AN: To my reviewers, thank you so much!! I LIVE for your feedback!

This story is a slow burn because neither of them are them type to cheat or be with someone who is cheating. We'll get there though, I promise! :) As for Lori, we'll get to see a few things happen in upcoming chapters that will feed the petty lol I'm writing Michonne kinda like the glimpse of the side of her we saw in Say Yes. She was just so cute! And I too like the friendship between Rick and Shane minus the betrayal. That's why he is Rick's bestie in this story.

The snow came but so did a cold and I've been feeling kinda blah. I'm not as far along as I hoped to be but here is Chapter 4. This is a filler and it doesn't process the overall story too much but we do get to meet Glenn and I love writing the friendship between him and Michonne! Fingers crossed I can get through Chapter Five (lunch...finally!) before the end of the weekend.

Chapter Four - Pre-Lunch Conversation

Michonne hit the end button on her cell phone and dropped her head into her hands on her desk.

"What is wrong with me?", she mumbled to herself. She should've said no when he invited her to lunch. She knew nothing good would come of sharing a meal with a man who was attached to someone else but she was still inexplicably attracted to. Actually, she was on the verge of telling him no when that deep southern accent of his weakened her defenses.

"Problem?" She lifted her head so that her chin was resting on her hands and looked across the office to where Glenn was typing away on his laptop.

"Why can't I say no?" He chuckled to himself and continued what he was doing. They'd been best friends since the day they met in their intro to drawing and design class back in ninth grade. They were both the new kids at Northview High; her family moving to Johns Creek from the Grove Park area after her father was promoted to Electrical Engineering Manager for Georgia Power, and Glenn's parents moved there from up north and opened the first New York style pizzeria in Johns Creek. Their bond was nearly instantaneous and it persevered through high school and colleges thousands of miles apart. She had gone to Cornell to study Architecture with a full athletic scholarship for fencing and he had decided to go to Georgia Tech for engineering.

"Gimme a break, Michonne! You are a badass and saying no has never been your problem." She stood up and walked over to sit on the edge of his desk.

"Then why did I just agree to have lunch with Rick?" He frowned and looked up at her, releasing a giant sigh as he took his glasses off.

"Who's Rick?"

"I told you, remember? The guy I nearly crippled on Friday…" Glenn couldn't hold back the smirk that appeared on his lips.

"Oh…didn't you say he had a girlfriend or something?" She slowly nodded and dropped her face into her hands.

"Exactly! So why did I just agree to eat Thai with him? I don't know if I even like Thai!" She uncovered her face to find that Glenn had leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on his desk. She knew that posture well. It meant that this conversation was about to go a lot deeper and usually in a way designed to make her see the error of her ways.

"Wait a minute…the guy you assaulted on Friday, who you are attracted to but has a girlfriend, asked you out to lunch and you said yes?" She rolled her eyes and defensively folded her arms across her chest.

"First of all…I did not assault him. It was an accident." His laughter rang through the office like he'd just been told the funniest joke ever.

"You were texting and carrying coffee! It was assault considering your track record!"

"Glenn!" She gasped, lightly slapping his arm. Glenn narrowed his eyes and leaned further back in his chair.

"Why are you even talking to him?", he questioned.

"I found his tie in my car so I called him to return it…" with her answer, he swung his feet off his desk, returning them to the floor with a thud.

"You called him to return his tie?" She was confused by the hint of disbelief in his voice.

"I figured he'd want it back!" Shaking his head, Glenn grabbed the Darth Vader mug she'd gotten him way back when they were in high school and walked over to the coffee station.

"It's a tie! He probably has dozens of them!"

"Are you saying I wanted to talk to him so I called under the guise of returning his tie?" He finished up making his coffee and looked at her with a sardonic grin.

"Not at all. I'm saying if you wanted to say no to Thai, you would have." Refusing to accept his assessment of the situation, Michonne stood up and walked back over to her desk, but deep down she knew he was right. When she'd found his tie wedged between the passenger seat and the center console of her car, she felt a mixture of nervousness and excitement all because she would get to see him again. She couldn't explain it. He had a girlfriend and Michonne was not going to do anything to complicate his relationship. It was just that he intrigued her. More than any man had in a very long time and she felt like that had to mean something.

