He's Not My Boyfriend

by Jackie Lau

  “Why not? I know how things work. Everyone has sex before marriage. Am old. Not stupid.”

  Well, Iris wasn’t going to protest and say she’d never had sex.

  “I forget why I’m here.” Ngin Ngin paused, then raised her finger in the air. “Yes! I remember. You must get out of these rags and come downstairs. Now.”

  “As you wish,” Iris said with a sigh.

  She put on jean shorts and a T-shirt, and when she got downstairs, she heard a motor running. The neighbors must be cutting the grass.

  Wait a second.

  Iris reached the back door in the kitchen, which led to the backyard.

  Someone was cutting Ngin Ngin’s grass.

  In fact, the someone in question was an attractive young black man wearing gym shorts...and nothing else.

  “Very handsome, no?” Ngin Ngin said, suddenly appearing at her shoulder. “I told him to take off his shirt. That was my idea.”

  Iris could do nothing but stare at her grandmother. Usually, Iris was the one who cut Ngin Ngin’s grass. She’d come over once a week to do it. It didn’t take long, since the backyard was very small, but now Ngin Ngin appeared to have hired a man to do her job—shirtless!—even though Iris had just moved in.

  “Did you hire him for the eye candy?” Iris asked. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask people to take off their shirts like that.”

  “Silly girl. Am not paying him.”

  Iris looked out the door again, and an awful realization crept over her.

  “You’re trying to set us up!” she exclaimed. “I told you no matchmaking, and yet I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and you’re already doing it.”

  Ngin Ngin grinned. “Jonathan is the son of Dee, my friend. Dee is from Jamaica, and she and husband run Jamaican restaurant in Kensington Market. I see her every week. Don’t understand half of what she says because I struggle with Jamaican accent, but I think she understands everything I say. She wishes for son to settle down and get married, and I wish to find husband for you, so we made a plan! You have love at first sight?”

  “No, I do not. That’s just bullshit.”

  “Not bullshit. I have experience.”

  Iris raised her eyebrows. “That’s what happened the first time you saw Yeh Yeh?”

  Ngin Ngin waved her hand away from her and turned to look out the door. Jonathan was now trimming the edges of the lawn. He looked up and waved at them.

  “Ngin Ngin, you experienced love at first sight with Yeh Yeh?” Iris was intrigued by this. Her grandparents’ marriage, from what she’d been able to glean, had been miserable, but perhaps it had been different at the beginning.

  “Aiyah. Stop annoying me.”

  Iris assumed that was a “no.” Interesting. Had there been someone else after Yeh Yeh? Before him? Or while she was married?

  “No love at first sight...that’s okay,” Ngin Ngin said. “But you agree he’s very attractive, yes? If I was young—”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to admire men who are sixty years younger than you.”

  “He’s sixty-three years younger than me.”

  “Right.”

  “Am old. Not dead. He has nice muscles. You don’t agree?”

  Iris decided not to answer that question.

  Jonathan did, indeed, have a nicely-toned body, and he was handsome. But to her frustration, she found herself comparing him to Alex and finding he came up short.

  Not that she would have wanted to go out with Jonathan anyway.

  This was the man her grandmother was trying to set her up with, for God’s sake, and she wasn’t interested in any attempts to marry her off. She was happily single.

  Ngin Ngin clucked her tongue. “I think he’s finished now. He’s coming inside. You must flutter eyelashes and look pretty. Would be better if you’d brushed your hair.”

  Jonathan stepped inside and picked up his grey T-shirt, which had been draped over the back of a kitchen chair.

  “No!” Ngin Ngin squeaked. “Not yet.”

  “Let the man put on his shirt.” Once he’d done that, Iris stuck out her hand. “Hi. I’m Iris. Sorry my grandmother has involved you in her plan to marry me off. I’m sure you’re great, but I’m not interested in anyone at the moment.”

  “No problem. Neither am I. I just came here this morning because my mother insisted.”

