The Secret Annex of Love
Chapter Two: Dating, According to the Available Evidence
After Alyx and Isobel kissed in the ninth-floor archive, they acquired nearly all the outward features of a romantic couple.
They held hands beneath the table in the Quiet Room.
They exchanged good-morning messages before either had technically arrived at work.
Alyx brought Isobel pastries shaped like hearts, stars, flowers, and—following one unfortunate bakery misunderstanding—a lobster.
Isobel began carrying an emergency hair tie for Alyx, although she privately considered gathering all that magnificent blonde hair into one little elastic band an act of cultural vandalism.
They walked to the train station together every evening. They spent Saturdays in bookshops. Alyx rested against Isobel while they read, and Isobel occasionally kissed her temple under the impression that Alyx was too engrossed in her manga to notice.
Alyx always noticed.
Nevertheless, after three weeks, a troubling question arose.
“Are we dating?” Alyx asked.
They were sitting in the Quiet Room. Isobel held Thucydides open before her, although she had spent the last seven minutes looking at the same paragraph.
Isobel lowered the book.
“I believe so.”
“You believe so?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds less romantic than I hoped.”
“I’m not uncertain about you,” Isobel said quickly. “I’m uncertain about the definition.”
Alyx sat up and turned toward her. “We kiss.”
“Yes.”
“We hold hands.”
“Yes.”
“You packed me a lunch yesterday.”
“You would otherwise have eaten six strawberry wafers.”
“You wrote my name on a little card.”
“So it would not be mistaken for anyone else’s lunch.”
“You drew a heart on the card.”
Isobel’s cheeks pinkened. “A labeling flourish.”
“And on Saturday, you bought me the deluxe edition of The Villainess Wishes to Be Stepped On by Her Loyal Maid.”
“I question the historical plausibility of that title.”
“You bought it.”
“You wanted it.”
“You wanted me to have something I wanted.”
“Yes.”
“That’s love.”
“That is not a logically sufficient test. I also want the Finance Department to have functioning software.”
Alyx narrowed her eyes.
“I do not love the Finance Department,” Isobel clarified.
“But do we go on dates?”
“We visited the museum.”
“You took notes.”
“There were objects.”
“We had dinner afterward.”
“We required food.”
“We shared dessert.”
“The portions were excessive.”
“You fed me the last bite.”
“You were talking with both hands.”
Alyx stared at her beloved with mounting concern.
“Isobel, darling, you can explain away anything.”
“I am trying to be precise.”
“Well, precisely speaking, I would like you to ask me on an actual date.”
Isobel froze.
“A date?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“Preferably.”
Isobel closed Thucydides.
The crisis had become serious.
Isobel approached dating as she approached any unfamiliar and consequential subject: through research.
Her first search produced seventy-four million results.
This was unacceptable.
She refined her terms.
FIRST DATE ADULT WOMEN QUIET NOT EXPENSIVE NO AXE THROWING
The results improved only marginally.
Every article disagreed with every other article. One insisted that dinner was too formal. Another declared that coffee showed insufficient commitment. A third recommended an escape room, which Isobel regarded as a terrible foundation for intimacy. If someone deliberately locked her in a chamber and demanded that she solve riddles to escape, she would contact the authorities.
At lunch, Alyx bounded into the Quiet Room and found Isobel surrounded by handwritten notes.
“Are you planning a military campaign?”
“No.”
“Tax reform?”
“No.”
“The overthrow of upper management?”
“Not today.”
Alyx leaned over her shoulder.
At the top of the page Isobel had written:
PROPOSED COURTSHIP EXCURSION — ALYX
Beneath it were headings for budget, transportation, weather contingencies, allergens, walking distance, conversational opportunities, and the possibility of “unexpected organized merriment.”
Alyx’s expression softened into something so fond that Isobel immediately covered the page.
“You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“You’re planning me.”
“I’m planning for you.”
“Oh, Isobel.”
“Do not make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that makes coherent thought impossible.”
Alyx moved closer and kissed her cheek.
Isobel’s entire plan ceased to exist in her mind.
“What were you saying?” she asked.
“I don’t remember.”
They spent the remainder of lunch holding hands in companionable silence while the proposed courtship excursion remained unplanned beneath a volume of Euripides.
The following Friday, Isobel approached Alyx’s desk at precisely 4:42 p.m.
Alyx was surrounded by coworkers.
This was the difficulty with asking Alyx anything: Alyx was almost always surrounded by coworkers.
“Isobel!” she said brightly. “Did you need me?”
Every head turned.
Isobel had prepared a sentence.
It was a good sentence. It was concise, unambiguous, and lightly romantic without exposing either party to reputational risk.
Under the gaze of nine interested colleagues, it vanished.
