by Sionna Fox
He stiffened and his expression that was so vulnerable she’d barely recognized him as the same man. “Sorry? Why are you sorry?"
She took a big breath for courage. “I respect you more than this, professionally. I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
His gaze searched hers and clasped her hand. “I’m not sorry.”
She leaned up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek, avoiding thinking about how hot his body still was against hers. “I said it wrong. I’m not sorry this happened at all. But I like you too much, Phillip. I mean…” She stumbled for words, unsure how to explain her feelings. “You mean too much to me, your career is too important to me for this to ever happen again. For that, I’m sorry.”
She worried for a moment he might try to dissuade her. If he did, she’d cave. It wasn’t like she really wanted to be saying this at all. If they worked at different schools, hell, if they worked in different departments and weren’t both administrators, if she weren’t his boss…
“Okay,” he whispered and kissed her cheek. His lips were so warm against her skin, she couldn’t not lean into him, hoping he wouldn’t listen to a word she said.
But he did listen. He backed away from her and gave a respectful nod of farewell. “Goodnight, Regina.”
“Goodnight, Phillip.”
The thud of the door closing behind him echoed in her chest.
Alone. Again. Like always. She’d never felt like that was a bad thing before.
She’d always liked being alone. She liked living alone. She enjoyed her life as it was. But it wasn’t the being alone that bothered her. No. It was the being without Phillip.
She glanced back at her desk, adjusted the blotter, straightened a chair, fixed things that hadn’t even moved. No one would know they’d had sex on her desk. Except her, every hour of every day she spent working here.
4
Regina was never late for work, but today she was. It was intentional. She didn’t want to have her usual early planning session with Phillip over their morning coffee. It was a daily ritual. Not today. Today everyone of their discussions would take place over email, because she couldn’t handle seeing his face while he looked at her and she looked at him remembering last night.
Olivia was already at her desk outside the office. Regina tried to pass with a curt hello. She had no desire for social conversation today. The more business-like her interactions the less likely she’d be to feel how loose she still felt in her legs and between her hips from mind-bending sex with Phillip last night.
But Olivia was oblivious to her plan. She was up from her desk, coming toward Regina for more intimate conversation after no more than hello. “Some students broke into your office last night.”
“Oh?” Regina stiffened, tightening her back, lifting her chin. “What makes you say that?” Inside she screamed, shit, what did I miss?
Olivia leaned in and whispered with a rapacious grin, “I found a condom in your trash can.”
Regina grimaced and closed her eyes. Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. She forced herself to take a deep breath and maintain her composure. “That is a discipline matter for Ned, our dean of students.”
“I already told him. He’s checking the security cameras.”
Oh. My. God. How could Regina be so stupid? How could she not have thought of that? She was screwed. Royally. Both her and Phillip. It was over. She might as well resign now.
“What?” Olivia asked. “Why are you so…Regina, are you blushing?”
She was. Feeling the heat steam over her face, she was certain she’d turned cherry red.
Olivia’s eyes widened and she whispered, “It was a student, right?”
Regina stopped breathing. She needed to lie, though she had no idea how to explain her blush. Her mind reeled with no excuses coming to her.
A door behind them clicked open, and in walked the last person on all of planet earth Regina wanted to see right now.
Phillip stopped and stared at her as soon as he walked in from outside. Evidently, he’d had the same idea, come late to avoid her, because he looked as astounded as she felt.
He recovered himself first, and noticing Olivia said, “Good morning,” then moved to his office, where he closed the door.
But his fast exit if anything made the situation worse. They usually talked in the mornings, making their plans for the day. For him to walk past her without a word was a serious red flag for Olivia.
“What’s with him?” She frowned.
“I, um—” Regina cleared her throat, awkwardly. “—wouldn’t know.”
But Olivia was giving her a major side-eye. “That was very strange. Did you two have a disagreement about something? I thought the equal pay missive came in yesterday. You should both be in a good mood.”
“We were. It…uh…” Regina scratched her neck and turned to walk in her office. “I’ll just get to work.”
But Olivia’s face widened on a gasp. “Oh my god!” She covered her mouth and squeaked a giggle she failed to suppress. “Did…” She leaned closer to Regina. “Was the condom yours? Were you and Phillip…”
Regina’s face grew impossibly hotter, and her failure to respond with an immediate refusal was a giveaway.
Olivia’s eyes shifted around, grasping the urgency of the situation better than Regina had hoped. “I’ll go tell Ned not to look at the security cameras. I’ll make up something, don’t worry.”
Regina snuck into her office and collapsed into her desk chair. In her mind, she swore every four-letter word she could think of and dropped her head in her hands. This was the worst professional situation she had ever been in. She’d never done anything so stupid as to jeopardize her career like this.
But what was so much worse, she’d put Phillip in the same situation.
There was nothing she could do about it though, except get to work. She opened up her email and her heart skidded. Three emails from Phillip, each on a different topic they had to discuss that day, and she sighed with relief. He apparently had the same game plan as she did.
