The next morning, Eugenia arrived at the office ten minutes early, with the feeling that she had slept inside an unfinished conversation.
She had woken several times during the night. Each time, the apartment was dark, her phone remained on the nightstand, and Samuel’s card was still saved in her contacts under a name meant to make it impersonal. Director. A professional, almost cold word. A way to lie to herself without having to delete the number.
She got up, showered, and got ready. She dressed as always: dark pants, a light blouse with the slightest hint of a neckline, her hair pulled back, and small earrings. Before leaving, she looked at herself in the mirror longer than necessary. She wasn’t checking whether she looked good. She was trying to find out whether anything showed.
She found no sign of anything.
That reassured her during the drive. Then it stopped reassuring her.
Laura was waiting for her beside the coffee machine, holding two paper cups and wearing an expression that needed no preliminary questions.
“Good morning,” Eugenia said.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you managed to sleep.”
Eugenia took the coffee Laura offered her.
“Yes.”
“Then no.”
“I slept.”
“Sleeping isn’t the same as resting. You look like you spent the night arguing with yourself.”
Eugenia glanced toward the hallway. Employees were coming and going from the offices, still discussing the previous day’s opening ceremony. Samuel’s name surfaced now and then in the conversations, accompanied by low laughter and remarks that died away whenever someone approached.
“I’m not arguing with anyone,” she said.
“Not with me. I already know that.”
Laura took a sip of coffee and leaned against the wall.
“Did he text you?”
“No.”
“Did you call him?”
“No.”
“Then why do you look guilty?”
Eugenia held the cup in both hands. The cardboard was hot, but not hot enough to explain the warmth rising to her face.
“I don’t look guilty.”
“You look like someone who found something she wasn’t looking for and now doesn’t know where to put it.”
The sentence settled between them with uncomfortable precision.
Eugenia thought of Samuel’s gaze. Of the way he had said her name, as if it were more than a mere formality. She thought of his relaxed posture, that confidence that didn’t need to be displayed because everyone else had already recognized it. And above all, she thought about what had happened to her: an almost imperceptible change in her breathing, an overly intense awareness, the feeling that her body had understood something before her mind did.
“I barely spoke to him,” she said.
“I know. I was there.”
“It was only a few minutes.”
“I know that too.”
“I don’t know him.”
“That’s what worries you most, isn’t it?”
Eugenia looked up.
Laura wasn’t smiling anymore. She had known Eugenia since college and had learned to distinguish her silences: the one that came with concentration, the one that came with exhaustion, and the one in which Eugenia shut herself away because she feared an answer might change the way someone looked at her.
“It doesn’t worry me,” Eugenia said.
“Then it unsettles you.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Not to you. You turn every word into a bookkeeping entry.”
Eugenia wanted to laugh, but all she managed was to lower her gaze.
Throughout the morning, she tried to focus on the suppliers’ invoices and the expansion figures. Numbers had the virtue of not demanding interpretation. An amount either matched or it didn’t. A document was complete or it was missing a signature. There were no double meanings in a bank reconciliation.
At eleven thirty, she received an email from headquarters with instructions about the reports for the new phase. The message wasn’t signed by Samuel, though it carried his authorization. Eugenia read the final line three times before forcing herself to close the screen.
Laura watched her from the desk across from hers.
“We’re having lunch together,” she said.
“I have work.”
“You’ll have it afterward.”
“Laura…”
“Eugenia, if you keep staring at that email like it’s evidence in a trial, I’m going to ask for permission to drag you outside so you can breathe.”
At one thirty in the afternoon, they ended up at a restaurant terrace two blocks from the office. It had wooden tables, open windows, and a menu written in chalk on a blackboard. It wasn’t a place for important conversations, which Eugenia considered an advantage. She could talk about anything and pretend it meant nothing.
They ordered salad and fruit water. Laura waited until their drinks had been served.
“Now we can talk.”
Eugenia ran her finger along the rim of her glass.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“That’s more honest.”
“It’s not just that Samuel is attractive.”
“No, of course not.”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
“I didn’t interrupt you.”
“You were going to.”
Laura raised her hands, conceding the point.
Eugenia took a deep breath.
“I saw him, and it was like… I don’t know. Like everything else became less distinct for a moment. The office, the people, what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t something I decided. I didn’t even have time to decide it.”
“You were attracted to him.”
The word was simple. Eugenia felt it as something far too big.
“Yes.”
Saying it aloud brought a kind of relief and, at the same time, a stab of guilt.
“I was attracted to him,” she repeated. “And that shouldn’t be happening. I can’t let it happen!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m in a relationship.”
“You have a boyfriend.”
“Andrés and I are talking about something serious.”
“That doesn’t make you blind.”
Eugenia turned her gaze toward the street. A woman crossed with a bag of bread; a delivery driver arranged boxes on the sidewalk; a bus stopped at the traffic light. The world continued with a normalcy that seemed almost offensive to her.
“Andrés hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said.
“I didn’t say he had.”
“He’s attentive. He’s good to me. He’s never disrespected me. I can trust him.”
“And yet you met another man, and he knocked you off your feet.”
Eugenia pressed her lips together.
