by Lucy Lambert
But that got me thinking about meeting him at the speed dating. How when I first sat down I also thought he looked familiar. Like I’d seen him on the news or on a magazine cover or something.
And now that I thought about it, we had shared a fair amount with each other. Where we came from, our families, school. But I still didn’t even know the name of the company he worked for.
I got the sense every now and then that there was something else. Something he wasn’t exactly lying about, but wasn’t telling me.
I wondered if that was the biggest factor contributing to my unease. My feeling that this was all too good. That the shoe was going to drop or the glass was going to shatter at any moment.
Why didn’t I know something as basic as where he worked?
ANOTHER WEEK WENT BY, and I noticed more and more how my life was basically a seesaw.
There was balance in the middle, of course. And on one end sat my work and professional life, and on the other my personal life.
At the moment, my personal life seemed to have put on a fair amount of weight. Because there was no such as thing balance, as I discovered.
Neil and I texted all week long. We also, and this was a pretty big first for me, spoke on the phone.
I’d get home from work, get out of my work clothes and into my much more comfortable PJ bottoms with an old Columbia shirt.
But not before first shooting Neil a text telling him I got home fine.
Then he’d always send something back.
I’m going to call you.
The first couple nights, Monday and Tuesday, I was so nervous, waiting for that call to come. The final three nights of the business week, excitement replaced the nerves and I often found myself staring impatiently at my Samsung, waiting for it to ring.
Of course, I always let it ring a couple times. It wouldn’t do to pick it up mid-first ring.
And we always had something to talk about, which amazed me. Talking so much, I figured we’d run into that wall of awkward silence as we both searched for something else to say.
If such a wall existed, we must have bypassed it.
On Friday night we went out again. I’d say on Saturday night, too. Except that we never really parted. I slept over again.
And I didn’t go into work on Saturday.
I have to say that again, because part of me doesn’t really believe that could have happened. It was a Saturday. The first Saturday since I started at the firm that I didn’t spend at least a couple of hours at the office, getting a head start on the next week’s work.
I stood in front of a big picture window in Neil’s living room, watching the treetops in the park sway and dance back and forth from the breeze. The lake sparkled in the distance, and scores of people walked, jogged, cycled, and picnicked their ways through the weekend.
A picture perfect Manhattan weekend with blue skies and clean sun glinting off the skyline.
I wore that white terrycloth robe again. With nothing on underneath.
“Maybe I should just pop in. Only for a little. The weekly analytics will be available from Google and Facebook...”
Neil came up behind me. I could sense him there, the solidity of his presence.
He swept the neck of my robe partway down my right shoulder so that he could lay a line of delicious kisses along the newly revealed skin.
“So go, then. If you can,” he whispered.
He’d just gotten out of the shower and finished a fresh shave. His chin and lips were smooth and warm against me, and I found the aroma of his aftershave intoxicating.
I could access some stuff from my phone. The company Twitter account, for one. I’d found an adorable picture of a huddle of fluffy kittens and shared it with the slogan from a laundry detergent we represented.
That counts as work, right?
I bit down on my bottom lip and looked into my translucent reflection on the window in front of me.
I should go. This is exactly what I worried would happen.
Then: I can stop. I can stop anytime I want to.
Except I didn’t want to go. Especially not back to work. That thought should have worried me a lot more than it did.
That it didn’t worry me to that extent was in itself worrying.
Although deep within I knew that I couldn’t stop. Those were the thoughts of an addict. And what was I addicted to? Neil, of course.
The way he kissed me, the way he caressed me, the way he took me to bed and the way he made me feel when he held me.
But not only that. I loved talking to him, spending time with him, enjoying a meal with him.
I wanted nothing less than to spend every moment, waking and otherwise, with him.
And that scared me. Scared me and excited me. It hadn’t been like that with any of my other, admittedly few, boyfriends.
“Are you?” I breathed, scarcely aware that I said anything at all.
“What?” he said, still a reassuring and solid presence behind me.
I thought first to say, Nothing, never mind, but then I realized that I wanted to know what he thought. Needed to know, even.
So I looked over my shoulder at him, unsure how to put it, “This is going to sound silly, like I’m still a teenager or something... But are we going out? Like, officially? Boyfriend-girlfriend officially?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“No hesitation? No let me get back to you, just Yes?” I said.
He wrapped his arms around me, hands folding just beneath my navel, and pulled me back against him. The smell of his freshly showered body, his freshly shaven face, washed over me in an intoxicating wave of masculine allure.
“I don’t beat around the bush, Rachel. Life’s too short to be anything other than direct, to play coy.”
“Good,” I said. How could I say anything else, wrapped in him as I was? “You smell good. Too good.”
He kissed my bared shoulder again. He untied the robe’s belt. We retreated from the window. Then he pushed the robe down from my shoulders and it pooled at my feet.
