Nick rubs his hands over his face. “Shit. Right. You’re right. I’m your boss and I came on to you. That was . . . God, that was not okay.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I say, getting angry. “You’re my boss in name only. I practically run this place half the time. You didn’t bully me into sticking my tongue down your throat, okay? I have some agency here. I came on to you.”

“Even if you came on to me, it’s not—”

“We both,” I say slowly, “need to stop saying the word came.”

The lights flicker, then come back on. “Great timing,” I say to the ceiling.

I hazard a glance at Nick. He’s looking straight at me. I can still feel the scratch of his stubble against my cheek, the way his hands grabbed my ass, the feel of his—

Well. There are a lot of things I’m going to have to excise from my memory.

“This was a mistake,” I say, my voice firm. “Both of us have been acting weird ever since stuff with Annie’s movie started ramping up—”

“You think this happened because of the movie?”

“And the Buzzfeed lists.”

“What the hell is a Buzzfeed?”

“Why are you a million years old?” I shout. “Wait. Forget it. I don’t have time to explain the concept of websites to you. We have to remember that Annie’s movie is fictional. It’s about characters, not about the real us, the people who should absolutely, under no circumstances be making out in their place of work. We just . . . need to forget about this.”

“Chloe.”

“Stop saying my name.”

Nick scowls. “Fine. Valued Employee . . . I think this is going to be a little hard to forget about.”

“Well, try,” I say, taking off my apron and tossing it over the counter. “Put the memories in the ol’ spank bank and throw away the key, dude.”

Nick screws up his face into a look of horror. “You are disgusting, you know that?”

“All the more reason to pretend this never happened,” I say. “You good with cleaning up the rest of this?”

He takes a step toward me. “At least let me give you a ride home. It’s pouring.”

“Nope.” I walk into his office and emerge with my coat. “Let the rain baptize me and wash away this evening.”

“Stop being dramatic and listen to me. You’re right, okay? We shouldn’t have done . . . what we did. We work together, and this will make things awkward, and . . . I’m sorry, okay?”

I stop in my tracks. Obviously I wanted Nick to agree with me, to concur that this was all one big mistake and that we, as coworkers who see each other every day, shouldn’t be involved in any sort of physical manner. So why does hearing him say those words out loud make me . . .

Disappointed?

I turn around and pull my hood over my head. “Yep.”