by A. J. Wynter
The limo was almost completely dark with the exception of a soft light emanating from the mini fridge, which was miraculously still working. We could hear soft strains of jazz from a restaurant outside, but otherwise, it was just the two of us, pressed up against each other and alone, waiting for one of us to fill the silence, to remedy the space between us.
“Logan...” I whispered, ghosting my fingertips across his chest.
“Whatever you’re thinking about doing, Sabryna...” Logan replied, “Do it.”
I didn’t need further permission.
I pressed myself harder against Logan, fully climbing into his lap, and kissed him with a fervor. He responded enthusiastically and pulled me flush against him as I finally tangled my fingers through his loose brown curls, pulling him closer to me. Our kisses had gotten so intense that I had barely noticed when we were suddenly horizontal on the seat of the limo, getting dangerously close to ripping each other’s clothes off.
“Logan,” I whispered, pulling myself off of him. “We...we should talk about this before this goes any further.”
“You got it boss,” Logan said, his breathing still heavy.
“Yes,” I said. “That exactly. I’m your boss, Logan. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Logan gathered me in his arms. “I wish you weren’t.”
“But that’s the way it is.”
Logan took my hand and looked into my eyes. “I’ve been attracted to you since the day I came in for that interview, Sabryna. There’s something between us, and I know you feel it too.”
“Maybe I do,” I said, sighing. “But work is important to me, and I can’t mess it up with something like this.”
“We can keep it a secret,” Logan said. “We can go out of the city for dinner or just watch movies in your apartment. We can figure it out. I can wait. I can compromise.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said, feeling a lump form in my throat. “Three years ago, I had a boyfriend...Nate. It was serious. But there was an accident, and he died. And I haven’t really been able to date anyone since.” I pulled the blanket tighter around myself. “Sometimes,” I said, stuttering. “Sometimes I think I’ll never be able to be in a relationship again. I like you, Logan, but I’m scared. It might not be easy.”
Logan sighed and pulled me to him in a hug. “We don’t have to do anything now, Sabryna. Or at all. You can take as much time as you need.” He squeezed my hand again. “But I want you to know, that whenever you’re ready to be with me, I’ll be here, okay?”
I nodded, and turned around as I heard the sound of the driver manually rolling the partition down.
“Hey guys?” he asked. “The repairman’s out here, and I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere any time soon. All the cars are out tonight, so unless you’re up for walking, there is a bus and it should take you near your destination.”
“Thanks,” Logan said, and opened the door to the limo. The driver let us keep the blankets, and we wrapped them around ourselves as we made our way over to the bus stop. A light snow had started to fall over the city, and according to the weather report I had seen earlier, it would only get heavier as the night wore on. It truly was freezing, and I nearly stumbled on the pavement in my high heels. Logan took my arm to steady me.
“So,” Logan said as we sat down on the cold bench by the bus stop. “Are we still pretending to be a couple at this party, or what?”
I laughed. “I don’t think we have another option.”
“Let’s do this,” Logan said, and we did a fist bump. I smiled.
The bus rolled up to the curb, and Logan took my arm to help me on. The bus was about half-full with people coming home from work, bundled up in their coats and scarves against the snow. In my ball gown and Logan’s suit, we must have looked ridiculous.
The bus driver laughed as Logan dropped some quarters into the pay slot. “Is she a princess or something?” he said, laughing as he pointed at me, holding onto the bus rail in my sparkling silver dress.
Logan smiled at him. “She most certainly is.”
Chapter Seven
The bus dropped us off nearly right in front of the Torver offices, and I was glad to be relieved of the stares from my fellow passengers, who must have been in awe at the strange couple in formal wear.
“So, these parties...” Logan asked. “Kirk was telling me about them earlier. Are they really as fancy as he made them sound?”
“Fancier,” I said. “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”
I always loved the elevator ride up to the Torver Christmas party—it was like stepping through a wardrobe into Narnia, or into deep space from a teleport. I rode up the elevator, same as always, getting off at the fourth floor, but when I stepped out the scene in front of me was always barely recognizable as my office.
The elevator stopped at the fourth floor, and I turned to Logan with an uncontainable grin plastered on my face. “Get ready to have your mind blown.”
The doors opened and we stepped out.
“Shit,” Logan said, his mouth hanging open, and I grinned even harder. I had managed to find something that had rendered Logan Ainsley speechless after all.
The office furniture, the usual desks and chairs, had all been temporarily moved into storage, transforming the rooms of the office into a lush party space. Red-tinted lamps were placed in the corners, and yellow twinkle lights hung from the walls, giving the room just the right amount of romantic glow. A string quartet played Christmas carols gently in the corner of the room. There was an open bar with its own bartender, and I knew some of the bottles of liquor he was handling probably cost more than a month of the rent on my apartment. There were footmen in coats going around with glasses of champagne and appetizers, as well as a larger spread of food. As usual, I didn’t know what half of it was. I saw bowls of caviar, a charcuterie spread with figs and dates, a rainbow platter of sushi rolls, and what looked to be a very expensive cut of beef, and that was only on the side of the table I could see. Around the room, the coworkers, their spouses, and their very lucky friends mingled in groups as they nibbled on appetizers, the booze already starting to get to some of them. Instead of office clothes, the employees of the Torver Corporation looked like they could be the cast of an Oscar-winning film gliding across the red carpet.
