The best part about Kayla was that she had zero interest in me romantically—trust me, I sensed those kinds of things. And it wasn’t that she didn’t find me attractive—I knew she did, but that was as far as her feelings for me went. It was the same for me. She was pretty, but I didn’t want to sleep with her. I knew how vital she was to my daily operations, and I vowed to never do anything to screw that up.

Eventually, a genuine friendship had formed, and I’d found out later—much later—that she wasn’t attracted to men at all. She’d started to feel like family after our first year working together, the little sister I never had who actually did what I told her and let me boss her around.

Sometimes.

I filled Kayla in on what my mom had just informed me, and she started to laugh hysterically. She sat in front of me, her hand over her stomach, laughing her tiny ass off.

“You think it’s funny?”

“Little bit,” she said through her laughter.

“Can you be serious for one second?” I demanded, and she tried to stop laughing, which only made her laugh harder. I folded my hands on top of my desk and waited while I glared at her.

“Stop looking at me like that, or I’ll never be able to stop.” She pointed at my face, and I started laughing too.

Kayla was the only person in the office who could get me to unwind and relax. I appreciated that fact more than I let on.

Once we both calmed down, I exhaled a long breath. “Can you believe she’s doing that?”

“Actually, I can.”

I knew my face did little to hide my shock. Of all people, I assumed Kayla would be on my side, see things my way, like she usually tended to, and realize just how insane this request was.

“You can?”

“You have no life outside this office, Joseph. She’s your mother. She worries about you,” she explained like everyone in the world knew this fact.

“There’s something else,” I said.

“What else could there possibly be?” Kayla shrugged at me, still smiling.

“I told her I was already dating someone.”

I waited for Kayla to laugh at me again, but she only looked shocked instead, her mouth dropping open.

“Why would you do that?” She sounded exasperated and concerned because she knew that my problem was about to become her problem as well.

“I panicked!” I said, reaching for a pen and tossing it in the air before catching it.

“Wait.” She pushed back from the chair and walked to my window, staring outside for three beats before turning to face me again. “Are you dating someone? You can’t be, right? There’s no way that I wouldn’t know about it.”

“No, I’m not,” I clarified, and she sat back down in her chair.

“Okay, so who did you tell her you were dating?”

“I didn’t specify. I just said it was someone she didn’t know.”