She didn’t want Laura to put it so simply. She preferred to think it had been exhaustion, curiosity, or the effect of an unusual day. She preferred to blame Samuel’s authority, his position, the impression he made on everyone. If the phenomenon had an external explanation, she wouldn’t have to take responsibility for what she had felt.
“Maybe it was just the circumstances,” she murmured.
“What circumstances?”
“The opening ceremony. He was the center of everything. Everyone was watching him.”
“So were you.”
Eugenia set her spoon down on the plate.
“I was supposed to be with him and attend to him. I wasn’t watching him the whole time.”
“I didn’t say the whole time.”
There was a brief silence. This time it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the space Eugenia needed to understand that she wasn’t defending her behavior so much as trying to hide from herself.
“I felt like he was watching me,” she said at last.
Laura made no comment.
“Not in a vulgar way. That would have been easier. If he’d acted like a jerk, I could have rejected him and forgotten about it. But he seemed to know exactly how far to go. He asked me questions, and when I answered, he seemed… interested.”
“Maybe he was.”
“He didn’t know me.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to know someone to be interested.”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”
Eugenia lowered her voice.
“How can someone make me feel this way after only a few minutes? I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know how he treats people when he isn’t trying to make an impression. I don’t know what kind of man he is. All I know is what people say.”
“And what you saw.”
“What I thought I saw.”
Laura tilted her head.
“What did you think you saw?”
Eugenia remembered Samuel’s smile when she corrected him. It hadn’t been the smile of an offended man. Nor had it been the smile of someone accustomed to being obeyed. He had seemed surprised. Amused. Almost pleased.
“That he didn’t expect me to answer him that way.”
“You liked that.”
Eugenia felt a small, precise shiver.
“Yes,” she admitted without embellishment.
The confession left her motionless.
It wasn’t only that Samuel had found her attractive. It was that he had reacted to her character. To the part of her that normally stayed behind a polite voice and impeccable conduct. He had seen the slightest resistance and, instead of backing off, had wanted to know more.
“I liked that he didn’t seem annoyed,” she said. “I liked that he looked at me as if I were… different.”
“Different from whom?”
“From the others.”
“And you think that’s a good thing?”
Eugenia took a while to answer.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
A notification appeared on her phone screen. Eugenia looked at it immediately, involuntarily. It was a message from Andrés asking whether they could set the date for Saturday or Sunday to visit the apartment.
Guilt hit her before any other emotion and nearly left her breathless.
She placed the phone facedown.
“I can’t think about Samuel and then sit with Andrés as if nothing happened,” she said.
“You did yesterday.”
“Exactly.”
“Did something happen?”
“No.”
“Did you at least have sex?”
“Laura! What kind of questions are those?”
“Then?”
Eugenia stared at the tablecloth.
“Andrés didn’t even ask if he could come over to my apartment. And I mostly thought about Samuel during dinner.”
Laura waited.
“While Andrés talked about an apartment, I imagined what it would be like to be somewhere else. A better restaurant. A more intimate table. Samuel talking to me about us, not about things or other people, as if he didn’t have to measure every word. And I felt….” She stopped, uncomfortable. “I felt alive. Then I felt horrible for thinking it.”
Laura didn’t judge her. That made the shame harder to bear.
“Thinking or imagining isn’t cheating,” she said.
“But it’s the beginning.”
“The beginning of a possibility. Not a betrayal.”
“What if I want it to be a possibility?”
The question came out so suddenly and so softly that it was almost lost amid the clatter of dishes.
Laura stared at her.
Eugenia felt as if she had just crossed a line she hadn’t known was there.
“I’m not saying I want to do anything,” she rushed to clarify. “I’m just saying I don’t know what I want. And that’s already too much for me.”
“Then don’t decide today.”
“I have to decide something.”
“What?”
Eugenia thought of the number saved in her phone. Of the white business card hidden among her things. Of Samuel, who might already have left for headquarters and probably wouldn’t think about her again until he needed a report.
“I have to find out whether this is real or just an impression.”
Laura frowned.
“And how do you plan to find that out?”
Eugenia didn’t answer.
The question stayed with her on the walk back to the office. She walked beside Laura under the afternoon sun, listening to the traffic and the murmur of the city, but inside she was still in that lobby from the day before. Samuel had said they weren’t in private yet. He had said it as a provocation, but also as a promise.
When she entered her office, Eugenia turned on her laptop.
The email from headquarters was still open.
Beneath Samuel’s electronic signature was an additional line, brief and addressed to her:
“I would appreciate it if Ms. de los Santos would send me the cost report personally once it’s ready.”
Eugenia read the sentence once.
Then again.
There was nothing improper about it. It was a work instruction. She could forward it to the chief accountant, as appropriate. She could respond formally and limit herself to performing her duties.
And yet her fingers remained poised over the keyboard.
For the first time since the opening ceremony, Eugenia understood that Samuel didn’t need to call her to move closer. He only needed to find a legitimate reason to step back into her day.
Eugenia closed her eyes. She ran her tongue over her lips. She felt that warm dampness in her lower belly, which was already beginning to feel familiar.
The guilt was still there, along with fear and prudence. But beneath all of it was something harder to deny: a small, insistent expectation that was beginning to look dangerously like hope.