As usual, it was magnificent.
“Do I want to know how much all of this cost?” Logan whispered.
I laughed. “Trust me, you don’t.”
The two of us slowly moved over to the bar, where Logan ordered a scotch, neat, while I found myself a glass of champagne. We shared knowing looks, and Logan was watching me as if he was waiting to receive an order. I took a sip of champagne and a deep breath. Adam hadn’t seemed to have arrived yet, so we didn’t have to jump into action until he got here.
Logan was on the other side of the room, talking to Eliza and Cassidy, (who got the limo that hadn’t broken down, of course) while I was near the string quartet, talking to Samantha and Marissa over the deep strains of a cello. Marissa was talking about where the best places were for Christmas shopping in the city, but I wasn’t hearing a word she was saying. My mind was on the limo ride over here, and that kiss. I mean, that kiss. It was electric in a way that I had never thought I would feel again. It was intense, and it honestly could have gone further if I hadn’t put a stop to it.
I was already desperate to kiss him again.
My train of thought was interrupted by the cheery sound of men greeting each other, slapping each other’s backs and shaking hands. I turned around to find Adam and a few other men I didn’t recognize entering the party. We wouldn’t let just anyone into these parties, but I supposed Adam’s business prestige made him someone.
Logan and I shared a quiet, panicked look from across the room.
“Excuse me,” I told Samantha and Marissa, and ducked out of the way to meet up with Logan before Adam could see us hanging out apart. It was a close call. As soon as Logan and I had ducke
d into a corner together, Adam approached us. It was a back corner away from most of the party, so any of Logan and I’s more couple-ey behavior wouldn’t start a gossiping spree among my coworkers.
“Good evening,” Adam said. He kissed my hand, and then shook Logan’s rather aggressively. “How are you two doing tonight?”
“Very well, thank you,” Logan said. I admired that he was being the bigger person. “The food here is absolutely incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’m sure you haven’t,” Adam said with a dismissive smile, and I glared at him. Adam came from money, and I had forgotten how much of a snob he could be sometimes. “So,” he said, and I could tell he was looking to cause trouble. “How did you two get together, anyway?”
Logan and I both smiled. “You tell it better, Sabryna,” Logan said, and if I wasn’t trying so hard to give an Oscar-worthy performance, I would have shot daggers at him.
“Well,” I said, shifting in my heels. “It’s really not that interesting. Logan asked me out for a drink after work one day, and we talked all night and just really hit it off.” Adam seemed to buy it. The trick was, of course, to make the story as dull and believable as possible.
“That’s right,” Logan said, smirking. His acting was not on my level. “I mean, you know Sabryna, she’s easy to like.”
This comment, which seemed to imply that I had told Logan about my past relationship with Adam, really seemed to tick him off. “Of course,” Adam said, and swallowed uncomfortably. Internally, I could practically see Adam imagining himself punching Logan in the face.
After I double checked to make sure we weren’t in view of any of the other party guests, I grabbed onto Logan’s arm and cuddled against him. Touching him was somehow different this time...now, we had precedent.
“Well,” Adam said, upon noticing that he was becoming a bit of a third wheel. “I’ll see you two later.” He walked back into the crowd, and I parted from Logan with a sigh of relief.
“I think that might have actually worked,” I said, looking up at Logan hopefully.
“Yeah,” he said, but there was still a sadness in his eyes. Among all the splendor of the party, it was easy to forget that I had turned down his offer less than an hour ago. “I’m gonna go talk to Kirk, but I’ll meet up with you later,” he said. I frowned as I watched him wander back into the crowd. I think I had really hurt him.
Now, I was alone. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was playing softly in the background, and the sounds of the violins were making me nostalgic and sad. I had shown up to this party with two men competing over me, but I felt more alone than ever.
“Hey,” Eliza said, noticing me standing alone. “How are things going? You don’t look too good.”
I sighed and caught her up on the events of the last hour.
“Shit,” she said, taking another sip of red wine. “Was Logan a good kisser at least? He looks like he would be.”
“Eliza!”
“Sorry! But a girl’s gotta know.”
I smirked. “Yeah.”
Eliza giggled and grabbed my arm, leading me over to the bar. “I’m getting another drink into you. Something stronger than champagne. You’re standing over there all quiet like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I looked over at Adam, standing under a wreath across the room. In a lot of ways, I had.
“Boom,” Eliza said, sidling up next to me with two golden-tinted glass goblets. “If this doesn’t do the trick, nothing will.”
“Is this the stuff Johnathan gets wasted on every year?”
Eliza laughed. “You bet, and you need it, girl. You’ve been stressed about everything, first work, now men, just let it all go tonight, okay?”
Easier said than done. I looked at the drink. It was some sort of punch or sangria—it looked fruity and innocuous, but I could smell the hard liquor in it from here.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, and we clinked our glasses and tilted them back. What the hell.
