause, and another one of those stupid little flutters in my stomach that I’m trying to ignore. I wish I had like twenty minutes to go away and analyze what he means by this. My instinct is to start talking and keep talking - it’s my comfort zone, honestly - but I’m learning that Aiden isn’t always a man of few words. He’ll talk, but you have to really let him. Leave him a long enough opening, wait when he pauses, and give him time when he stops altogether, in case there’s more. There’s an unusual rhythm to his language, but I’m starting to understand it a little bit. I’m trying to shape mine to fit it, because I don’t want him to stop and close up. I think it’s working.

Otherwise, I never would have known that he considers himself a romantic.

“So?” I prod gently, testing the waters. “Why didn’t you realize it until after high school?”

He nibbles his lip for a second, thinking about it.

“I think the high school experience gives you a lot of wrong ideas about stuff like that. You know - love, attraction. Reciprocity. Romance.” He pauses, and I wait. “Based on the way I understood those things back then, I had zero interest in the whole concept.”

“So what changed your mind?”

He shrugs.

“Figuring out that it’s cool to write your own rules, I guess?”

“Oh.” My mind is racing. I’m not sure what to say. Aiden’s gaze drifts back to my face, and he smiles apologetically.

“Sorry. One of the side effects of getting sober is getting a little philosophical. At least for me. Let me know when I’m doing that, so I can stop.”

“No, I don’t - it’s fine.” I hesitate, and then blurt out: “It’s just - the way you’d hear Melanie tell it, you were like the dream boyfriend. I mean. Up until you left.”

Aiden cringes.

“Melanie is probably the person I owe the most apologies to. And for the record, she always gave me a lot more credit than I deserved.”

“Yeah, she was way too good for you,” I tell him.

“Obviously! Duh!” he answers, and we both laugh again. He leans back against the wall of the office. “God, you think I don’t know that? Come on, Jamie.” He pauses. “What about you? Are you a romantic?”

I frown deeply.

“Am I a romantic? You come on.”

“I mean, I know that old-school you was. But people change.” He pauses, for a little longer this time. “Sometimes… bullshit happens to people and it kind of stamps that out of them. Right?”

I know what he’s asking me. I wonder if it’s specifically about the time he stole the poem, or just in reference to his general shitty behavior. The way he always made me feel stupid for it.

“Are you asking if you murdered the romantic in me?” He fidgets, doesn’t answer. “Aiden, hey.” He looks up at me again; his gaze had dropped to his shoes. I see the question swimming around in his blue eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m as much of a hopeless heart-eyed idiot now as I was back then.”

The tension in his face breaks, and he lets out his soft, huffing laugh again.

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to be responsible for that particular casualty.”

A gentle silence settles down over us, one I surprisingly don’t feel the need to populate with as many words as possible. I get the feeling that Aiden is working his way towards saying something, so I wait until he does.

“So, who are you a hopeless heart-eyed idiot for at the moment?”

“Oh.” I blink, surprised. “Uh, honestly, I haven’t really dated anyone in a while. My romantic life is littered with choices that were, uh, simply great.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah. I went through a bit of a like, super-hot-idiot phase.”

“Were you the super hot idiot, or were they?”

“I guess both?”

“Wow. How long did that phase last for?”

“Not too long, just like ten years.”

Aiden laughs again, and my heart jumps wildly. I really like making him laugh. Or maybe I’m just not used to it yet. He never used to laugh in high school, unless it was cold and cutting. This one is warm, and it crinkles his eyes.

“What about you?” I ask, before I can think too hard about it. “Brought anyone back with you that you’ve secretly been stashing in Kent’s attic this whole time?”

“Nope. I mean, I had options, of course, but nobody could fit in my one backpack.”

He keeps startling little laughs out of me. This happened at the party, too. I’m fairly sure it turns my cheeks red, when it happens. I glance away quickly, rolling my eyes. I think it’s fine. He didn’t see, I don’t think.

