CH 2.
Mindy, much to his surprise, was sitting in her office when Danny casually strolled in at 8:50. Sitting there with her head bent over a file and her glasses perched just on the tip of her nose where they rested when she was so engrossed in something she didn't think to push them back up. It looked as though she'd been there for a good while.
He went over to her door way and peeked in. "Are you kidding me? How did this happen?"
When she'd looked up from her file there was a brief moment when annoyance had her eyebrows furrowed, but her face was quickly transformed by a bright smile. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "I have my secrets, and you'll never get them out of me." She looked back down at her file and started making notations so Danny backed out of her office. He was headed over to his door when he heard a muffled shout, "No pizza, Danny!"
He sighed. The stupid bet. He honestly thought she'd been kidding. He kept walking as though he hadn't heard. He sat down at his computer and checked his appointments for the day. Maybe he could work though lunch and avoid Mindy for the rest of the day. They had been spending an inordinate amount of time together outside of the practice and lately it was really throwing him off balance. He'd given up on actively trying to dislike Mindy ages ago. She just didn't let that happen. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that she irked him more than any living person he'd ever known, but most of the things that bothered him about Mindy were things that he could easily find endearing if he let himself. That's what made him feel strange.
They argued constantly about everything, but he enjoyed it. Too much. Ruffling her feathers was so easy to do. Pretending he didn't understand some pop culture reference or being obtuse about new technology was enough to set her off on those short-lived crusades to educate him, the old man, on the nuances of modern tech and celebrities. He'd never known anyone to argue so passionately about such things. The more vociferous she became, the more entrenched in his viewpoint he became, until they inevitably stomped away from each other in a huff only to start up again later. He loved it, and it was starting to scare him.
Last week she had taken two days off to go on a trip with Gwen. It was her "Four Day Weekend in the Hamptons." That was the heading on the itinerary she gave to everyone in the office so they could contact her while she was away. He'd rolled his eyes when she'd given it to him. That earned him a ten minute lecture on professionalism from the woman wearing Jacki-O sunglasses and a sunhat with a foot wide brim in an office on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.
He had looked forward to Thursday and Friday without Mindy's high pitched cheer around the office intruding on his work, but it hadn't been like he thought it would. He'd been so bored. He'd missed her. And that scared him too. He didn't like becoming attached to her.