Dirty Boss (An Office Romance) (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  I laughed at that and tried to keep my focus on Brock and keep Alexa’s off of Jeff. I had my hand on her leg and I was tapping my fingers in time to the music. If Jeff opened his mouth again, I was going to ask her to dance.

  “So what do you do, Alexa?” Jeff asked her. That was good, steer the conversation her way. She could hold her own and I seriously doubted that she had any skeletons in the closet.

  “I’m still in school,” she said.

  “Oh, a smart girl,” he said. “Good for you. I should a went to school…or I should a become a fighter like Ian. Then I could say screw my scholarship and make a ton of money anyways.” I wanted to punch him in the face. Alexa looked at me and still smiling she said, “What is he talking about?”

  I tried to smile too but I was pissed, “They’re all under the impression that I’m a UFC fighter and I’m making bank,” I told her. She had her brow furrowed and I knew that wasn’t what she was asking. Jeff knew it too and for whatever reason, he was all over me tonight.

  “Ian gave his scholarship up. Did he tell you that? He was a smart little nerd until what was it, sophomore year?”

  “Alexa doesn’t want to hear all this old stuff, Jeff. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  “It’s okay,” she said, “I’d like to hear more about you when you were young.” She was being genuine and I felt like an even bigger ass hole for wanting her not to know.

  “I thought you two knew each other for years,” Danielle said, confused about why Alexa didn’t know more about me. This shit was getting out of hand fast and Alexa was going to have more questions than I was prepared to answer.

  “You want to dance?” I asked her. There was a Tu Pac song playing overhead. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “No thanks.” She turned back to Danielle and said, “I knew his family well. Ian wasn’t around much when I was there.”

  “You must not have gone over much on Sundays,” Jeff said.

  “Drop it Jeff, now!” I snapped too quickly and too loudly. That just made Alexa more curious.

  “Why? What happened on Sundays?” she asked.

  “Visiting day,” Jeff said. I was picturing him with no front teeth after I knocked them both out. He was already ugly; it might actually help his look. Alexa turned to me and said, “What’s he talking about?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can talk about it later. Besides, Jeff never knows what the hell he’s talking about.”

  “Aw, come on Ian. It’s fun stuff. She has a sense of humor, right? Why are you so uptight all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not uptight and none of that was fun.”

  “None of what, Ian?” Alexa asked again. Her voice was low and her questions were meant only for me, but Jeff kept answering them. “Visiting day, where?” she asked.

  “County lock-up for disorderly juveniles,” Jeff said. “Ian was a guest there.”

  “You were in jail?” she whispered that.

  “It wasn’t really jail,” I said.

  Jeff laughed and looked at Russ. “You remember that nice buzz cut he was sporting when he got out, that was priceless.”

  Alexa was still looking at me. I finally said, “I spent a couple of weeks in juvenile hall. I got caught shoplifting because these shit heads all took off and left me holding the bag.”

  “Hey, we came and visited you,” Mike said, laughing. “And don’t act all innocent, it was your idea.”

  “Yeah, you wanted to see who could take the most stuff in the shortest amount of time, remember?” Jeff said. “All I had on me was a Mars bar, man. I wasn’t going’ down for a Mars bar. What was it you had on you…like over five hundred dollars in merchandise?”

  I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even look at Alexa’s face. The worst was yet to come though when Russ said, “Leave him alone, man. He had to pay for his Roids somehow.” Mother fucker!

  Brock, thinking he was helping said, “Come on guys, leave him alone. Seriously, out of all of us, who turned out to be the most successful so far?”

  “True that,” Jeff said. “Like I said, proof that you don’t need no stinkin’ school and no stinkin’ scholarship to make the bank. Maybe if someone would have expelled me…”

  “Shut up Jeff! Just shut the fuck up!” I looked at Alexa and said, “Let’s dance.”

  She didn’t look like she wanted to, but she got up and went with me to the dance floor. The song was slow and she slipped her arms around my neck and I put mine around her waist and pulled her into me. Her posture was stiff and I could tell she was bothered by what had been said at the table. Hoping to make it better I said, “I really wasn’t a delinquent. I just made some bad choices…all of which I paid for.” She just nodded and we finished the rest of our dance in silence. When the song was over I said, “Do you want to go home?” she looked upset.

  “No,” she said. “It’s early yet.” That wasn’t the reply I was hoping for. It was early. Early enough for Jeff to have enough time to ruin all of my chances with this girl that I was becoming very attached to. We went back over to the table and there was a fresh drink in each of our spots. Jeff said, “I felt bad for giving you a hard time, drink up.” We thanked him, but he couldn’t leave it at that, as usual. “The truth is, Ian is my hero,” he said, looking at Alexa. “When we were freshmen, he wanted to wrestle. We’d all wrestled in middle school, but high school was a different story. These guys were serious and they were huge and we were just puny little runts.”

  Alexa looked at me and smiled, “I can’t picture you puny,” she said. I knew what was coming when Russ opened his mouth, “He wasn’t that way for long. All he needed was a little bit of chemical persuasion.”