“I wondered whether you might wish to accompany me to a location tomorrow,” Isobel said.
Alyx blinked.
“A location?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“A suitable one.”
Nadine in Accounts Receivable began typing furiously without looking at her screen.
“Would this be a date?” Alyx asked.
“If you consent to designate it as such.”
Alyx’s smile became dazzling.
“Yes, Isobel. I consent to designate tomorrow’s suitable location as a date.”
“Good.”
“Where are we going?”
“That information will follow.”
“When?”
“When I have it.”
Alyx glanced at the papers clutched in Isobel’s hand.
“Are those forty-seven possible locations?”
“Thirty-two. I have already eliminated miniature golf on grounds of windmill-related indignity.”
Alyx stood, slipped her arm through Isobel’s, and announced to the office, “My girlfriend is taking me on a mystery date!”
Isobel turned scarlet.
Nine coworkers tried not to applaud.
Their first official date took place at a small botanical garden attached to the municipal library.
Isobel chose it because it contained plants, books, benches, tea, and no compulsory group activities.
She arrived twenty-three minutes early.
Alyx arrived twelve minutes early and discovered her standing rigidly beside the fountain, wearing a dark green dress beneath a tailored coat. Her long black hair shone in the morning light. In her hands she held a paper bag and a single pale-yellow rose.
Alyx stopped walking.
Isobel’s composure faltered.
“Is the dress unsuitable?”
“No.”
“The flower?”
“No.”
“Have I fundamentally misunderstood—”
“You’re so beautiful,” Alyx breathed.
Isobel stared at her.
Alyx wore a soft cream sweater, a blue skirt, and ankle boots. Her long blonde hair fell loose around her shoulders. She looked luminous, excited, and—rather unexpectedly—shy.
“You’re beautiful too,” Isobel said.
Alyx came closer.
“Is the rose for me?”
“Yes.”
“Why yellow?”
“I researched flower symbolism. Yellow once suggested jealousy, but now commonly indicates warmth, friendship, and happiness. Since our romance developed from companionship, I thought—”
Alyx kissed her.
A passing elderly woman whispered, “Good for them,” to a fern.
When Alyx released her, Isobel still held the rose stiffly between them.
“I had more explanation,” she murmured.
“You can tell me later.”
The date began successfully.
They walked through the conservatory. Alyx admired every flower indiscriminately. Isobel read every informational plaque in its entirety. In the orchid house, Alyx tried to take a photograph of Isobel and accidentally activated a filter that gave her cat ears.
“Delete it,” Isobel said.
“Never.”
At the lily pond, Isobel explained ancient Greek associations between water lilies and nymphs.
Alyx listened with an intentness that surprised her.
“You really like hearing this?” Isobel asked.
“I like hearing you.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is to me.”
They had tea beside the library windows. Isobel presented the contents of the paper bag: two carefully chosen sandwiches, fruit, and four strawberry wafers.
“You packed wafers!”
“Six would be nutritionally indefensible. Four seemed romantic.”
“It is the most romantic number of wafers.”
Afterward they entered the library’s annual used-book sale.
For the next forty minutes, they lost each other completely.
Alyx was found crouched beneath a table containing graphic novels. Isobel had vanished into Biography and Memoir. They were reunited when they both reached for the same battered copy of The Tale of Genji.
Their fingers touched.
Alyx gasped theatrically.
“Just like in a manga!”
“We have been holding hands all morning.”
“That was established contact. This was fated contact.”
Isobel regarded the book.
“Genji himself is not an encouraging romantic precedent.”
“Then we’ll be better than Genji.”
“That is an attainable goal.”
They bought the book together.
Neither could later remember where it went.
Alyx planned their second official date.
Her process was less rigorous.
She sent Isobel a message reading:
SATURDAY. SIX O’CLOCK. WEAR SOMETHING CUTE. TRUST ME.
This message caused Isobel two days of anxiety.
“What constitutes cute?” she finally asked in the Quiet Room.
“You.”
“That is not clothing.”
“Everything you wear becomes cute because you’re inside it.”
“That is biologically inaccurate.”
Alyx looked up from her manga. “Are you trying to make me provide a detailed description of exactly how attractive I find you in your office clothes?”
Isobel immediately returned to Thucydides.
On Saturday, Alyx brought her to a tiny Japanese restaurant followed by an independent cinema screening a romantic comedy about two women who accidentally exchanged luggage on a train.
Isobel watched the first half with grave concentration.
Then the heroines became trapped together at an inn where only one room remained available.
“There will be only one bed,” Alyx whispered.
“That would be a remarkable failure of hospitality management.”
There was only one bed.
Alyx squeezed Isobel’s hand.
Twenty minutes later, one heroine borrowed the other’s pajamas.
“Symbolically intimate,” Isobel whispered.
