By the time I got back home, I kind of wanted to kick my own ass. That about summed up how I was feeling about myself and my decision making. If I knew anyone else who slept with their much-younger employee not only once, but twice, and after they talked through it and knew it was a bad thing, my first thought would be to smack some sense into them. It only seemed appropriate now. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to have the effect I was going for, and no matter how much I tried to convince him, Cole just wasn’t into the idea of doing me a solid and giving me a nice square kick in the ass. His explanation had something to do with us being grown men and the time he spent in Tibet, but I didn’t care. I felt like shit and just wanted it to be over.
I got in the shower and stood under the water that was so hot it stung my skin. Turning the showerhead to a pulse setting, I hung my head down and let the streams pound down onto my neck and shoulders to try to loosen the muscles up. It felt like they were all tied in knots, and I couldn’t get them to relax. The water helped, not just in tenderizing me like a steak, but also in filling my head with sound so I could ignore all the thoughts rushing through it for a little while.
When the water ran cold, I got out and stood in front of the foggy mirror. As the fog cleared and I was able to look at my reflection, I considered it carefully. I was never one of those people to spend much time staring into mirrors and contemplating myself. A quick glance at my reflection in the morning to confirm my clothes went together and my hair was straight was all I needed to get me through the day. But that evening, I forced myself to stand there and have a long, hard think session about what I was seeing.
There I was. Over forty. Perpetually single. Making mistakes right and left with a woman I could actually see myself with but who I had managed to completely screw up any chances with. It wasn’t the best evaluation. But it was accurate. That’s who I was, but it’s not who I wanted to be. I just didn’t know how to fix it. Any of it. Especially with Merry. We’d barely fixed it the last time.
I walked away from the mirror and put on boxers. It was still early in the evening, but I wasn’t feeling up to doing much. After an in-depth tour of my kitchen where I came to the conclusion my full cabinets and refrigerator offered me nothing worth eating for the night, I wished I’d thought to swing by the kitchen before leaving the complex and grab something Mom baked. She was in a daily bake-a-thon habit now, and everybody at work was bringing home the spoils. I’d been so thrown off by the encounter with Merry it didn’t even cross my mind.
But even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to eat it. Nothing sounded good right then. It was like all my pleasure sensors had shut down and now nothing was going to be enjoyable anymore. I probably deserved that. It was some sort of cosmic justice for taking way too much pleasure where I shouldn’t have.
I finally settled on giving up and ordering pizza. I brought it into the living room and lounged in my recliner, the box in my lap and a beer open beside me. After several slices and my second beer, I wasn’t feeling much better, but I also wasn’t feeling worse, which I was going to take as a victory. It wasn’t until I was most of the way through my third gory action movie that I admitted to myself I was checking my phone every few minutes to see if Merry had gotten in touch with me.
She hadn’t, of course. She made it clear as soon as she scurried away and left me alone on that bench, she was determined to not acknowledge what happened and just go back to work. I felt fairly certain she was doing everything she could to try to convince her brain it didn’t happen. Maybe she could get back to her office having replaced the memories with just sitting placidly by the pond by herself. I knew she wasn’t going to reach out to me, so I had to decide how I was going to handle the situation and what I was going to do next. I could let it drop. Just go to work the next day like nothing, keep up with the story spreading around the complex, and try not to think about it anymore.