This was why she loved working with him. Professionally, they were like parallel forces. They might repel each other on how they chose to approach things, but at the core, they followed the same path with like-minded goals in an almost uncanny way. Sometime she swore there was a form of mindreading going on between them. Not that she believed in that sort of thing.
But amidst her relief, there was a murmur of disappointment, and she realized, though she should avoid him, she wanted to talk to him. She missed him, even though he was across the hall. Communicating via email was so cold and impersonal. They couldn’t banter or share excitement with email. She couldn’t look at his too handsome face or admire his well-formed body and remember what he looked like beneath his clothes.
“Problem solved.” Olivia walked in with a self-satisfied smile on her face. “You owe me.” She plopped down in a chair across from her desk in an uncharacteristically unprofessional way.
Regina kept things structured with the people she worked with. Olivia and Regina weren’t friends. They were co-workers. Things ran more efficiently when she wasn’t spending time being social with everyone around her.
That is, until she’d decided to fuck the man she spent more time with than anyone, here, on her desk, last night. She wiped a hand across her forehead and tried to clear her thoughts. “Thank you, Olivia. I appreciate your candor.”
“I’ve decided on my repayment,” Olivia teased in a friendly way.
But it made Regina cringe with a feeling of foreboding. This couldn’t be good. “What?”
Olivia stood and with a giggle closed her office door. She tiptoed back to the chair with too much giddiness and said, “I want details.” She wagged her eyebrows.
Regina groaned. “Um, no. That’s not—”
“Come on, Regina.” Olivia leaned forward in her chair. “You can’t have sex with a man that fine—like with a capital F—because having it lowercase would be a disservice to the human race
.” She gave a joyful shiver. “You have to tell someone about it, and now that I know, it may as well be me.”
The eager expression on Olivia’s face was so jovial, that Regina couldn’t help cracking with laughter. “I guess so.” Olivia was right on a level. Regina realized, she did want to talk about it—maybe a little.
Olivia stamped her feet excitedly. “Tell me, was it good?”
“Hell yes.” Regina sank into her chair and let the self-satisfied expression she felt beneath her professional anxiety take over her face. “It was like life-alteringly good.”
Olivia bit her lip. “Once you go black…”
Regina froze, like her stomach turned to ice and her chest stiffened so tight she couldn’t breathe. Please tell me she didn’t just imply what I think she did.
Olivia was smart, and she read Regina’s awkward silence. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
Regina let out a relieved sigh. “You’re right. Thank you.””
Olivia cleared her throat and shifted nervously. “Well, your secret is safe with me so…” Embarrassed, she stood and sidled toward the door. “I guess… I’ll just go.”
Regina nodded. “I appreciate your candor, Olivia. And quick thinking.”
Olivia gave a half-smile, “You’re welcome,” and left.
Regina let out the gust of air she’d been holding and sat looking at her desk top, waiting for her chest to loosen again. As a white woman, she was embarrassed for her friend implying something racist about her attraction to Phillip. She was glad Olivia had caught herself, apologized, and Regina hadn’t needed to call her out on it.
The conversation had revealed something else that was needling Regina, though, now that she’d said out loud that last night had been “life-alteringly good.” She was forced to admit this attraction she felt for Phillip was greater than anything she’d ever experienced. It must be true for him, too. Neither of them were normally the type to forsake their principles as to risk their careers with the kind of behavior they had last night. She could only pray that Olivia had stopped the dean of students in time before he looked at the security footage. Nothing less than feelings that were so overwhelming she and Phillip didn’t know how to contain them could motivate them to do something so reckless.
But the realization meant something even more disturbing. After Phillip, how would she ever move on to someone else? And she didn’t mean just the sex. She meant the man. She wanted him in her life, not just her work day, but her nights and weekends, her late-night ice cream runs and her early morning, straight-out-of-bed, first cup of coffee. She wanted him there. She missed him already, him and his quick mind and his passion for, not just her but, everything he strove for.
Except if she wanted their professional goals to keep running with hinderance, a relationship with Phillip was the last thing she could have.
* * *
Phillip did the best he could to keep his relationship with Regina strictly professional. They spent as little time in each other’s presence as possible all week. Email was their main source of contact. When they did meet, they did it in the conference room with a glass wall where anyone could see in. If it wasn’t private, then they wouldn’t be at risk of doing something dangerous—like touching each other.
They did their jobs, their work didn’t suffer. Phillip knew he and Regina were both too motivated to let something so trivial as mind-blowing sex get in the way of their goals.
But sweet Jesus, it had been good. Every time he walked past her office and glimpsed her desk, he had to fight himself not to get aroused. He didn’t know how she was managing to work at that desk each day without thinking about it.
He wasn’t going to ask her.