  She didn’t bother looking at me that time. She had put together his earlier comment about the Roids with the chemical persuasion…I could see it in her eyes. She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. It was stupid of me not to just tell her all of this before she met these guys. It probably would have been less shocking that way.

  “What did you gain that first year, Ian? Wasn’t it something like fifty pounds?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this shit,” I told him again. My tone was more firm and they still didn’t get it.

  “Remember when coach asked him how he was bulking up so fast and he said that he just ate a lot while he was studying?” Mike asked. He and Jeff laughed and then Jeff said, “Yeah, but he was winning matches so coach didn’t really care what the answer was. Hell, he probably would have even supplied them if Ian ran out.”

  Alexa was quietly sipping her drink. These idiots went on about my shady past for another half hour before they got tired of it and started razzing someone else. The damage was done though; I could see it in Alexa’s pretty green eyes. Later on in the evening Russ got on a tangent again and went on about how I didn’t give a shit that they expelled me and how jealous he was because he had to go to school and I got to work out every day. It just got worse and worse.

  Chapter Eight

  Ian

  After a few more drinks, they all decided they wanted to go get something to eat. I tried to beg off, but I got the feeling Alexa was suddenly avoiding being alone with me. She wasn’t really saying anything, to anyone, but when I said I thought we’d pass she said, “Do I get a vote?”

  “Of course,” I told her. “I’m sorry, you didn’t say anything so I thought you didn’t want to go.”

  “I’m kind of hungry,” she said.

  “Okay, we’ll go.”

  Danielle was their designated driver so she drove all of those shitheads and Alexa hadn’t drank anything stronger than Pepsi, so she drove us. We met up at a little café outside of town that we used to go to a lot when we were teenagers and hanging out way too late on the streets. It was a place that stirred up a lot of memories for me because there was a while there that I didn’t really have a permanent place to live. During that time, the owner here would let me come in at night and sweep floors and clean windows, stuff like t
hat in exchange for food. Brock knew a lot of that and Jeff knew some. I was afraid that being there would just give them more fodder to make Alexa think the worst of me. I can already tell that the respect she held for me was waning. She had driven all the way out here without saying a single word to me unless I asked her a question and then all I got was a one word answer.

  When we drove up in front of the café and she started to jump out of the car I said, “Hey wait a sec, please. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing,” she said. It was reminiscent of the night Kristie text me.

  “Alexa, I can tell that something’s wrong. Tell me what it is, please. Stop saying “nothing” when it is very obviously, “something.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m just hungry.” Her voice was terse and impatient with me.

  “My friends can be assholes sometimes…” I started. I know that was a good example of me trying to put the responsibility I should be taking off on someone else…but I was desperate.

  “They’ve been nice to me. I’m just hungry, Ian, really.”

  She started to reach for the door handle again and I reached for her. She flinched. She fucking flinched like my touch was taboo or something. “That’s it, Alexa…what the hell is it?” I sounded pissed, but I was just frustrated. I had a pretty good idea what it was, but I wanted her to tell me. I didn’t want to put ideas in her head.

  “Don’t talk to me like that, please.” She said that nicely, but that fire was raging behind those green eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sincerely. “I’m just frustrated. Why won’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Why won’t you just let it go?”

  “Because the last time you insisted everything was fine it was three days before I saw you again. I don’t want to have to worry all the whether you’re mad at me or not. Please just talk to me. We talk about everything, don’t we?” In hindsight, that might not have been the right way to put it. She looked at me with that fire spitting out of her eyes and she said, “Apparently not. I heard a lot of things tonight that we’ve never talked about.”

  “Being in jail? Is that it? You’re upset about me shoplifting? It was juvenile hall and I was in middle school. I haven’t ever stolen anything since.”

  “No Ian. I could care less about that,” she said. “They’re waiting and I’m hungry. Everything is fine. Let’s drop it.” She got out of the car and closed the door.

  Shit! I got out and followed her. She was walking with long strides and I almost had to jog to keep up. We got inside and were shown to a big booth. My friends all had pretty good buzzes going by now and they were talking and laughing. Alexa was staring at the menu and I had no fucking idea what to say. After the waitress took our orders Brock said, “You think Dean can get me in for a session this week?”

  “Probably,” I said, relieved to have something normal to talk about. “Call him and see. If not, let me know and I’ll work out with you one day.”

  “Coach Sievert asked about you the other day,” Mike told me.

  “Oh yeah, where’d you see him?”

  “I ran into him at the mall,” Mike said with a laugh. “He was following his wife around while she shopped. He looked miserable.”

  I laughed; Alexa was now reading the sugar packets. “If you see him again, tell him I said hello. He was the best math teacher I ever had.”

  “True that,” Jeff said. That was his favorite saying. “I loved it when the coaches taught a class. They didn’t give a shit if you could add or subtract, as long as you could carry a ball they’d give you an “A.” Everyone at the table agreed with that except Alexa. She was perusing the dessert menu.

  “That’s probably how you got that scholarship, huh Ian?” Russ said. “You just took all the classes that coach taught.”

