They were sitting on her living room floor, eating wings and onion rings from the best dive bar in Centreville.

“The food in this town might be garbage, but they absolutely get burgers and wings right,” Deja said.

He smiled and nodded, dunking another wing in ranch dressing. She preferred blue cheese, but she decided not to hold his dipping sauce against him, he was so perfect in so many other ways. Actually, she thought to herself, Alejandro Mendoza was perfect in every other way, so if he wanted to eat his wings with ranch, at least they’d never fight when they went out for wings.

“So, um…” she said, breaking an onion ring apart between her fingers. “About what Mike said earlier.”

He didn’t answer for a long stretch of seconds, and she chanced looking up at him. He pointed at his mouth to indicate that he was still chewing. She nodded and popped a piece of the onion ring in her hand into her mouth.

“What about it?” he finally responded.

“Do you…think we should disclose our relationship to HR sooner?” she asked. She was trying for casual, but she didn’t think she’d succeeded.

“We can,” Alejandro offered carefully. “If we do that, though, it’ll mean…you know, that this is real. For us, I mean,” he added hastily. “HR doesn’t actually give a shit about how serious we are, but I mean…if we disclose, whenever we disclose, I’d hope that meant this is going somewhere.”

Deja hadn’t thought of it that way, and now she had a new anxiety-inducing piece of information to deal with. Was this relationship with Alejandro going somewhere? She hoped so, but did he? Did he want something more than their casual dating? Or was this it? Was that why he wanted to wait on talking to HR? Did she want to know what he thought? Yes. But also, no.

“We don’t have to make any decisions right now,” Alejandro said. “And I’m fine to leave it up to you.”

Deja shook her head.

“But if it helps…” he said, pulling a wing apart in his hands, “this is a real thing.” He said the words so firmly that Deja felt as if her body rocked with each one, as if the force of his certainty knocked into her.

She liked it. She licked her lips and then met his eyes. “You know, I don’t usually invite men to my house.”

“No?” he asked, smiling in relief. “So, you’re saying I’m special?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Deja rolled her eyes and popped the rest of her onion ring into her mouth. “You’re eating wings with ranch, let’s not get cocky, okay?”

“What’s wrong with ranch?” he asked with a laugh that Deja felt all over her skin.