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order to avoid being unfair or judging her with haste. In hindsight, maybe that was one of my biggest mistakes. Starting to pay attention to Ms. Cindy O’Rourke at all, I mean. She was extraordinary in many senses. She had a contagious sunny disposition of which her bright, wide smile seemed to be an essential part. She welcomed everyone with one of those grins – from maintenance staff to delivery people to clients and celebrities. Everybody who crossed the office’s door was greeted with the same level of grace and attention. As for touching people when talking, she seemed to do that to everybody. She was just one of those people and since I didn’t like being touched like that I figured the discomfort I felt was my own fault. I wasn’t able to confirm the leaning on the counter thing, though. My observations were inconclusive. Sometimes, I thought I saw her leaning on the counter to talk to Mark, for example. Other times, she would be standing straight as a lamp post when talking to another person. At the end of a week, I decided to drop the whole thing.
    Still, having watch ed her over those days made me aware of things I would come to regret later. Every time I saw Mark and Cindy talking, I felt a stab of something very unpleasant that I couldn’t label or didn’t want to look into carefully enough. The same wouldn’t happen if I saw her talking to another person. I had never felt anything like that regarding Mark before. I was intrigued but told myself I didn’t have time to worry about it. Again, I put it aside and moved on with my life.
    At least, I tried to do that. But, for the first time, I would find myself daydreaming in the middle of a trading session. I would stare at my computer screen and see nothing. Not to mention the strange dreams I started having then, too. During the day, flashes of those dreams would pop up in my head, out of the blue, distracting me from whatever I had been doing or saying. Other times, during a particularly dull meeting, for example, my mind would drift off and I would lose my train of thought. I’m sure people noticed but nobody said anything to me. Almost nobody, that is. One evening, Mark and I were the last two people left in the office. We had just finished preparing a presentation for a client when I stood up, stretched and yawned, as my computer shut down. Mark looked worried.
    “What’s wrong, Mark? Have we forgotten something?”
    “No, the meeting will be fine. I’m worried about you. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
    “Oh, sweetie, are you upset because we haven’t been together this week? ” I ran a hand over his forearm and squeezed him lightly. “I’m sorry. We have worked so hard that I’m always beat at the end of the day. I’ll tell you what - let’s have dinner tomorrow night at my place. I’ll make it up to you for all this lost time. How about that?”
    “That sounds like a plan but I didn’t mean that. You have been acting weird like you aren’t focused, you know? You stop talking in the middle of a sentence; then, you can’t finish it, for example. I’ve never seen you act like that. What’s going on?”
    I felt tempted to open up to him, to tell him about the disturbing dreams I had had and the strange signs I had picked up from Ms. O’Rourke. I opened my mouth to say those things but for some unknown reason I changed my mind.
    “There’s nothing wrong, Mark. I’m just tired. That’s all ,” I said as I turned away to grab my purse and go home, effectively avoiding eye contact.
    He didn’t seem convinced when he stood in front of me, framed my face in his big hands and stared into my eyes as if looking for the truth. “You know I’m here for you, right? No matter what, you can always count on me.”
    When I just nodded in reply, he planted a soft kiss on my lips, ran a thumb over them and let go of me, still frowning. I thought that kind of worry and care on Mark’s part didn’t suit our ‘no-strings-attached’