He shrugged out of his robe as well. Then he pulled me against him again, this time nothing between our bodies.
You still haven’t asked him about work, I thought. I’d been meaning to the whole week, but hadn’t. It was like an annoying loose thread on a favorite sweater. Sure, you could pull at it. But if you did the whole thing might start unravelling.
And I didn’t want this to unravel, what the two of us had.
But then he kissed me and I forgot. Or let myself forget.
Chapter 14
NEIL
“No,” I said, “You’ll finish as per our original agreement. End of discussion.”
I dropped the slick black phone back on its receiver and leaned back in my chair. My eyes strayed over to the corner windows and I looked out at the other side of Madison Avenue.
I used to live for this. This, at this specific instance, being pushing through an agreement with a rival to open up new inroads into developing markets.
Something that promised to add at least two points to the stock valuation by the end of this quarter.
But now all I wanted was her. Rachel. I wanted to look into her eyes, wanted to kiss her, wanted to hold her...
The Manhattan skyline became fuzzy and featureless while I concentrated on the image of Rachel.
Somewhere distant, I heard my office phone ringing. Except modern phones didn’t really ring anymore, did they?
No, it was more like some sort of tonal warble.
Who was it told me that? Oh, yes, Rachel. I found that we complemented each other so well, despite our lives being so different.
In any case, my phone continued warbling on my desk and I continued ignoring it.
“Neil? Neil! Neil!”
I looked up. Gigi stood in front of my desk, her chest and shoulders heaving and flushed. She had an expression pinching her face. Concern? No, definitely irritation.
“What is it?” I said.
�
��When your phone rings you need to answer it,” Gigi said, gesturing to the aforementioned phone. It was silent for the moment.
I shook my head, “No, I don’t. If I want you, I’ll call you.”
Gigi slunk around to my side of the desk and sat on it, her long hair hanging nearly all the way to the surface when she leaned back a little.
The act of sitting, though I suppose it was more of a lean, made her skirt ride some distance up her thighs.
She reeked of perfume, and it tickled my sinuses.
“And you do want me, don’t you?” Gigi said.
“No,” I said.
And I had to admit that I did take some pleasure in the expression of shock that twisted her usually beautiful face.
“What? Why not?” she said.
I stood up from my desk and walked over to the windows. I didn’t feel comfortable with her so close. And I also thought if I sat there much longer that aura of perfume around her would send me into a sneezing fit.
Still, I did turn to face her. Anything worth saying was worth saying to the other person’s face, if it all possible.
“For one, Gigi, I’m not interested in you. And two, I’m with someone else.”
Thunderheads gathered on her forehead for a moment before dissipating. She smiled. “Of course you're with someone else. For a week or two. Then you’ll be done with her. You always do it that way.”
“Not anymore,” I said.
I did have that reputation, what the media liked to call my insatiability.
However, I knew then that that wasn’t correct at all. It wasn’t that I wanted a new woman constantly. Or that I didn’t enjoy my past flings.
I knew then that I’d been searching, and it only took me a week or two with most women to know that they weren’t the ones for me.
But that’s changed now, hasn’t it? Because I’ve found the one I want.
The thunderheads returned to Gigi’s expression. “You’re not tired of your little worker bee yet?”
“No,” I said, then I picked up on the subtext, “You know about her?”
This time when she smiled I saw far too many teeth. The grin of some great and malicious predator. A lioness, out for the kill.
“Of course I know about Rachel!” she said, “You’ve had me schedule your time off, remember? Moving meetings and conference calls. Like this last weekend.”
“I did tell you to move those things around, but never because I was seeing someone. And I know I never said her name.”
“It came up. I know it did,” Gigi said, “Just like I know it’s not going to last between the two of you.”
That angered me. Made my heart pump hot and hard, my stomach clench up. “Get out of here, Gigi. Get out now.”
She paled at the expression on my face. I had to give credit where credit was due, however. She pushed away from my desk, straightened out her skirt, and left at a hurried walk rather than a run.
I watched the door for a moment before turning back to the window. I rested one wrist against the thick pane of the glass and looked down at the street, where the taxis and the pedestrians streamed in all directions.
I wasn’t angry just at Gigi, I knew. Also at myself. I was being foolish if I thought that I could keep hiding this from everyone. If Gigi knew, others would also find out.
And why haven’t you come clean about everything with Rachel?
I knew why. Because I didn’t want things to change. I mean, she saw where I lived, the type of car I drove. But she didn’t know everything.
And why?
Because I’m selfish and jealous, I knew. I wanted her all for myself. The real me, the one at home and out with her. Not the way that sat behind that big oak desk.
And I thought, feared more like, that if she knew everything that things between us would change. I didn’t want that.
But I also knew that I did need to tell her.
I dug my iPhone out of my pocket. I started typing everything up. One gigantic, infodump of a text.