The real consequence of the new rearrangement was how much he missed her. He’d always known he enjoyed working so closely with her, but he hadn’t known his attraction to her had been beyond the physical. He went home each night and not only had fantasies about her naked, but also of talking to about how he was feeling and how hard it was to muddle through this without talking to her. He wanted to ask how she was doing, how she’d been affected, because he could see that she was. She rarely met his gaze, but he caught her looking at him once with an unusual loneliness in her eyes.
He’d taken the moment home with him and fantasized about kissing her until that look went away and it was replaced with longing and affection for him.
The day of the school board meeting arrived, and they had every minute of their dual presentation for the equal pay missive planned. They arrived promptly ten minutes before the meeting and made small talk with specified members whom they knew wanted to move the future of the school forward.
The meeting progressed through its prescribed order.
The time for new business came and Regina stood to present their new initiative, and she began with a compromise of what both she and Phillip wanted.
She stood square to face them, no pacing, no hand gripping. Phillip had to smile and admire her sheer grit and self-assurance. To call her confident was an understatement. She was a force of nature, and he pitied anyone who attempted to disagree with her.
She scanned the table of board members, making eye contact with each one before she began. "We've had some interest from alumni in making adjustments to the pay scale among faculty and staff.”
A vocal member spoke up, “What’s wrong with the pay scale?”
Regina smiled as though she appreciated the interruption. “It’s racial and gender biased. An outside company has evaluated the salaries of the staff and faculty and found that white, straight, cis men on this campus earn an average of twenty percent more than people of color, women, and LGBTQIAP+ individuals in comparable positions.”
There was silence, and she let the stats sink in. “That percentage is worse than the national average pay gap by ten percent.”
Murmurs worked through the room. “Which company made this evaluation?” and “Those numbers can’t possibly be accurate” were audible.
She glanced at Phillip with a nod and a twinkle of triumph in her eye.
He stood beside her and joined her in the uncompromising stature. Anyone who dared disagree with them was a fool. “We have fifty signatures from faculty who have noticed and are demanding a change.”
One member scoffed. “Of course, they want a raise out of this.” Others muttered agreement.
Phillip almost smiled. This was exactly the response they’d planned on. Their audience was too predictable. Regina held up her hand for them to be quiet, and as though she were a teacher in command of her classroom, they quit talking.
She continued in a voice low enough that they all had to lean forward to listen intently but strong enough one couldn’t doubt her severity. “It doesn’t matter what the teachers are after, the main point is…” She stopped for dramatic emphasis. “We’re vulnerable to a lawsuit, and the teachers know it.”
Another silence, exactly as they had hoped.
Phillip stepped in again. “We’ve researched the costs of such lawsuits across the country and compared it to the cost of making the appropriate raises.”
Regina finished his thought, as though they were working from a script together. “If the school makes the necessary adjustments to equalize the pay gap, it will take ten years to reach the cost of a lawsuit brought by the teachers.”
When no protests arose, Phillip had to suppress the desire to pump his arm and whisper a loud, Yes! but he forced himself to maintain composure. “We’ve made a packet with the concrete statistics and all the information laid out for each of you to look over.”
They left the meeting after that, leaving the members to discuss.
Regina and Phillip waited until they’d walked far enough away from the boardroom that they wouldn’t be heard.
He held up a hand in high-five, and she slapped it with a satisfying crack and interlaced her fingers with his.
“We rocked that so hard!” The glee on her face echoed his.
<
br /> “I think it worked. Did you see their faces?”
“Bringing up the threat of a lawsuit was brilliant,” she told him, since it had been his idea.
“It’s perfect. Even though none of the teachers have mentioned it, it’s far more likely than a strike.”
“And something the board will take far more seriously.”
“It’s all about the dollar signs. Quantify it and they’ll understand.”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners with her excitement, but her appreciative gaze was intoxicating. “We make an excellent team.”
“The best.” He couldn’t help noticing how close together they were. Without thinking, he’d brought their clasped hands to his chest, and she was so close, he could hear her breathing.
He wanted to share this celebration with her, not just in words and in high-fives, but also with touch. He wanted to fucking kiss her and whirl her around in a circle like in those movies. He wanted to rejoice in how seamlessly they worked together, in the extraordinary things that they were accomplishing.
He couldn’t keep from saying, “I love doing this with you.”
She didn’t pull away. She leaned into him. “Doing what?”
“We’re unstoppable,” he breathed, more intimately than he should. “Together, we can do anything we decide to do.” The tilt of her head, the smoothness of her cheek, he couldn’t not caress her face.
She closed her eyes a moment and let him touch her, but she didn’t let it last. She backed away, releasing his touch. “We don’t know for sure if it worked.” She adjusted her skirt that wasn’t out of place.
Phillip wasn’t ready to let her give up their celebration yet. “You know tomorrow we’re going to get their approval.”
She shook her head. “I won’t celebrate until we know.”
His chest tightened. She wasn’t just rejecting his need to celebrate. She was backing away from him, putting physical distance between them. In a last effort to touch her, to do something about his need to hold her, he reached his arm out.