Chapter Two In Which Impressions Linger, Assignments Are Made, and Happy Hour Is Complicated
Lillian was tucked into bed, Mr. Collins curled at her feet like a soft, judgmental cushion, when her phone buzzed.
A message from FitzWill.
FitzWill: “You ever wish you could delete a first impression?”
She frowned at the screen, thumb hovering.
LizzyB: “Depends. Was it something mortifying or just wildly misunderstood?”
FitzWill: “The second one. I said something today. Thought I was being helpful. It didn’t land that way.”
LizzyB: “Yikes. Work?”
FitzWill: “Yeah.”
LizzyB: “Let me guess… advice that felt more like a critique?”
FitzWill: “Pretty much.”
LizzyB: “That’s always tricky. Sometimes it’s not what you say—it’s when and how.”
FitzWill: “So I tanked the ‘how.’ Possibly the ‘when.’”
LizzyB: “It happens. We all step in it now and then.”
FitzWill: “Feels like I might’ve made things worse.”
LizzyB: “You probably did. But the fix is in the follow-up, not the apology.”
FitzWill: “What does that mean?”
LizzyB: “You show up. You don’t explain, you adjust. Be better next time. People notice that.”
There was a pause. She watched the “typing…” bubble blink in and out a few times before another message appeared.
FitzWill: “That’s good advice. You’re annoyingly wise for someone who once said Mr. Darcy was ‘emotionally stunted with a hero complex.’”
LizzyB: “Still true. But I’d die for his coat collection.”
FitzWill: “Fair.”
LizzyB: “You’ll be fine, by the way.”
FitzWill: “You don’t know that.”
LizzyB: “Sure I do. You’re still thinking about it. That’s half the battle.”
FitzWill: “What’s the other half?”
LizzyB: “Caffeine. Possibly cookies.”
FitzWill: “You're kind of the best stranger on the internet.”
LizzyB: “Don’t get sappy. Go to bed, Fitz.”
FitzWill: “Goodnight, LizzyB.”
She locked her phone, heart a little lighter than it had been an hour ago.
Tomorrow was still going to be awkward as hell.
But maybe… a little less unbearable.
By the time Lillian arrived at the office the next morning—coffee in hand, hair still damp from a rushed shower—she’d already regretted three choices:
• Not calling in fake sick.
• Wearing the boots that made her ankles sound like microwave popcorn.
• Ever making eye contact with Oliver Hollingsworth in the first place.
She stepped off the elevator and immediately spotted him through the glass wall of the conference room.
Already seated. Already smug. Or maybe just breathing.
She hated how good he looked in a blazer.
“Stewart,” called Laura, their managing editor, from down the hall. “Conference room, please. Manuscript pairing.”
Lillian gave Jane a brief, panic-stricken glance before walking in. She took the furthest seat from Oliver without sprinting. Barely.
Laura handed them matching folders.
“Rush job,” she said. “High-profile author. Big contract. Needs a co-edit because it’s massive and the timeline’s stupid. You two are the only ones I trust with it.”
Lillian opened the file and felt her soul whimper. Historical fantasy romance with a 200k word count. And it was overwritten.
Like... Thesaurus-Word-of-the-Day overwritten.
Laura smiled. “You’ll need to coordinate edits, tone, pacing—basically everything. You’ll need to be in sync.”
Lillian opened her mouth to protest but Oliver cut in smoothly. “We can handle it.”
She glared at him. We?
He met her eyes briefly, then looked back at Laura, completely unbothered.
“Oh good,” Laura said, missing the atomic-level tension. “You’ll have shared access by noon.”
Once she left, the room grew thick with silence.
Oliver didn’t look at her. Just gathered his notes.
“So,” he said finally, neutral. “Do we need to draw up a schedule or are we doing the spontaneous chaos method?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she replied flatly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Good. I hate babysitting.”
“And I’m perfectly capable of handling heavy edits. You don’t need to... swoop.”
He blinked at her, lips twitching like he wanted to respond—something biting, no doubt—but then thought better of it.
“Noted.”
She left the room first, boots snapping on the tile like punctuation marks.
He watched her go and muttered, “Great start.”
Lillian was halfway through furiously rearranging a stack of manuscripts on her desk—a task that absolutely did not need doing—when Jane peeked around her office door.
“You’ve been reorganizing the same pile of paper for ten minutes,” Jane said, stepping in with her latte like a nosy angel. “What gives?”
“Nothing,” Lillian lied.
Jane raised a brow and closed the door behind her. “You’ve got your ‘I didn’t commit murder but I maybe fantasized about it’ face.”
“I’m fine.”
“Was it Oliver?”
Lillian dropped the papers like they’d burned her.
Jane gasped. “Oh my God, it was!”
“It wasn’t anything,” Lillian said, flopping into her chair. “We’ve been assigned a project together. A huge one. With deadlines. And tone matching. And coordination. And... breathing the same oxygen.”
Jane sat down across from her, looking far too delighted. “So this is like, forced proximity? High-stakes? Possibly enemies-to-lovers if I’ve ever seen one?”
“There is no ‘to-lovers.’ There is just ‘to-murder’ or ‘to-mild HR complaint.’”
“Uh-huh.” Jane took a sip of her drink. “So naturally, you’re coming to the bar with me after work so we can unpack all of your rage.”
“I’m not ragey,” Lillian muttered.
“You’re rage-adjacent.”
“I’m just professionally offended.”
“Which is exactly why we’re getting wine and something fried.”
The sky was darkening as they exited the building, laughter already spilling between them as Jane described her theory that all men under 40 should come with warning labels.
Lillian’s rebuttal—something about legally mandated personality quizzes—died on her tongue as she spotted Oliver outside, phone pressed to his ear.
He was leaning against the side of the building, smiling. Not the polite, corporate smile he used for networking or ordering lunch. A real smile. Easy. Open.
His laugh drifted toward them on the evening breeze—low, unguarded, and honestly kind of unfair.
Lillian slowed just a step.
Jane noticed. “Who’s he talking to?”
“No idea.”
He hadn’t seen them. And she wasn’t sure why she kept watching. Maybe it was the strangeness of it—seeing him so human when he spent most of his workday operating like a brooding email in human form.
“Maybe he has a girlfriend,” Jane offered casually.
“Maybe he has a secret second life where he’s... likable.”
Jane grinned. “Now that would be a twist.”
Lillian tore her eyes away and kept walking.
But for the rest of the night—evenþ after the drinks, and the fried pickles, and Jane’s dramatic retelling of her almost-date with a man who had a collection of medieval flails—Lillian couldn’t shake that image.
Oliver. Smiling. Like he did it often.
And not at her.