“Yeah,” I said. “I was up late last night and had way too much wine.”
He grinned. “Oh, so it's like that, huh? Well I guess I'm gonna have to work you extra hard this morning to get you to sweat all those toxins out!”
“Come on, Bryce, you can cut me a little slack this morning. I feel like I got trampled by a herd of elephants last night.”
“All the more reason why I'm not going to cut you any slack, Ash. You hired me not to. If I recall correctly, you hired me because I used to be a drill sergeant and Discipline is my middle name. Now, I'm telling you, if you want to be trained like a marine, it's gonna be painful. Especially, if you slip up and drink on a school night. Your personal screw-ups are not my problem, Sinclair. I'm here to turn you into a machine, and if you can't discipline yourself, then I'm here to step in and do it for you.
“Now get your ass on the treadmill! We're setting the starting speed at 20 percent higher than usual to make up for your stupidity! Go, soldier. Go, go, go!”
***
The moment I stepped off of the elevator at the office, my secretary had a dozen things waiting for me that needed immediate attention. Because of that, I'd been too absorbed in work to stop by Lilah’s office even to say hi in the three hours since I’d arrived. As luck would have it, though, I was about to head out of my office when I saw her walk past my door in the hallway. I immediately called out to her before she disappeared around the corner.
“Lilah!”
She stopped and peered back into my office over her shoulder.
“Good morning, Asher,” she said in a very business-like manner that came across as a little awkward.
“Hey, can you step into my office for a second?” I asked.
“Sure.”
I stepped back behind my desk, where I took a seat.
“So, uh,” I began as she sat down across from me, “about last night . . .”
“Um, yeah . . .” she stuttered.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, not really knowing what to say and hoping she’d give me something to go on.
“I have a little bit of a wine hangover,” she replied. “I've had a killer headache all day and I've been feeling a little sluggish.”
“Me, too. At least you didn't have an hour long training session with a former U.S. Marine Corps drill sergeant at 5:00 a.m.”
She laughed and immediately some of the tension in the air evaporated. It was a relief to hear her laughter.
“That sounds like the absolute worst thing I could have imagined doing at 5:00 a.m.!” she claimed. “I got up an hour later than I usually do. I got here on time, but I’m usually here half an hour earlier.”
“But you did get here on time, and that's a sign of commitment and discipline,” I encouraged. I knew I needed to stop beating around the bush and get to the point, even though I really wasn’t looking forward to it. I wasn’t sure how she was feeling about the events of the previous evening.
“So, about what happened last night, specifically at the end of the evening . . .”
“Yeah, that,” she said, looking down at the papers in her hands.
“Look, we'd both had way too much to drink, and when I've had a lot of alcohol, I sometimes . . . well, do things I wouldn't usually do.”
“Yes, me, too,” she agreed. “We'd both had a few too many glasses of wine.”
“So, it just happened because we were both rather intoxicated, right?” I tried not to sound like I was fishing for confirmation, but I was.
While I knew I likely wouldn’t have kissed Lilah had we not been drinking, it wouldn’t have been because I didn’t want to. It would have been because my logical side would have stopped me. The fact that she paused before answering made me wonder if she was feeling the same way or if she truly had no attraction to me unless there was alcohol involved.
“Yes,” she responded. “I would definitely say it happened because we were both fairly inebriated.”
“I think so.” All I could do was agree.
There was a drawn-out moment of uncomfortable silence. I was about to flip the switch back into all-business mode when she looked up from the papers in her hands and our eyes locked.