The elevator stopped on seven

She pressed eight. He pressed twelve. After that neither of them said anything, and the silence took on a weight that neither had asked for.

It was Thursday, nearly eleven at night. The building was one of those offices that grow too large after hours. Lit corridors with nobody in them, air conditioning still running out of habit, a cleaner on the fourth floor with a radio turned low. She was coming from a meeting that had run three hours longer than it should have. He was coming from the legal floor, jacket folded over his arm, tie already loosened.

She knew the face. Not the name.

Seven months of passing him in the coffee queue downstairs, at the machine that grinds fresh and takes forty seconds a cup. He ordered the same thing every time and never took sugar. And always that look held two seconds longer than politeness requires.

She had started counting the seconds around the third month. She never told anyone she was counting.

The elevator rose to seven and stopped.

It didn't open. The lights flickered once, decided to stay on, and the number on the panel froze at 7.

"Perfect," he said.

His voice was lower than she had imagined. She had imagined his voice. That was another thing she never told anyone.

He pressed the intercom. A woman on the other end explained, with the patience of someone who has explained it many times, that maintenance would arrive in twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. He thanked her, let go of the button, and the two of them stood staring at the closed door as if it might open out of embarrassment.

"Twenty minutes," she repeated.

"Maybe thirty."

She laughed. It was short, almost soundless, and he turned his head to look. It was the first time they had looked at each other straight on, with no coffee queue between them, no other people behind, no ready-made reason for being there.

There was a laminated inspection certificate on the side wall, expired in April, signed by an engineer called Wanderley. She read the name three times because she needed something to look at.

The elevator was small. She had never noticed how small. With her back to the wall she could feel the air he moved when he shifted his weight.

"Sofia," she said, and held out her hand.

"I know."

She stopped, hand in the air.

"It's on your badge," he added, and this time it was his turn to smile. "Daniel."

She took his hand. It was an ordinary grip, of ordinary length. What was not ordinary was that she didn't let go at the right moment, and he did nothing about it.

The intercom crackled again at quarter past eleven. A different voice, a man's this time, said the engineer was on his way across town and asked them not to force the door.

"We're in no hurry," Daniel answered.

He let go of the button. Then he looked at her the way you look when you realise, a beat too late, what you have just said.

She didn't correct him.

Something happens when two people are shut into a small space and know that nobody is coming in. It isn't the attraction. The attraction was already there; seven months of coffee queue had handled that. It's the permission. The world outside, with all its rules about colleagues and two-second looks, had stayed on the other side of the door.

She took off her heels. It was the first gesture with no excuse attached.

"If it's thirty minutes," she said, sitting down on the elevator floor, back against the wall, "I'm not spending it standing up."

He watched her for a moment. Then he folded his jacket, set it on the floor beside her, and sat. His shoulder came to rest less than a hand's width from hers. Neither of them moved away.

"Seven months," he said.

"Seven months what?"

"You know."

She did know. She turned her face towards him and found his already turned. They were close enough for her to see that one of his eyes was darker on one side. A birthmark in the iris, the kind of thing you only see from six inches away.

"You never said anything."

"Neither did you."

"I was waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

She considered the honest answer and decided to give it.

"A broken elevator."

He moved first, but only just. His hand found her face the way you touch something you have looked at for a long time without being allowed to touch it. Slowly. Almost asking.

She answered before the question finished.

The first kiss was careful. The second was not careful at all.

She felt cold metal at her back and the heat of him at her front, and the contrast was enough to pull out of her a sound she hadn't made in years. His hand slid down the side of her dress, stopped at her waist, and held. Hers had already found the first button of his shirt and settled the matter.

Twenty minutes is a long time. Thirty is an eternity. They found out about both numbers.

Wanderley's certificate ended up crooked on the wall at some point and neither of them straightened it.

At some point she laughed against his mouth. At the absurdity, at the place, at seven months thrown away in a coffee queue. He laughed with her and didn't stop what he was doing, and the laughing turned into something else, and the something else took over what was left of the time.

The elevator released at eleven forty-two.

There was time. She put her heels back on, he did up his buttons in the wrong order and corrected them, and when the doors opened on the eighth floor they were both standing, a metre apart, breathing almost normally.

The engineer was waiting in the corridor with a toolbox and a sleepless face. He looked at neither of them. He stepped into the elevator, pressed something behind the panel and muttered about a relay.

She stepped out. Before the doors closed, she turned.

"There's a coffee queue tomorrow," she said.

"I know."

"Don't look for two seconds."

He held the door with his hand.

"How long, then?"

She thought about it. Then she shrugged, and her smile was the last thing he saw before the metal closed between them.

"Find out."