“Your cheeks are all red,” he observes. Shit.

“It’s because I’m - cold.” I am a little cold, actually, so maybe this could sell? “I might put my jacket back on.”

“Yeah, when did it get so chilly in here?” Aiden glances over at the windows; the blinds are still closed. We’d just flipped back on the overhead light in the office when we were done with the photos. He gets up and opens the blinds, and we’re met with a rectangle of pure darkness. “How long have we been here?”

“Well, we spent like two hours looking at the photos,” I answer.

“And how long did we spend talking after we put them away?”

“Not that long, like an hour?” I glance at my phone for the time. “Oh. Um. More than an hour.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s 11:00.”

“What?”

“Technically it’s 11:39, actually, but 11:00 sounded better. Oh my god, Aiden, are we even allowed in here this late?”

“I didn’t realize we’d be here till midnight,” he answers, clearly as surprised as I am.

“Okay, midnight is a slight exaggeration. Let’s just sneak out quickly, no one will know.”

“Yeah, here’s the thing. This is City Hall, so they lock it at night. I don’t have the keys.”

We stare at each other in silence for a moment, and then I scramble to my feet.

“What? Aiden? Are we locked in City Hall?”

“Ah… yes. Shit.” He runs a hand over his hair. “This can’t happen. It’s only my first week.”

“Oh my god! Aiden, you can’t get in trouble on your first week! You only just started! If someone catches us in here this late, that would be bad, right?”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be good,” he agrees, crossing to the door of the office. He eases it open and peers out into the hallway, where all of the lights are dimmed to their lowest setting. “We definitely need to get out of here.”

“What if you get fired? We have to leave, we need to-”

Aiden turns around and presses his index finger over my mouth, startling me into silence.

“Okay, I’m gonna need you to stop agreeing with me so loudly. Just for one minute.”

The tip of his finger is warm against my lips. I just nod at him, and he steps away again, leaving me rooted to the spot and trying to get my heart rate under control. He steps out into the hallway, peering around.

“Seems like no one is inside, that’s good. We can’t call anyone, because that would get me busted…”

“What are we gonna do?” I shake out my hands anxiously.

Aiden looks over his shoulder at me, and once again I am stilled by his blue gaze. For a moment, he almost had that same careless, flat expression that he wore all through high school, but this isn’t the same thing. It’s not apathy, it’s - calm. Steadiness.

