by Daryl Banner
Thank you for the apology.
So carefully, guardedly worded for a timid young man. So strict. So respectful.
I understand and will cooperate by maintaining a professional manner in the office.
In the office? Only in the office? Is that a hint at something, or am I simply desperate to read something secret between the lines of his text?
Maybe a part of me is disappointed in his compliance.
Maybe I wanted him to say something like, “Fuck you, boss man. I’m going to act however I want around you. I can’t resist you, and you can’t resist me.”
“Professional,” I state, quashing out all my dirty thoughts with that one word. “Professional.” I’ll say it again and again until I get that damned kid out of my head.
And Trevor’s last line: See you tomorrow.
Indeed, he will. My cock throbs in reply.
I’m so fucked.
15
Trevor is employed at Horny Hell.
Professional.
I take the stapled packets to Rebekah and smile curtly when she thanks me in her clipped, nasally voice. I keep my posture, walk with a purpose from one end of the office to the other, and staple twenty more packets with conviction.
Professional.
Elijah asks me how I’m doing, and I give him a polite nod and help him with his task of cross-checking names against contact emails, because two sets of eyes are better than one, and we need to strive for perfection here at Gage Communications.
That’s right. I’m a walking, talking infomercial for the ideal employee. I’ve become that bubbly morning person with too much caffeine who everyone probably can’t stand.
But this is who I have to be to maintain my professionalism. Because deep down beneath this pretty face of perfection, there is one seriously repressed individual.
A seriously repressed—horny—individual.
And he’s losing his mind.
When Mr. Gage arrives, everyone whispers, as they always do. The computer wizzes straighten their glasses. The buzzing birds with memos fly much more determinedly. The employees in the break room cut their break by fifteen minutes just to hop back to work and put on an ear-to-ear smile that reads: I love working here.
And I don’t even lift my face from the computer screen where I’m tallying comments from Facebook posts to gage how well the client’s fans react, since Mr. Gage’s team wrote them.
Nope. I don’t even flinch, in fact. I’m so proud of that.
When Mr. Gage passes so close that one of my elbows feels the breeze of his passing body, I simply recount the number of likes from the post I was just staring at without so much as a tiny glance in his direction.
Professional.
I can do fucking professional.
Ben keeps his promise too, if a text message on a phone can be called a promise. Other than his first entrance, I don’t see a bit of him for the rest of the day. Even when I pass by his door, I find it shut and the blinds of his floor-to-ceiling office windows drawn.
“Really keepin’ to himself,” notes Elijah with a smirk.
I jump, not having noticed Elijah sneak up to me. “Who?”
“Boss man. You’ve been staring at his door.”
“No, I haven’t.” I shrug him off and return my focus to the article I’m analyzing about one of Mr. Gage’s clients.
“Don’t worry,” Elijah assures me with a nudge. “You’ll get your chance to impress him. I’m pretty certain you’ll get picked to sit in on another meeting.”
I sigh. “What are you even busy doing, Elijah? Staring at me all day?”
“You’re just so dang pretty,” he shoots back, poking me in the cheek teasingly. I swat his hand away, annoyed. “So I was thinking we could grab some Thai tonight on the way home. There’s this place—it’s just a block out of our way—that Ashlee told me about. She goes there all the time.”
Now it’s my turn to play with him. “Ashlee and you seem to be sharing a lot of … secrets … lately.”
“Nah,” he grunts, shaking his head. “She’s not my type.”
I snort. “She’s 100% your type. She couldn’t be any more your type. She’s smart, pretty, and has green eyes.”
“Well, then, I’m not her type.”
“She doesn’t like her guys good-looking but kinda dumb?”
He shoves at me for that, then straightens his face right up after swallowing his chuckles. “Honestly, I think it’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“To get involved with someone in the workplace,” he finishes.
I train my eyes to the article in front of me, unblinkingly. My throat stiffens, as if suddenly incapable of swallowing at all.
“I mean, I’m not judging you for whoever you were gettin’ it on with in the bathroom,” he quickly adds. “Like, you totally need some tail, no joke. But I—”
“It wasn’t me,” I insist for the twelfth time since yesterday.
“Dude, I could pick you out of a lineup by just your ankles. That was totally you in the bathroom. And I don’t care who it was you were doing the porky-pork with.”
“Elijah!” I hiss, my face going red.
“Unless it was Brady.” He cringes. “Then I hope you porked him good and that’s the reason he’s walking bowlegged today.”
“Good God, no.”
“Alright. Then I hope he porked someone else and got crabs.” Elijah pats me on the back heartily. “Anyway, workplace romance never works out. Bad idea. Hope it was just a one-time thing. Besides, we don’t want to look bad in front of the boss.”
I close my eyes, feeling my chest tighten with frustration.
“Again, no judgment,” he adds, “but if you want to squirrel up some sexy nuts for the winter, I’ll take you to the club again. If you promise to keep it out of the office, I will too. No Ashlee for me. And no Brandon for you.”
“Oh my God, it wasn’t Brandon,” I hiss at him, lowering my head.