I couldn’t send it, though. I held my thumb over the little delete icon until the whole message disappeared.
Anything worth saying is worth saying face to face.
So instead I sent a much briefer message.
I need to see you tonight. Big news. Say yes.
Looking back, I also should have read more into Gigi. Into her knowing. Into that predator expression.
I didn’t usually underestimate people, but in that moment of anger I underestimated her. It cost me.
Chapter 15
RACHEL
The bubble burst. The other shoe dropped. The cat leapt out of the bag and out the window.
The day at work started out just fine. I got in, woke my computer up, fired up Excel and brought up the latest dump of analytics data.
I even managed to get a good tweet in and I was pleased to see that our official Twitter account had gained a dozen followers since yesterday.
And of course I thought about Neil. About maybe seeing him again that night. My hand even started straying towards my phone.
Maybe he’s messaged me already, I thought.
At some point in the last week, things had begun to get serious. I thought so, at least. It wasn’t as though we sat down and had the talk. The one where we both say how much we like each other and then say we think we should be exclusive.
The talk never happened because it didn’t need to happen. Not only because I was definitely not seeing anyone else, but because everything went so smooth and naturally between us.
Soon you should tell him how you really feel.
It was a way I hadn’t felt for a guy in a long time. And I wasn’t even sure I was ready to feel that way for someone.
Still... I reached for my Samsung, hoping for maybe a quick pick-me-up of a text.
Instead the phone on my desk rang. Before I picked up the receiver I knew it would be Mr. Diehl’s secretary.
“Hello, Rachel Smith speaking,” I said. My stomach took about half a second flat to tie itself into a knot of Gordian proportions.
“I know,” the secretary said, “Mr. Diehl would like to speak with you right away.”
“I just received the weekend data. Surely he wants me to look through that first?”
“No. He’s expecting you, Ms. Smith.”
Before I could say anything else, she hung up on me. I pulled the receiver away from my face and looked at it while I chewed my lower lip.
I hung up the phone and pushed away from my desk, the castors of my chair rolling almost silently below me.
I started for his office.
And here I’d been thinking, hoping more like, that I’d found that mythical work-life balance people talked about so much.
That it was okay to be a little less productive at work if it meant being happier as a person.
That maybe—maybe—it wasn’t a huge mistake to take up with Neil the way I had. The way that one little, annoying voice in the back of my head kept muttering, I told you so, I told you so.
But Mr. Diehl never called anyone into his office for good news. At least, he never called me into his office for good news.
“Go right in,” his secretary said.
“Oh, yes. Right, thanks,” I replied. I’d been so deep in my thoughts that my feet took me over by themselves.
I’d been wrong about my stomach, too. The knot tightened when I reached for the latch. I paused there, fingers wrapped around the cool steel. I needed a moment.
“He’s expecting you right away,” his secretary said.
I looked over my shoulder and saw her watching me. Just beyond her, her computer monitor displayed some sort of cute cat YouTube video.
“Yes, right, sorry. I just was trying to remember if I logged out of the system,” I said.
I managed a smile somehow. Even though on the inside I bristled. She answers the phone and watches videos all day and doesn’t come in on weekends and she looks at me like I’m the one not doing enough.
As usual, Mr. Diehl sat behind his desk. This time, a tight smile pulled at his cheeks and he steepled his fingers in front of that smile, elbows resting on the desktop.
I grabbed the back of the empty chair in front of his desk, meaning to pull it out so I could sit.
“I didn’t tell you to sit, Ms. Smith,” he said.
“Oh, okay.”
So I stood behind the chair. My knees started trembling a little. My throat went dry. That kind of dry that requires a big swallow to moisten again.
It was so quiet in there that he’d definitely hear a swallow like that. And he’d judge.
So I suffered the dry throat. In fact, we stood there regarding each other for a solid minute. Each second passed with acute awareness.
What is going on?
“Is there a problem?” I said finally. My voice was froggy from the dryness in my throat.
He spread his hands, palms up, “Is there?”
In my imagination, I saw Devil-me and Angel-me appear on opposite shoulders.
“Rachel, remember, you want to impress him. As soon as he sees that you are capable of doing your job, and doing it well, he’ll let up on you. So don’t say anything rash,” Angel-me said, her halo twinkling.
“What a load! The guy hates women! Don’t you remember what Neil said? He’s never going to cut you any slack. He’s just gonna take and take until you got nothing left and then smile when he fires you! Don’t take any of this double-talk crap,” Devil-me said, waving her pitchfork for emphasis.
I grabbed onto the back of that empty chair with both hands and squeezed my fingers into the padded executive leather of it. I tried smiling, hoping it was a bit more genuine than it felt.
“Mr. Diehl, sir, I know I haven’t been coming in after hours as much as I used to, but if you check I’m sure you’ll find that I’m still technically ahead of schedule on pretty much every assignment...”