Britt lingered at the party so long she ate a second slice of cake with its mega-sugary grocery store buttercream frosting just as an excuse to stand around and look at him. A throbbing started in her forehead between her eyes, probably from the sugar, or from the effort to will him to her side. He stood there, careless, hands in his pockets just talking and laughing with the marketing team he was joining. Just like she wasn’t there. Just like she hadn’t lain beneath him and kissed his mouth, swallowing his hoarse cry of completion. Just like she was no one to him at all.
Choking on what she suspected were tears, Britt threw away her paper plate and turned to fill another plastic cup with disgusting pink fizzy punch. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and before she turned, she knew it was him. Not familiarity really but the zing of recognition, the sparks of knowing when his body touched hers. She turned to look at him and the mere presence of him, his physicality moved her a little. Lean and strong, so at ease, so casual even in a suit. He was comfortable in his skin, she realized, just the same way she was uncomfortable in hers whether she wore a sexy blue dress or a conservative blouse.
Every conflicted feeling she’d had for the last week stormed in on her then. Every dirty thought, every moment of sheer panic that she’d ruin her life if she ever so much as looked at him again bombarded her. None of it was irrational, she realized. She’d been scolding herself daily for blowing a one night stand so out of proportion. Here it was, in the flesh, riding in with a fresh hell of complications in tow. He was her new boss’s youngest son. He was now a coworker, immediate family to her ultimate supervisor. He was someone not to be fucked with, not to be bedded and discarded as she had. What if he held a grudge against her? What if he, even worse, was married? Or struck up a liaison with someone else in the office? She’d be so jealous; it made her sick at her stomach to think of him with anyone else. This man was too dangerous to her professionally as well as personally—she could wind up broken hearted and jobless, theoretically, if she pursued him. If she went after him the way she wanted to, with a ferocity halfway to hatred.
It was making her crazy. She felt crazy, like she wasn’t capable of rational speech. Like she might open her mouth to say something else boring about his W-2 form and instead might say, Please fuck me again, Jack. She might beg; she felt so out of control. It was a sexual obsession, she realized, like those pathetic people on talk shows who ruin everyone’s life by chasing after someone who doesn’t want them, insisting with deranged assurance that the object of their stalkage must feel the exact same way! It was exactly what she thought about him...he must feel something if I feel this much! Britt realized how silly it was to think that way. Looking at him now, all she could think was how much she wanted him. Take me, she thought, wishing she could speak into his mind, could make him want her that way again, or make him move far away and never return. How could she ever get over him now when she had to see him every day?
There was a smudge of blue frosting at the corner of his mouth. She smiled at the sight of it. A neon blue trace of imperfection in his perfect shell, the easygoing face he showed the world. Without thinking, Britt reached up and touched his face, rubbing the speck of blue with her thumb. Self-consciously, she drew away, realizing too late that she’d touched him in front of the entire company. Hopefully, they weren’t all watching at that moment but word would get around.
Grinning, he darted the tip of his tongue to that corner of his mouth experimentally.
“It was good cake. What can I say?” Jack remarked.
“The first piece was good. The second is going to send me into insulin shock,” she confessed, feeling the heavy glob of sugary cake riding uncertainly in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to grope him or run away or just throw up. It was a perfect storm of social anxiety, ramped up by sexual tension.
“So, you work here. At my dad’s little retirement project,” he observed neutrally, not too friendly. In fact, neutrally enough that she felt disappointed.
“How is being a COO a little project?”
“His doctors told him to quit, the stress and the schedule were bad for his heart condition. He can’t quit though, not completely. So this is his answer, to take over a small venture and make it something big.”
“Are we being rebranded?” she asked, congratulating herself on thinking of a relevant question to ask.
“Sort of. He puts his stamp on everything he does. I have to say I’m happy to see a friendly face. I get a lot of shit for working with my dad.”
“I can’t see why. I can’t imagine anything much harder than working for family. They’re like the last to have mercy on you,” she said, feeling an aggravating kinship with him now, starting to sympathize, to look at him as a human being and not just the sex object she wanted to lay out across the hood of her Nissan.
“Exactly,” he agreed.
“I worked in my mom’s shop one summer, sweeping up hair and shampooing people. Hardest damn four bucks an hour I ever made. Nothing I did was good enough.”
“Did she fire you?”
“Yeah, but only after I told her I’d rather rob a bank than work for her another day.” Britt grinned guiltily.
“So really you quit?” Jack corrected.
“So really I threatened to commit a felony,” she clarified mischievously.
“I’ll have to try that line on dad when he gets on my nerves,” he said with a crooked smile that set her pulse racing.
“I thought you were trying not to give him a heart attack,” Britt pointed out.
“Fair enough. It might’ve been good for a laugh otherwise,” he shrugged, hands still in his pockets, hands she wanted all over her body.
“This is weird, having you here,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, s
eeming genuinely puzzled.
“Because we, because I—you know why,” she said.
“I thought you could show me around. Where the vending machines are, executive washroom, that sort of thing.”
When he mentioned the washroom, she knew her face turned red. She recalled her detailed fantasy about Jack joining her in the ladies room for some afternoon delight in front of the mirror. Hardly what he was thinking of, obviously, but it triggered a rather graphic flashback. She knew it was a bad idea to give him any kind of a tour. She would end up showing him the maintenance closet and yanking down his pants and going for it. Where had her professionalism and her sanity gone? She wondered miserably. A mention of the bathroom sent her into a frenzy of desire for Jack. She wanted to laugh but it was too pathetic. She had to think of a way out of showing him around.
“I’m sure your dad will have someone do an orientation for you. Or they’ll move the vending machine wherever you want it.”