“Hah! I knew it was you in the bathroom. Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.” He slaps my back again, then calls out over his shoulder as he walks away, “Get ready for Thai in an hour, bro!”
For the next however many minutes, I’m cringing over and over again as I replay my roommate’s heavy words in my totally-not-guilty brain. Keep it out of the office. Workplace romance never works out. Hope it was just a one-time thing.
… Bad idea …
I’ve never kept secrets from Elijah. Not once. Not ever. And now not only is my secret about Benjamin and I sitting on me like a sexy heavyweight wrestler folding me into a Boston crab, but Elijah’s made a deal with me not to pursue anyone in the office.
Except I’m not seeing Benjamin. We’re being professional. There is nothing happening anymore.
I straighten my posture. There’s nothing to feel guilty about, I tell myself. You just have six and a half more weeks of this glorious place to endure, and that’s six and a half weeks where I’ll keep my hands to myself and prove exactly how disciplined I am.
The clock taunts me minute by minute.
Tick tock tick tock.
The second the clock hits five, Rebekah poofs into existence in front of my desk. “Trevor. I need you to do me a very important favor, and I am not asking this of you lightly.”
I blink. My messenger bag is already over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“I was asked to drop these files off at Mr. Gage’s,” she explains while patting a small box, “but I have something of a little family emergency and can’t swing by his place. I have to leave now. You are the only intern who doesn’t give me the creepy vibe. Can you please drop these off to him?”
I’m frozen in place, my thumb still hooked on the strap of my messenger bag. “I … um …” I gesture at his office. “You want me to leave … this box … on his desk?”
“No, hon. He left half an hour ago. I need you to drop this off at his apartment. Here, I’ll leave the address,” she says, picking up a pen and scribbling on a
nearby post-it.
My heart is in my throat. I stare, wide-eyed, as she proceeds to jot down the address—the address which I totally don’t need.
Rebekah slaps the post-it atop the box. “Just leave it at his door. He’s the only one on the top floor. He owns the whole thing. Thank you, Trevor.”
And then she’s off in a hurry, her heels clacking along the tile as she goes. I stare after her for a full minute, my protests dancing on my lips, unspoken.
“But …” I finally say, no one there at all to hear the tiny word.
My phone vibrates on the desk. I look down at it.
ELIJAH
You coming down, dude?? I’m waiting.
And very, very, very starved.
I bite my lip, my insides turning to ice. Is this really happening? Is the universe playing a joke on me that a ton of little scheming demons and Cupid-like half-gods are laughing hysterically at? I feel like the butt of some joke no one’s ballsy enough to say to my face.
I glance at Mr. Gage’s office, which I just now notice is dark. I didn’t even see him leave. I must have done a really great job at actually ignoring him for these past thirty minutes.
I clench shut my eyes, giving myself a second to think. Then, snapping them open, I decide to keep yet another secret from my dear, loving roommate. I open my phone and proceed to construct another lie for my childhood friend to believe:
ME
I have to stay late.
Rebekah gave me an extra task.
Go without me. I’ll see you
back at home later.
He texts back a crying emoji, a thumbs-up, and then the flag of Thailand. I take a deep breath—perhaps to choke out the guilt that’s bubbling up from my chest—and then grab hold of the box.
Cue the Mission: Impossible theme.
When I get outside, though, the last thing I hear is music. It’s all noise and car horns and shouting while I hug the box to my chest like a pool floatie and wade through the crowds and cars and smog of the city on my way to Benjamin Gage’s building.
For the second time in my life.
Really, this isn’t that big a deal. I don’t even have to see him. I can just go right up the elevator, drop the box off in front of his door, and leave. He doesn’t even have to know I was there.
Suddenly, I’m standing in front of his building, and I spend a second genuinely considering whether I magically teleported here or not, because I don’t recollect walking the distance at all. It was all a blur of noise and car exhaust fumes and crossing streets.
And sweat marks I’m likely leaving on this box, which I have not stopped hugging since I left the damned office.
I push inside the building and give a nod at the security guard, who I pray isn’t the same one from the night I was here. Honestly, I didn’t get a good look—distracted as I was with the hot stranger I was going home with. I tap the button for the elevator and wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Ding.
When the doors shut behind me, my throat is so constricted I can barely breathe. I’m tapping one foot like crazy, bouncing as I ascend the nine thousand floors.
Ding.
That was quick. I force myself out of the elevator on legs as stiff as stone. The hall is longer than I remember. Benjamin Gage’s door—the only door—looms at the end of it.
Each of my footfalls is heavy and ringing. My ears fill with the thumps of my shoes against the floor as I carry the box to its fateful destination.
I stop at the door. Should I really just leave the box? Should I knock? Should I shoot him a text? No, I decide, because then he’ll know you were here, and things will get weird again. I nod, assured, and set the box on the ground in front of the door. I make sure it’s perfectly in place, parallel to the door and exactly one foot away from it. Yes, that looks nice.
Then I glance up at the door again. The peephole stares back at me suspiciously.
Maybe I should just tap on the door and run away. He might not see me as I slip back on the elevator. I could run, maybe.
