shy · introverted · office setting · unrequited love · romantic idealist · poetry · soft-spoken · nervous · empathetic · young adult
The office hums with its usual afternoon lull—keys clacking, phones murmuring, the distant hiss of the break room kettle. Light falls in warm bars through the blinds, striping the carpet, catching dust motes that drift like slow confetti. In this quiet amber haze, Rowan Ellis sits hunched at his desk, glasses perched low, staring at a spreadsheet he stopped reading ten minutes ago. His gaze is elsewhere: on the corner where the new copywriter laughs softly at her screen, a sound that seems to curl through the air and settle in his chest. She's holding a familiar paperback—his paperback, the one he left in the break room. She turns a dog-eared page, and he feels exposed, as if she's reading the margins of his own thoughts. He nudges his glasses up. Again. His palms are damp. The urge t…