The string quartet switched over to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and people had started to form a dance floor in the center of the room, slow dancing back and forth under the glow of the holiday lights.
“Sabryna?” came a deep voice from behind me, and I turned around to find Adam holding his hand out. “Would you like to dance?”
“Okay,” I said, more because I was too lazy to find a way out of it than anything else. Besides, despite all of his bullshit, Adam looked good, just like he always did. He wore a light gray suit with a Christmas tie—red with little bunches of mistletoe. And probably the thing that still got me the most about Adam, was that he reminded me of home, and of all the happy places from my past. We had grown up in the same town, gone to high school and college together, experienced all of the ups and downs of a turbulent first love together. Sometimes in a big city like Seattle, you can feel so alone, and you can feel home tugging at your heartstrings—and at moments like that, Adam was the ultimate temptation.
“I hope Logan doesn’t mind me stealing you away for a bit,” Adam said, pulling me closer to him.
“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t know where he had gone off to. I could already feel the punch going to my head, making things blurry. It was making it easy for me to forget all of Adam’s flaws—all of the things that had made our relationship initially disintegrate in the first place.
“I’m worried about you Sabryna...about you and him,” Adam said.
I scoffed. “You’ve barely even met him. He’s a good guy, I swear.”
Adam sighed. “You don’t find any of this suspicious? I mean, I did a quick google search, and it seems like his ambitions are a bit beyond being an assistant’s assistant. Isn’t it a little bit convenient that he takes this job he’s way over qualified for, and then gets in a relationship with the person who, let’s be real, has the most influence with Johnathan? It’s fishy, Sabryna.”
“That’s not true,” I said, tensing up in his arms. “It’s just not, Adam. And you know that any job at the Torver Corporation is more prestigious than practically anything else.”
“You’re being silly, Sabryna,” Adam said. “I know at work you’ve always been a realist, always been organized, but in your personal life you’ve always been different. You’ve always been a dreamer. Can’t you at least entertain the possibility that this guy doesn’t care about you at all? That he’s just taking advantage of you to get ahead?”
“Shut up, Adam,” I mumbled, feeling the alcohol burrow deeper inside my veins. “You’re being an idiot.”
“We should have been together, Sabryna. You should have married me all those years ago, but you had to run off to London with that dweeby assistant professor. You had to—“
“He died, Adam,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”
I rushed away from the crowd, my vision blurry from the tears and my head numb from the alcohol. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I needed to get the hell away from here.
I ran out into the hallway and stumbled into the elevator, the noise from the party fading away. When I got to the ground floor, I stumbled outside into the darkness, exhausted from the crying and the stress. The world seemed to spin around me. The ground was now completely covered in a thin layer of snow, and it was still falling from the sky. I dove into my purse to look for my phone, thinking that I would call a cab to get me home as soon as possible.
I dialed the number for the cab, shivering in the cold. I had ten minutes to wait until it got here. Despite everything, it was still really pretty outside—I had always been a sucker for snow. The stores were all decorated for the holidays, and their lights danced in pretty colored patterns on the snowy sidewalks. Perhaps the best thing, however, was the lovely silence of it all—the party, although lavish, had been loud and chaotic, and it was wonderful to finally be away from it all, the falling snow muting all of the commotion until it resembled something like peace.
Suddenly, my peace was int
errupted by the sound of someone yelling after me.
“Sabryna! Wait!”
I turned around to see Logan running towards me. He had no jacket on and the bottom of his pants were now covered in snow. “Sabryna,” he said, out of breath from running down the stairs. “Are you okay?”
I started crying, drunk and lost again in all of the turbulent emotions of the evening.
“Okay,” Logan said, holding me close to him. “Clearly not.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said, my head knowing not to ask, but the Christmas punch insisting that I do. “Are you using me? Did you make all this up? Do you have any feelings for me at all?”
Logan stepped back. “What? Sabryna—"
“I’m serious, Logan. Everyone was right. You’re too much of a control freak to be an assistant. You’re just using me to get to Johnathan.”
“What?” Logan asked. “Why would you...” he froze, his face morphing into a scowl. “Adam. Adam told you this shit, didn’t he?”
I shivered against the cold and wiped my tears against my hand.
“I don’t believe this,” Logan said. “Not just that, Sabryna. All of this.”
“All of what?” I asked.
“What you said in the limo. About how we can’t be together.”
“I’m your boss, Logan, I can’t—“
“Bullshit,” Logan said. “That’s bullshit, Sabryna, and you know it. Everyone in this damn company dates each other! What, you think Johnathan would fire you? We could ask for his blessing, if that would make you more comfortable. It has nothing to do with that.”
“Okay,” I said through my tears. “What then?”
“You’re scared, Sabryna,” Logan said, looking into my eyes. “You’re scared to lose someone again, the way you lost Adam or the way you lost Nate.”
I stuttered, letting his words sink in. “Logan, I—“
“You can’t be scared anymore, Sabryna,” Logan said. “There’s a whole city out there, full of people, full of life, and you have to live. There’s so much more out here for you to see, for you to do. If not with me, then with someone else.”