  “See!” Ngin Ngin said. “He’s a keeper! He respects his mother! And he has his own business. Landscaping company.” She turned to Jonathan. “At work, do you take off your shirt on very hot days?”

  Iris just prayed that Ngin Ngin wouldn’t ask if she could come watch.

  Fortunately, she didn’t.

  “Would you like some water?” Iris asked, trying to be polite. “Coffee?”

  “Coffee would be great, thank you.”

  Ngin Ngin decided to give Iris some time alone with Jonathan so they could get to know each other. They talked for twenty minutes and drank coffee, and it was pleasant enough, but nothing more than pleasant.

  Once Jonathan left, Ngin Ngin came back downstairs.

  “So? Isn’t he a great catch?”

  Iris was practically pulling out her hair in frustration. “I told you. No matchmaking. Why can’t you listen?”

  “I listen, but I don’t agree. So, I do what I want.”

  Well, it looked like living with Ngin Ngin wouldn’t be so easy after all.

  * * *

  After a not-so-relaxing weekend, Iris was glad to escape to work on Monday morning. She worked at a small structural engineering firm in midtown called Lowry Engineering. Sometimes she took transit to work, but today she drove because she had to go to site in Markham later.

  “Hey! How was your weekend?” Emma asked as Iris walked into the office. Emma was the other female engineer at Lowry, and she had the desk next to Iris’s. She was ten years older and had been a mentor of sorts.

  “I moved in with my grandmother,” Iris said.

  “Right! How did that go?”

  “She’s already tried to set me up with someone. She got the son of one of her friends to come over and cut the grass—shirtless—at nine in the morning yesterday.”

  Emma started laughing.

  “She’s going to be the death of me,” Iris muttered. “Then in the evening, we watched Barefoot in the Park on Netflix after I set up the internet. My grandma likes Robert Redford.”

  Sunday movie night with Ngin Ngin hadn’t been too bad, actually. In the afternoon, Iris had had a break from her grandmother—who’d gone to play mah jong—and had done a lot of unpacking. But in the evening, it had been nice to have company, even if Iris had to pause the movie every ten minutes because Ngin Ngin kept asking her questions. Ngin Ngin had also brought out her popcorn maker from the eighties, so they’d had popcorn with melted butter. Probably healthier than the microwavable stuff.

  “How was your weekend?” Iris asked Emma.

  “Oh, you know. Maddie emptied a bottle of shampoo in the only room where we have carpet, so that was a mess.” Maddie was Emma’s two-year-old daughter.

  Iris poured herself some coffee and got to work on a report that she had to finish by the end of the day. At ten-thirty, she drove out to Markham. She and Emma had worked on the structural engineering for an addition to East Markham Hospital. Some rich guy had donated a lot of money to the hospital and was having a new cardiology wing named after him. Construction on the addition had started recently, and today they were supposed to pour concrete for the foundation. Iris had to inspect the formwork and rebar first to make sure everything was as it should be. Emma had done the past couple of site visits, but she’d been put on a new project that was taking up a lot of her time, and Iris would now have to come here about once a week.

  No big deal. Iris didn’t mind going to site on occasion, as long as it didn’t take too much time away from her other work. Sometimes it felt a bit strange—she was often the only woman on site—but it was nothing she couldn’t
handle.

  She parked her car and put on her steel-toed boots, her safety vest, and her hard hat. She got out her clipboard with the structural drawings of the addition and headed toward the trailer, where she would sign in and meet the site supervisor, who worked for the general contractor. His name was Alex, but that was all she knew.

  Which reminded her of...

  No. She wouldn’t go there. She needed to stop thinking about that Alex. It had only been a one-night stand, and that was three weeks ago now. Time to push him out of her mind.

  There were two men standing by the trailer, and they turned toward her as she approached. The man on the right was a tall, middle-aged guy with a crooked smile, and the man on the left was smaller in stature and...