“Okay,” he says. “I have a plan.”

~~~~

“The windows don’t open,” Aiden explains quietly, as we creep along the hallway. “But there’s one upstairs with the latch broken. I bet we can get out through it.”

“Who walks around their workplace noticing broken latches?”

“The office manager accidentally cc’d all of City Hall on the maintenance request,” Aiden whispers, and I have to repress a laugh.

“Jesus Christ. This situation is beyond ridiculous. How are we going to get down from a second-floor window, by the way?”

“It’s not that far, don’t worry about that. Just watch out for the security guards.”

“The security guards?”

“They walk around outside too, so just make sure no one sees you when we’re climbing out of the building.”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You’re lucky you’re with a retired troublemaker.”

“I don’t buy that retired shit for one minute, based on what we’re doing right now.”

“Here, this way to the stairs.”

Sooner than I’d like, we’re peering out of the broken window. Aiden was able to get it open quickly, at least. Below us is the green spread of the City Hall lawn. A wide row of tall flowers - I can’t tell what kind from here, not in the dark - is planted around the building. Not much to cushion a fall, but we’re also not quite as high up as I’d feared.

“Ready? Have everything?” Aiden whispers.

“What? No, hang on, what - we’re just gonna fall?”

“It’ll be fine. Watch, like this.”

I repress the urge to let out a hysterical laugh as Aiden hops up onto the windowsill. He swivels around to face me, gets a grip on the windowsill. And, oh my fucking god - he winks at me before he steps backward and disappears. I gasp and rush forward, to find him hanging over the side, his hands gripping the windowsill. The distance between his dangling feet and the ground now looks much less frightening. He lets go and drops the rest of the way.

“Come on!” he hisses, beckoning to me.

“What!” I whisper-yell, dumbfounded. “I’m not tall enough - I can’t do that!”

“Yes you can, I’ll catch you if it looks like you’re gonna fall too far!”

“How are you -? No, no!”

“Jamie, come on! The security guard is probably going to lap this side of the building soon!”

“Holy shit.” I step up on the windowsill, crouch, and turn to face the inside of the building. “Holy shit. Aiden, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you.”

“If you let me fall, I am never going to forgive you.” I grip the windowsill with my hands tightly.

“I’ll catch you, I promise.”

Just like that, I’m dangling from one of the windows of City Hall, praying that the old wood doesn’t give away, my feet below me supported by nothing -

“Let go, Jamie! I’ll catch you!”

My hands slip, and somehow I know I’m falling in a bad and weird way. A fear confirmed when I hear Aiden say “Oh, shit-”

I’m gonna slam into the brick wall, I think blankly.

Strong arms close around me and snatch me out of the air, and now my crash course is reversed: where I was about to go flying forward, I now tumble backward, my legs tangling with Aiden’s. We both trip and crash down into the flowers, gasping. I open my eyes and find myself staring at the sky, flat on my back, flowers framing the edges of my vision. I am directly on top of Aiden.

He unlocks his arms from around my waist and sits up, panting. I feel his breath skitter across my neck.

“Shit! Are you okay?”

“Yes!” I scramble off of his lap and get onto my knees, fanning my face. “Are we dead?”

“Maybe?” Aiden gets himself into a low crouch. “Okay, security guard check.”

We peek out over the flowers, but no security guards make an appearance.

“Great!” Aiden whispers. “We’ll just go around to the front and get out of here.”

He straightens up and begins edging along the wall. I follow behind him, my face still burning. I’m so glad it’s too dark for him to see what color my cheeks are right now. I can’t believe I fell on him like that! His fingers had trailed along my waist when he let me go. I can feel the exact path they followed. The scent of his aftershave is still in my nose, the little oof he breathed out when I landed on him is still in my ear. This is all just quite a lot right now, and my attention lapses. I’m shocked back into reality when I glance up and see the white beam of a security guard’s flashlight, only twenty or so yards ahead of us. Aiden is ahead of me, and the security guard will hear if I say anything. I seize Aiden’s wrist and yank him back towards me.

“What-?” he begins, and I quickly press my hand over his mouth, shoving him back against the wall and deeper into the shadows. The security guard strides closer. I feel Aiden’s body stiffen next to mine, which I assume means he’s noticed the problem. I drop my hand from his mouth and press up against the wall next to him. We both hold as still as possible until the flashlight beam disappears.

“You know,” I tell Aiden, when we’re back out on the sidewalk, “When you said you wanted to get coffee, I didn’t realize that what you meant was an evening spent poring over ancient photographs before making an escape through a window while avoiding enemy government agents. Are you James Bond?”

“There was coffee, though, so I feel like I delivered on that. And yes, I clearly am James Bond.” He hesitates. “Given that we both fell out of a window, do you regret coming?”

“No.”

I’m almost embarrassed by how quickly I answer, but Aiden just smiles his blue eyed-smile at me.

When I get home, I go straight to my bed and lay flat on my back.

“No, no, no,” I groan softly to myself. Do they call it a crush because you want to crush it into a million pieces and stop it from happening before you can embarrass yourself? That seems like the most probable reason. There’s something I’ve been kind of excited to show you all week, he’d said. So he was thinking about me all week? That’s what that means, right?

“Nooooooooo,” I groan. “Who cares, who cares what he was thinking…”

His arms locking around me before I could hit the ground. The wink when he disappeared from the window. The smile he gave me. Oh, god. Oh, man.

“No, no, noo!” I plant my face into my pillow, letting out a long groan. “It was just supposed to be coffee!”