Alyx looked at her with delight.
By the final confession, both were crying.
“I knew they would reconcile,” Isobel said afterward, dabbing her eyes.
“You cried anyway.”
“The narrative execution remained effective despite the predictable structure.”
“You’re a romantic.”
“I am not.”
“You are. You’re a terrifyingly well-researched romantic.”
Outside the cinema, it began to rain.
Alyx opened her umbrella.
It was a very small umbrella.
They had to press close beneath it, Isobel’s arm around Alyx’s waist and Alyx’s head tucked against her shoulder.
“We shared an umbrella for forty-seven pages,” Alyx said.
“What?”
“That’s how you knew the secondary couple in my manga were in love.”
“Ah.”
“So what does this mean?”
Isobel looked down at her. Rain shimmered in Alyx’s hair. Her blue eyes were bright and mischievous, but beneath the teasing Isobel saw something delicate: the wish to be chosen again, explicitly and without doubt.
“It means,” Isobel said, “that I am completely in love with you.”
Alyx nearly dropped the umbrella.
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve never said completely before.”
“I wished to avoid overstating the evidence.”
“And now?”
“The evidence is overwhelming.”
Alyx kissed her beneath the inadequate umbrella while rain fell around them and several pedestrians navigated irritably past.
Dating changed their work domesticity in small but significant ways.
They developed Monday-night dinners, during which Isobel cooked real food and Alyx provided moral support by sitting on the counter and reading dramatic manga dialogue aloud.
They had Wednesday bookshop visits.
Friday became Date Night, alternating planners.
Isobel’s dates involved museums, quiet restaurants, architectural walks, historic houses, and once a lecture entitled Municipal Drainage in the Late Roman World.
Alyx enjoyed the lecture enormously because Isobel enjoyed it enormously.
Alyx’s dates involved films, elaborate picnics, street festivals, dessert cafés, and one disastrous pottery class during which Isobel attempted to create a small Greek kylix and Alyx produced something resembling a distressed turnip.
“It’s a cup,” Alyx insisted.
“It has no opening.”
“It is a conceptual cup.”
“What is the concept?”
“Love cannot be contained.”
Isobel kept it on her bookshelf.
They discovered that Alyx loved crowds only when she knew she could leave them. At festivals, Isobel would squeeze her hand twice—their private signal for Would you like to escape?
Alyx always loved her a little more for asking.
They discovered that Isobel could manage almost any social situation if Alyx did not abandon her in it. At office gatherings, Alyx stayed beside her, smoothly diverting questions and giving Isobel moments of quiet.
Isobel loved her a little more for noticing.
And they discovered that romance was not separate from their little domestic world at work. It was its continuation.
It was Isobel peeling the paper from Alyx’s straw because Alyx was trying to answer three messages at once.
It was Alyx warming Isobel’s cold hands between hers.
It was shared train rides, grocery lists, bookmarked pages, sleepy good-night calls, and the startling sweetness of hearing someone say, “I saw this and thought of you.”
Three months after their first official date, they returned to the botanical garden.
The lilies had faded. Autumn leaves floated on the pond.
They sat together on the same bench, Alyx’s blonde head on Isobel’s shoulder.
“So,” Alyx said, “are we definitely dating?”
Isobel closed her book.
“Yes.”
“No definitional uncertainty?”
“None.”
“Could you prove it?”
Isobel turned toward her.
“I reserve every Friday evening for you. Your preferred tea is in my kitchen. There are seventeen volumes of yuri manga on my shelves, although I purchased none of them. You possess a key to my apartment and have used it to introduce a plant you claim is named Lady Chlorophyll. I have attended a musical adaptation of a baking competition because you wished to see it. I know that you become overwhelmed when too many people want something from you, and you know I become frightened when I cannot prepare for what people expect of me.”
Alyx’s teasing expression softened.
“You are the first person I want to tell when something happens,” Isobel continued. “When I read something beautiful, I save it for you. When I plan my week, I imagine you inside it. When I imagine my future—”
She stopped.
Alyx slipped her fingers between Isobel’s.
“I’m inside that too?”
“Yes,” Isobel whispered. “Rather prominently.”
Alyx kissed her cheek.
“Then I accept your proof.”
They remained together beneath the autumn trees, their shoulders touching and their hands entwined.
After a while, Isobel reopened her book.
“What are you reading?” Alyx asked.
“Herodotus.”
“Any lesbians?”
“Not explicitly.”
“Any women sharing an umbrella for forty-seven pages?”
“Umbrellas were uncommon in his account.”
Alyx sighed. “Ancient literature needed better editors.”
Isobel kissed her golden head and pretended to continue reading.
She did not absorb another word.
The evidence, as she had already established, was overwhelming.
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