  Iris’s stomach dropped.

  It was that Alex after all.

  Chapter 6

  Iris couldn’t believe it. The site supervisor for the East Markham Hospital job was Alex Kwong.

  This was horrible.

  She hated when her personal and professional lives mixed. She took her job seriously, and she would never sleep with a co-worker or a contractor.

  But now her latest one-night stand had come back to bite her in the ass.

  She was going to have to see Alex Kwong every week for the near future, and she’d slept with him, then hurried out of his apartment before he woke up the next morning.

  Well, she would remain professional and hoped he’d do the same.

  Though given they’d spent the past ten seconds staring at each other without speaking, perhaps they weren’t off to the greatest start. Unfortunately, he was just as attractive as she remembered, and she also remembered what he looked like underneath that safety vest and T-shirt...

  She pushed that out of her mind.

  “Hi,” she squeaked. She couldn’t seem to say anything else.

  He nodded at her. “Hi.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Ooh, this feels awkward!” said the man standing beside Alex, clasping his hands together. “You guys sleep together or something?”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Yes,” Alex said in a clipped voice before Iris could respond.

  Bastard. Why did he feel the need to say that?

  The other man bent over and started laughing.

  “Get back to work, Carlos,” Alex said.

  Carlos gave him a smile and a mock salute before heading off.

  Iris waited until he was far away before hissing, “Did you really have to tell him we’d slept together?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Iris.”

  “He’s going to tell everyone that you slept with the engineer, isn’t he? Fuck. I have a reputation to protect. Maybe it’s all well and good for you to brag about how we had sex, but think about what it’s like for me, okay? I need to maintain my professional integrity, and I don’t need these rumors floating around.”

  Alex looked at her for a moment, and she felt her skin prickle.

  Goddammit.

  She wasn’t immune to him, not by a long shot.

  * * *

  Alex hadn’t meant to admit that he’d slept with the engineer from Lowry, but the answer had popped out of his mouth as soon as Carlos had asked the question.

  And yet a part of Alex was pissed off that Iris was so angry at him. It rubbed him the wrong way. Consenting adults having sex—it was no big deal.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry I said that. The answer just slipped out.”

  Iris rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure it did. You don’t sound very sorry. I think you wanted to brag about your sexual conquests.”

  “Did it sound like I was bragging? It’s just instinct for me to answer a question honestly. Normally that serves me well, but this time, I admit it was a mistake.”

  “This isn’t some little mistake. A man sleeps with a woman, his co-workers slap him on the back. A woman sleeps with a man, her co-workers think she’s a slut.”

  “I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but—”

  “Shut up, Alex.” Her cheeks were turning red. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, especially in a male-dominated field like this one. I am not ashamed of what I do in my free time, but it has absolutely no place in our work lives. Why couldn’t you have pretended you were meeting me for the first time?”

  “But I wasn’t meeting you for the first time. It would have been weird to ask for your name.”

  “You could have pretended we’d met before in a professional capacity.”

  “You know this whole thing could have been avoided if you’d actually told me what kind of engineer you were when I asked.”

  She would have said she was a structural engineer, and, being familiar with many structural engineering companies because of his job, he would have asked where she worked, and he would have been somewhat prepared for this moment.

  Or maybe she would have refused to sleep with him because she worried their work lives might cross at some point. He wasn’t sure.

  “Well, sorry.” She put her hand on her hip. “Sorry I wasn’t in the mood to talk about my job that night.”

  It was weird to speak to a woman at work when he knew what sounds she made when she came, and how it felt to push inside her...

  Focus.

  Instead, he blurted out, “Why the hell did you leave before I woke up?”

  “Poor baby. Did I injure your delicate ego? Do you think you’re just so amazing in bed that no woman would dare leave without a morning quickie?”

  He clenched his fists and stepped forward until he was standing a touch closer to her than would normally be appropriate.

