“So are we supposed to bring dates to this?”

“Uh, you can if you want,” Lisa says, twirling the spoon in her coffee and mixing the creamer.

“Are you?” Jaehyun asks, grabbing the creamer from her hand to put it back in the breakroom fridge.

His eyes are focused and his breath looks held in.

“Um. No…” Lisa says, looking down at her coffee as she brings the mug up to sip.

She’d brought Ryan to it last year, but it wasn’t like it’d been that different from going solo because Ryan and her… Well, they'd felt more like friends with extended benefits. She’d introduced him and they mingled with other people but it wasn’t romantic. Even when they’d found themselves under mistletoe, she’d only briefly brushed her lips against his cheek before going to talk to a co-worker about something mundane like their dog’s eye surgery.

“Are you?” Lisa asks, stirring her spoon more even though her coffee was perfectly mixed. Sweet caramel liquid on her lips.

“No. I can’t think of anyone even if I wanted to…” Jaehyun, sighs and Lisa tries not to show her sudden disappointment. Not that she was waiting for him to ask her or something, just the way in which he laments. As if he was also waiting for someone… which is ridiculous because he’s a total eligible bachelor type. Why would he want to be single? Lisa was the only person that didn’t seem to mind being single.

Jaehyun leans back on the counter, the palms of his hands behind him.

“Well... “ Lisa begins, figuring she should console. “Maybe you’ll meet someone there.”

Jaehyun turns his head to meet her eyes again.

Did they always stand this close?

Or did he happen to be closer because he was next to the fridge?

“Maybe,” he says, quieter than he usually speaks.

“Look at you too…”

And cue, Amanda’s nosiness.

Lisa clears and takes a couple steps away, pretending she needs sugar, which she doesn’t because she used creamer.

“Good morning, Amanda.” Jaehyun says professionally, with no hint of acknowledging the tease.

“Good morning, Jaehyun,” Amanda tilts her head and bats her eyelashes just enough that it could read as a joke, but still perhaps a serious come-on. “Good morning, Lisa,” she turns to Lisa and raises her eyebrows.

Lisa nods, walking out the room, while she can. Before they’re both subjected to needless interrogating.

She’d been avoiding Amanda recently for the last time they talked because damn… Even if it was a thing to say. It was honest…

What had Lisa been doing to get anything or anywhere outside of work?

Was she going to stay at this job forever and be single forever? But not like she minded! Things take time, require patience. It was just, occasionally, the anxiousness of everyone in her life watching and wondering if something was wrong, to the point where sometimes it got to her. Maybe something was wrong… with her.

Who else was taken to prom as a friend? Who else had only had one boyfriend, at her age?

What was possibly wrong with her to be so resisted?

“I thought the coffee was supposed to wake you up, not make you zone out,” Jaehyun says and Lisa snaps back to attention, smiling weakly.

They would be working at the office today. Nearing the end of the year, things were getting busier and shopping less convenient as stores were left mangled by shoppers, fighting for throw blankets and luxury chocolates.

Lisa didn’t mind though. It was nice to watch the snow fall from outside her window instead of feeling it melt on her skin and hair.

“Thanks for stopping by, by the way.”

He’d missed Monday and Tuesday but had felt better by Wednesday.

“Next time, please go to the hospital,” Lisa pleads, setting her mug down and looking serious business.

“Look at me. I’m fine,” Jaehyun gestures a hand from his face to his chest, showing his living, breathing, body as if Lisa had never noticed it. Like his slender wrists, firm palms, long legs. Big brown eyes that slowly blinked. Pouty lips that pushed deep dimples out when he smiled, showing white teeth with the cutest curves.

“You were nearly hallucinating.”

“Thanks for nursing me back.”

“It was probably the medicine, not me.”

“Who’s to say those weren’t one in the same?”

Okay…

Lisa rolls her eyes, returning to her computer.

Why is he playing like this?

“Anyway… I think I freaked out your mom.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. Just her vibes were weird. She was asking me questions…”

“Like?”

“Having kids and stuff,” Lisa says, uncomfortably.

She looks over at Jaehyun when there’s only silence and catches his ears have gone red, it’s his turn to feel uncomfortable.

He brings his palms to his face, dragging the skin below his eyes, in a whine.

“I’m sorry. That’s none of her business.”

Lisa doesn’t say “okay” because it wasn’t okay. But she doesn’t want him to feel too bad. It’s not like his mom was being different from most moms. She had found his co-worker at their house, after all. It was her house. She had some right to ask questions…

“Lisa!” she hears Sue call her over.

“I found you a man.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said, you wanted to be set up again.”

She thinks and recalls the moment she’d slipped up a couple weeks ago. Susceptible to peer pressure.

“Oh.”

“And just in time for the holiday party!” Sue smiles, looking a bit too happy and accomplished.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I told him he could meet us here.”

“Like… here?” Lisa points a manicured finger to the ground. “Here, here? Like party, here?”

“Like, yes, yes.” Sue answers.

“What the-” Lisa, stops herself, taking a breath. “But why?”

“Well, if not this Friday, you’d probably push it off to another weekend and besides, this way will be more chill. With other people around and a little liquor. You won’t be so tense.”

“I’m not a tense person.”

Sue considers this and tries to compromise her meaning.

“Well, you’re something if this is the only date you’ve had since Ryan and you broke up. Which, by the way, he’s engaged now.”

“He’s what?!” Lisa wishes she was still at her desk so she could be seated and have heard none of this. The room was beginning to feel too small and Sue’s voice too loud and her mind too scattered.

“Yeah, like last week. Didn’t you see the pictures on Instagram?”

No, Lisa had unfollowed him like she supposed was normal for people that’d broken up and never talked anymore.

“Anyway, your date’s name is Yangyang. Super gorgeous, works in tech, travels between here and China. He offered to pick you up but I figured you’d say no, so we’re riding together.”

Sue sure did "figure" a lot of things out for her.

Lisa stands in shock, trying to take in the fact that in 24 hours she’s meeting a new person in the middle of a company party, a new person that could potentially become her boyfriend since that was the point in meeting him and the man she’d broken up with, like, half a year ago already engaged.

Sue was off and running before Lisa could find the words. Lisa didn’t know if she’d even find the words in time for the party.