PERIPHERY | NH |

FOUR

Niall

Watching Hunter drive away, I see the bumper sticker on the back of her deep blue car and can't help but laugh, now knowing she's the one that I saw pulled over on my way to the studio.

"I can't parallel park."

The purple sticker with colorful hearts sits on the bottom left of her bumper, the same one that I noticed when I sped past the police officer this morning.

Knowing it was her should make me feel bad for laughing about it but if anything it makes me want to laugh even harder. From the few hours I spent in the first meeting with her, she didn't seem like the kind of person who would get pulled over for speeding.

Hell.

She didn't seem like the kind of person to get pulled over for anything.

I couldn't keep my eyes off of her in our first meeting, no matter how hard I tried to focus literally anywhere else in the room. Her lips were like the perfect shade of scarlet strawberry on a warm sunny day and from the moment I laid eyes on them my mind started working in overdrive to figure out how I could feel them move along with mine.

Forcing myself to focus, the longer we sat in our original meeting though the more I understood why Paul said that she was the only person he would trust to take his place.

Every single statement or idea that came from her was so well thought out and articulate that I don't think I had ever heard someone so artfully describe their thoughts or their creative process when it came to making sure everyone understood how she did what she did.

Truly if seeing her when she first walked into the room wasn't enough to make me go insane, hearing her talk with unbridled passion about her job and music would for sure have sealed my fate.

Even today, when I turned around and saw her standing with her back to the door, with her hands folded in front of the oversized faded George Michael t-shirt I couldn't help but let a smile spread across my face.

When I went to sit next to her and asked her about how she took her coffee, I saw the way her cheeks flushed like a Grecian sunset at my terrible choice of words that could have been taken more than one way, realizing it was way too late to take them back.

I could have kept going on our meeting but the scent of her perfume was driving me wild and I needed an out, anything to get out of the close space we were in with my choice to sit as close to her as possible.

Asking her to come out with everyone was a lame attempt at trying to see what she was like out of a work setting, something I knew better than to try and pursue in the first place.

She signed the same paperwork that everyone does when it comes to working with me.

The non-disclosure agreement set every rule I thought that I needed in order to protect myself against other people in stone, a legal way to make sure people didn't take advantage of things I did and use them to tear me apart. It was something that I hated doing but after so many people take advantage of you over the years — whether that be in the workplace or even a personal relationship — you have to find ways to protect yourself and give yourself even a small bit of sanity.

Reminding myself that she was technically my employee was going to be my daily chore and the reason at the very top of my list why I couldn't let myself get carried away, knowing that I'm sure it was just the kind of infatuation you find yourself lost in when you are around someone new.

Telling myself after getting to know her that it would most likely wear off and she would just be like one of the guys to me...

I hope.