  Alexa picked up her head then and said, “What was the scholarship for?”

  I didn’t say anything right away so of course my helpful friend Jeff said, “He was given an academic scholarship to MIT…in the tenth grade.”

  “Yeah, why the hell he hung out with the likes of us is beyond me,” Russ said. I was just wondering that myself.

  “He didn’t hang out with you until high school,” Brock said with a laugh. “Remember, you used to all think he was a little nerd in elementary and most of middle school. I was his only real friend.”

  “Are you guys all having fun at my expense tonight for a reason?” I finally asked.

  “We’re just messing with you,” Brock said, ever the peacemaker. “We watched you fight the other day and realized how good you’ve gotten. We’re jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Jeff said, “Of anything but his girlfriend.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Jeff,” I told him. Alexa had gone back to her reading. She’d found a bottle of Tabasco sauce that looked interesting.

  Our food came and we ate and talked. Alexa just ate, and not much for a girl who claimed that she was starving. When we finished, she finally said yes when I asked her if she was ready to go. She told everyone how nice it had been to meet them and we left. When we got to the car I said, “I’m sober. I can drive.” Without saying a word, she took the keys out of her purse, handed them to me and got into her side of the car. I was getting really annoyed with the silent treatment. It seemed a little juvenile to me. Why not just confront me and get it over with? I got into my side and said, “You’re still not going to tell me what’s wrong?” She didn’t bother answering that. She just sat silently.

  We drove back across with neither of us saying a word. When we got to town and I started to turn towards my apartment she said, “No, I want to go home.” It was a last ditch effort on my part. I was hoping if we were alone, she’d talk to me.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously,” she said. I turned towards her Dad’s, but about halfway there I turned into the parking lot of the park and stopped the car. “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’m going to take you home, but Alexa don’t I at least deserve to know what it is that you’re angry with me about? I’m going to go home and drive myself crazy trying to figure it out. Please, just tell me so that I don’t have to do that.”

  She looked at me then and I saw disappointment in her eyes where respect used to be. “You had a scholarship…to MIT?”

  “Yeah.”

  “MIT offered you a full scholarship when you were in the 10th grade?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t something I told people. Telling someone usually required a “why” explanation and I wasn’t up to that.

  “Do you know how rare that is? They are not free with their money at that school. They’re very selective who they let in and who they offer support to. It’s an honor just to be on the list. What are you, some kind of genius?”

  That’s what the school used to tell my mother, before they tired of me. “I’m good at math,” I told her.

  “If they offered you a scholarship when you were fifteen years old, you were a lot better than good. But you didn’t go to MIT because you got expelled from high school your sophomore year? They never let you come back?”

  I hesitated, but knew it was stupid to even consider lying to her. She already knew. She was only clarifying what she’d heard tonight. “Yes, I got expelled and they pulled the scholarship. No, I wasn’t allowed to go back.”

  “What in the world was that bad? What did you get expelled for?”

  “You heard them all talking about it tonight, Alexa. Why are you trying to make me say it?”

  “Because I need to hear it from you. I should have heard it from you already?”

  “When? When we were just hanging out? When we were having sex? Or maybe, at my sister’s funeral?” I know I shouldn’t have said that, but the way she was approaching the whole thing was pissing me off a little bit…or maybe it was all a defense mechanism. She started to reach for the door and I said, “What are you doing?” It was full dark and we were at a city park.

  “I’ll cal
l my dad to come get me,” she said. “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. I can look at the facts given to me and.”

  “I was on the wrestling team. I was skinny and it didn’t seem to matter what I did, I couldn’t gain weight. I was a great wrestler but I was in the wrong class because of the weight thing. I met a guy who introduced me to performance enhancing drugs.”

  “Performance enhancing? You can’t even say the word?”

  “Steroids, Alexa, okay? Is that what you needed to hear? I was fifteen years old. I was a skinny ass nerd that got his ass kicked at every turn. I found this stuff that miraculously made me big enough that people didn’t mess with me any longer. I didn’t know any better. I took it.”

  “What was it?” she said, still not willing to let it go. She was now looking at me like I was a drug addict.

  “He used to mix us a “cocktail”, he called it. It was testosterone and nandrolone and anastozole.” I told her. “He was the grown-up Adele.

  She raised her eyebrow again and said, “How long did you take them before you got caught?”

  “I don’t know exactly…maybe six months.”

  “Did you go to rehab after that?” Shit! One big miserable life story in one sitting here tonight. I might still punch Jeff in the mouth.

  “For a minute,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I left early. But, I am not now nor have I ever been an addict. I took the steroids with one specific goal in mind: to bulk up. I stopped taking them when I got expelled…”

  “Did you win?” she said it so low that I barely heard her.

  “What? Did I win what?”

  “Your wrestling matches. Did you win them…the way you win your fights now?”

  “Yes, I won. But if you’re insinuating that I’m using something now…”

  “I’m not making any assumptions, Ian. But based on the facts of what you told me…you cheated. You cheated, Ian. You cheated all of those guys who were doing it the right way.”