"What am I going to do? I can't cancel. He said he was in meetings right up to 12:30 and I don't have his cell." She sighed resignedly and started shuffling papers across her desk. It was Glenn's turn to come over and sit on on her desk and he waited for her to look up at him before speaking.

"What are you so worried about? You've had like 2 conversations with him. You might find out he's a dumbass over lunch and problem solved."

"But what if he's not a dumbass?" That was the question. What if she ended up liking him more after this lunch? She shut down that train of thought because it only led to things she didn't want to deal with. Glenn shrugged before taking a sip from his coffee mug.

"So don't show." Admittedly, that it sounded like a simple resolution except for the fact that she would feel guilty and still be left with his tie.

"That would be really shitty." Glenn placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

"Ok…then I guess you're going to find out if you like Thai today." He stood and made his way back over to his desk leaving her to stew in her thoughts for a bit. When the idea come, it hit her out of nowhere.

"Hey…we have that meeting near the restaurant at 2…", she began, hoping that she didn't sound as desperate as she thought she did. He immediately began shaking his head.

"Uh uh…I know what you're going to say…" She didn't give him a chance to finish his thought.

"All you have to do is show up at the restaurant around 12:45. If you join us, it's not so much like a date and everything will be cool and we'll go our separate ways afterwards."

"Michonne…" She heard the reluctance in his voice but she decided to use the last trick she had in her book.

"Please Glenn! Remember that time sophomore year when you were crushing hard on Karen and even though I couldn't stand her, I invited her to my birthday party so you could talk to her?"

"It didn't work. She was too busy flirting with Tyreese all night…"

"Still! I did that for you! You still owe me one!" Glenn released a deep sigh.

"Fine! You're lucky I like Thai! If it was Indian, you'd be out of luck." A huge smile stretched across her face as she jumped out of her chair and practically ran over to throw her arms around Glenn.

"Oh my god, thank you Glenn! You are the best friend and business partner a girl could ask for!"

"Yeah, yeah...so the meeting at 2…" She let go of him and went back over to her computer.

"I have everything ready to go for that. The sketches and the proposal are on my tablet. Can you believe it? We may be designing a new wing of the CDC!" Glenn nodded in agreement.

"It's crazy! I think Sasha is the one we should be thanking though. If she hadn't pushed her bosses to give us a chance…" Glenn and Sasha had met a Georgia Tech and now she was working as a Facilities Engineer for the CDC. When Glenn had first started talking to her about Sasha, she had been unreasonably worried about Sasha somehow replacing her as Glenn's best friend. Then, she came home for winter break and met the bubbly, brilliant, spitfire and immediately liked her just as much as Glenn did. The three of them became very close and when Sasha met and fell in love with Abraham, the burly ex-army ranger become firefighter rounded them out to a foursome.

"Yeah, we should take her and Abraham out to dinner. She may be the reason Bishop Rhee finally crosses into the black!"

"Agree, but maybe we should wait until we actually cross into the black because right now, the way the business bank accounts are set up, we might be able to take them out for pizza."

"l know we're stretched pretty thin right now, but it's all going to work out. Even if we don't get the CDC thing, we just got a few home remodels and that vacation home build...the word is finally getting out about us. Soon, we'll have more work than we can handle!"

"Michonne…"

"And...if Atlanta wins the Amazon Headquarters lottery, we'll get a whole new client base! It's going to work, Glenn…"

"I know that. I wouldn't have quit my job and gambled my life savings on this if I didn't believe in us. All I'm saying, is that we need to curb some of our expenses until we land the dream account. While your optimism is powerful, it can't keep the lights on in here."

"I get it. I just want this to be successful so much..."

"And it will be. We just have to be careful right now."

"Ok…" She turned her attention back to her computer screen and tried to push the nervous energy about her lunch with Rick to the background. Glenn's voice broke the silence.

"You said that Rick guy is a corporate attorney, right?" She wrinkled her eyebrows and shrugged.

"Yeah?" Glenn looked up at her over the rim of his glasses and gave her a smirk.

"Maybe this lunch isn't such a bad idea. We could use some free legal advice."