Dating By Numbers. Jennifer Lohmann

got a protein bar in my desk. I’ll be fine.”

      “A protein bar isn’t lunch. It’s barely a snack.”

      “It’s not lunch or a snack. It’s desperation, but it tastes vaguely like a brownie, so it’s okay.”

      He laughed. “Right. Well, here,” he said, leaning over the arm of the chair and digging around in the bag at his feet.

      Curious, Marsie sat up a little taller. She knew she wasn’t able to hide the surprise on her face when he set a small salad in a to-go container on her desk, then followed it with a roll, a pat of butter, a fork and a little container of dressing. “What’s this?” she asked stupidly.

      “Salad.”

      “Is it for me?” She felt like her brain was running two beats behind. She hated that feeling.

      “Technically, it was for me. But a brownie protein bar is an oxymoron, not lunch.”

      “It’s a small salad,” she said, still not able to stop the idiocy from coming out of her mouth. He was giving her salad?

      He gave her a long, searching look, probably trying to decide how she ever managed to get a PhD in anything. Then he shook his head, reached down again and pulled out a sandwich. “Ham and cheese,” he said as he set it on her desk. “You can have this instead if you want. But not both. I need lunch, too.” He was smiling, so she didn’t think he was angry. “I’ve got a bottle of Coke in the bag, as well.”

      “Coffee and coke?” she asked with a raised brow.

      “A man’s got to get his addictions covered somehow. You can have the coffee if you want, but I like mine different than you like yours.”

      “The Coke is good.” She’d left her meeting with the hounds of work on her tail and had forgotten that all she’d wanted the whole time had been a cold drink. Now that Jason offered it, a cold Coke sounded like the best thing in the world. More important than either a salad or a sandwich.

      The bag rustled, then a sweaty bottle of soda appeared on her desk. She reached out for the salad, too, slow in her lingering disbelief. “And the salad is good, too. I don’t know what surprised me more, that you have a salad for lunch or that you’re giving it to me.”

      He shrugged and set his sandwich on her desk. “I’m giving you a salad because a protein bar isn’t food.”

      “I’m still going to eat it.” She pulled the salad across the desk toward her. The salad was a much better lunch than her nonbrownie. She often forgot to eat lunch, and her workday was almost always worse off for it.

      “You can call it a crispy brownie and I’ll call it dessert and we’ll both pretend.”

      She chuckled. “Okay. Want to split my dessert?”

      “Ugh. No.” He shook his head. “I had a salad for my lunch because I’m not twenty-five anymore, and I need the vegetables more than I need the potato chips.” He unwrapped the waxed paper around his sandwich, and Marsie realized she must be hungrier than she’d imagined, because his sandwich looked delicious and she didn’t like ham and cheese.

      “Well, thank you.” She cracked the plastic container open and poured dressing on the greens. The dressing was white. It could be Caesar or ranch or blue cheese. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. It wasn’t food that had been sitting in her desk drawer for months. “This was sweet of you. Want something to drink other than coffee, since you gave me your Coke?”

      “Whatcha got?”

      “Warm Diet Coke,” she said, which was apparently enough to stop him as he was lifting his lunch to his mouth.

      “Warm?” he said.

      “Warm,” she confirmed. “I love Diet Coke. Though it’s not as good when warm. So I keep cans under my desk. In an emergency, it’s there for me to drink, but the fact that it’s not cold keeps me from drinking it on days like today, when I would falsify data in exchange for a cold drink.”

      “I’m glad it didn’t come to that.” He took a bite of his sandwich, chewing while she stabbed at her salad with a fork. She was taking a bite when he swallowed. “I guess that makes some amount of sense.”

      “Only some?”

      The warm soda fizzed when he popped the can open. “Some. I’m still going to drink it, but it makes about as much sense as me justifying an extra beer at the bar on Friday nights because I had salad for lunch.”

      “Oh,” she said, laughing as she picked up another forkful of salad. “So that’s the real story behind the salad. It’s not about the chips, it’s about the beer.”

      “Well,” he said, hedging. His trim beard hid a small dimple when he smiled. She’d never been close enough to notice before. “It’s really about both. To be honest, the salad allows me to justify all sorts of things.”

      “Yeah? Like what?” she asked, still charmed by the small dimple.

      “Like this Diet Coke.” His brows were raised as he lifted the can to his lips and took a sip. “Hey, this isn’t so bad actually. I think I like it better warm. It’s better than warm water, which is what I was going to drink along with my coffee, since you took my Coke.”

      “Where were you going to eat your lunch? Obviously not here.”

      “Wish I was there instead?” One of the things she had always liked about Jason was that she could hear the teasing in his voice. She rarely had to wonder if he was serious. It made all their interactions easier for her.

      But she still said, “Of course not.” Teasing voices didn’t mean there weren’t hurt feelings. She knew all about faking that everything was okay. “Curious, is all.”

      “I was going to eat in my car, spiking my blood with caffeine from Coke and coffee, and listening to my audiobook. But this is better.”

      “Yes,” she agreed. “Thank you for the salad. I appreciate it.”

      “There’s a cafeteria in the basement, you know, for when you don’t have lunch. We’ve gone to get coffee there.”

      “I know.” She pushed the last of her salad greens around to get them coated in dressing, then speared them up on her fork.

      “What’s your reason for not going down to get a salad or sandwich? I’m hoping it’s as fun as your reason for keeping warm Diet Coke in your office.”

      Fun. People almost never used that word to describe her, and Jason using it made her smiley inside. “It’s not. Fun, I mean. Or convoluted, which is the other way to describe my soda reasoning. But when it gets to be early afternoon and I’ve not eaten lunch yet and I have a pile of work on my desk, it seems easier to keep working than to quit and feed myself. After all, dinner’s getting closer.”

      “Well, I’m a three-squares-a-day kind of guy. Usually I pack my lunch. You’re lucky.”

      “Yes.” She closed the lid of her salad container and picked up the roll. “Want to share?”

      “No, that’s all yours.”

      “Thanks.” She didn’t have a knife, so she used the back of a fork to spread the butter around.

      He was throwing away his trash when a flash on her phone screen distracted them both. He probably recognized the icon, and she didn’t want to deal with it right now, or hear his questions, so she slapped her hand on the phone and flipped it over, screen side down.

      “I know what that is,” he said. “You don’t have to hide it.”

      “It’s not important,” she lied. The paucity of responses she got in online dating meant that every small response took on a magnitude that far outweighed its actual importance. She knew it, and still that icon called to her. Look at me! I might be the one!

      “I’d