  “You enjoyed it,” he said, his voice low. “A lot. I promised you’d like the way I fucked, and you did, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. Why didn’t you stay?”

  Three weeks later, it still rankled that she’d left without saying goodbye, though he wasn’t sure why he felt that way. It wasn’t like he’d planned to take her out on a date. He wasn’t interested in anything more than a few rounds in the sack with a woman.

  She still hadn’t stepped back, even though he was invading her personal space. Her lips were so close. Not bright pink, like they’d been last time, but just as enticing.

  Iris on a construction site was as hot as Iris in a fancy dress in a dimly-lit bar.

  She finally took a step away from him. “It was six o’clock in the morning, and I was wide awake. I wasn’t going to wait around until you woke up.”

  “You could have woken me up.”

  “In my experience, most people don’t like being shaken awake at six in the morning.”

  “You didn’t need to shake me awake. You could have kissed your way down the muscles you’d admired.” He couldn’t seem to help it. She was a firecracker, and he liked getting under her skin.

  She rolled her eyes. “Fuck you.”

  “I would quite enjoy that, thank you.”

  The corners of her mouth quirked up, and then she clenched her jaw. “Alex, I’m here because I have a job to do, and I’d appreciate it if I could get started. We need to get that concrete poured today, and it can’t be done until I give my approval.”

  “Very well.” He set off toward the building in progress. The soil engineer had been here last week and had given the go-ahead. Now they were just waiting on Iris.

  They walked around, saying nothing to each other but terse comments related to the job. He could feel the anger vibrating off her.

  “The spacing of the rebar is wrong here.” She pointed at the rebar in question and then at the corresponding part of the drawing on her clipboard.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re pissed at me.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “You really seem to like that word. Just an observation.” He stuck his fingers in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels.

  “I am a professional engineer, and I would not make unnecessary work for you if I didn
’t need to. How long will it take to fix?”

  “Maybe half an hour?” It was just a small area; it wasn’t a big enough problem that the concrete pouring would need to be delayed another day, thank God.

  “Good. I might as well wait around then, rather than having you send me photos.”

  They finished walking around the site in tense silence. Luckily, Iris didn’t find any other issues.

  “I’ll be in my car,” she said. “Eating lunch and writing a report. Let me know when it’s done.”

  She hurried off, not waiting for a response.

  * * *

  Fucking Alex who made her swear like a sailor.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  She took a deep breath. It would be okay. It wasn’t like she had to see him at the office every day. Just a couple hours a week until this project was finished, and then hopefully she’d never have to work with him again. Although her company worked with LBZ on many projects, LBZ was a large general contractor and they had lots of site supervisors. There was a good chance she’d be able to avoid him for a while after this project was done, and if she had to work with him again in a few years, surely he wouldn’t have much effect on her.

  And surely he wouldn’t tell whoever happened to be with him at the time that they’d slept together, unlike this morning.

  She still couldn’t believe he’d done that.

  It just slipped out.

  Yeah, sure it did.

  Infuriating, attractive man. Who was very good in bed. And on the couch. She bet he was good on any flat surface. Even vertical surfaces, like the door.

  Somehow, they’d have to learn to work together. Fortunately, she didn’t have to be super friendly with him. All she had to do was walk around the construction site, making sure the work was getting done and telling him what they were doing wrong.

  She would rather enjoy doing that.

  Although when they were in bed or on his couch, he sure hadn’t done anything wrong...

  Enough, Iris.

  Unfortunately, she was stuck here for the next thirty minutes or so. She turned on the car so she could roll down the windows, then got out her laptop while she waited. She also pulled out the sandwich she’d brought for lunch. Ngin Ngin teased her about her terrible cooking skills, but Iris was at least able to make a damn cheese and ham sandwich and cut up a few carrot sticks, although her grandmother had watched over her while she made her lunch this morning, as if she were a small child who needed supervision while using a knife. Ngin Ngin had seemed surprised when she didn’t draw blood.