I’ll just leave it, I decide. With a resolute nod, I turn away from his door and leave the box where it is, determined.
Until I hear his door open. “Trevor?”
I stop. Hairs lift on the back of my neck. My hands jab into my pockets at once. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Just … dropping off the box of files,” I explain without facing him. “Rebekah had an emergency. She sent me in her place. I’ll be on my way now.”
“What’s the rush?”
I sigh and roll my eyes. Now he wants to play with me? I spin around and paste on a fake smile, prepared to answer him.
Until I see him shirtless and speckled with droplets of water all over his muscled, tatted torso, wearing nothing but a fluffy white towel hanging low at his waist. Tiny diamonds drip down from his hair, messy and wet.
Oh my Good Gay God.
“You caught me stepping out of the shower,” he says lazily, leaning against the doorframe. “I was just about to sit down for some dinner. You hungry?”
I can’t close my mouth. “I … I’m …”
“Nothing unprofessional,” Ben promises with a crooked smile that only touches half his face, a dimple popping out. “Totally innocent meal, that’s it.”
There is nothing innocent about that body. There is nothing innocent about any of this whatsoever.
“Well?” He nods at me. “You gonna keep me waiting?”
16
Benjamin is clean, yet feeling dirty.
What the hell am I doing?
“I’m …” He shuts his eyes and swallows hard, standing there in the hallway looking adorable as fuck.
Behave, I order myself. I told him it’ll be an innocent meal, and I meant it. Professional, remember?
Professional. Yeah. And here I am answering the door wearing just a towel. As if I didn’t totally plan this.
“I really … I should be going,” he insists.
But his feet tell a different story, planted in place and totally not directing his body back toward the elevator.
“You just came from the office,” I point out. “You haven’t eaten anything since your lunch, if I had to guess. Which I imagine was something like … a sandwich and chips …?”
“How’d you know?”
“So you can’t tell me,” I go on, ignoring his question, “that the sound of Bistecca Fiorentina over buttered fresh-made pici pasta from Da Lena Cucina E Vino doesn’t make you salivate like crazy.”
“I … don’t even know what half those words mean.”
“Then stay and find out.” I give him a lopsided grin and push my door the rest of the way open, then turn away to head upstairs.
When I hear the door close, I glance over my shoulder.
Trevor’s inside, the box hanging in his arms.
Score.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He gives me a tightlipped nod, then slowly comes farther in to set the box down on an end table by the couch. I leave him be, disappearing into my bedroom where I discard the towel and face my closet to dress myself.
The trouble is, with Trevor downstairs suddenly, my mind is going twenty thousand dirty thoughts a second, and all of my clothes look like a blur. Where do I keep my shirts again? My pants? Do I own any?
I catch sight of my naked form in the mirror of my walk-in closet. I must stare at myself for a solid minute, my breath slowing back down to a normal pace.
I shake my head at my reflection. “The hell you doing?” I ask myself quietly, my voice hardly a whisper. “Why did you invite him inside? What were you thinking?”
What am I thinking?
I’m thinking Trevor isn’t like any of the guys who’ve passed through my life. I’m thinking I know when someone special comes along, someone who needs to stick around, someone who makes me feel changed just by being in his presence.
Trevor is every
guy I didn’t approach back in high school.
Trevor is not only adorable, but he’s intelligent. He’s trapped in his head, an intellectual, a thinker—much like me.
When I look at him, I see kin. I see a likeminded friend. I see a person who I want in my corner, a person I know won’t betray me, a person who regards me like another human being and not like a gold mine.
You are thirty-three years old, but your cock is twenty-three. I hear Jazz’s words echo in my head and cringe.
Keep it platonic, I swear to myself. Respect him as much as he’s respecting you. You owe him that much, at least.
I shake away my worries and pick out a pair of comfortable faded jeans, slipping them right on without a care. Then I swipe a matching tee to go with them, pulling it over my head in a hurry. Can’t keep him waiting.
Lance stares at me the whole time, perched on the end of my bed with half-lidded, uncomfortable eyes.
I smile at him. “Don’t worry, buddy. You can hang here if you want, but I promise, Trevor won’t bite ya.”
Lance stares back, unresponsive.
“Hey, I ordered food for you, like always. It should be here any minute now. The chef made you something special.”
Lance continues his deadpan stare. He’s clearly not happy about my company downstairs.
I let out a breath, then give him a gentle rub on the head, which he seems to dodge with an annoyed snort. He gets like this. “Alright, buddy.” I decide to forego any socks, padding along the wood flooring on my way back to the stairs.
Over the banister, I see poor Trevor seated on the couch as awkwardly as I could ever imagine him. His legs are pulled tightly together as if he was bound by rope—shush, dirty mind—and his hands rest in his lap, drumming along his kneecaps. He’s rolled up his sleeves, which was probably his nervous way of trying to act relaxed and calm down. He didn’t take off his shoes. He’s still got his tie on. One of his legs is hopping in place.
If there’s anything I can help him with, it’s relaxing. This boy is wound up tighter than a camel’s butt in a sandstorm.