The Boss Crush

The city sparkles with a million lights, all of them flickering like fireflies. I step to the edge, resting my hands on the brick and stand in awe. The Hudson looks so beautiful from here. The surface is smooth, twinkling with the reflection of a star filled sky.

“Wow, now this is a view.” The wind ruffles my hair, sending it in different directions.

“Yeah, I love it up here. It’s where I can go to just get away. Hungry?”

Turning around to face him, there’s a small round table between two chairs, and Lyle is taking the food out of the bag. He sets the containers down, arranging them in size.

Pointing with a pair of chop sticks, he says, “This is crab Rangoon, over here you got your fried rice, this is orange chicken. . .” He lists off the rest, using his chop sticks like a laser pointer. “And I brought some wine, red and white, because I wasn’t sure what you like.”

“Either is fine with me.” I walk toward him slowly, taking a seat in one of the chairs. He passes me a set of chop sticks and a glass of wine. “Thank you for this. I thought I’d be eating alone.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, dropping into the chair next to me. “I felt bad asking you stay late like this. Dinner is the least I could do.”

Scooping a bite of rice into my mouth, I look over at the grass strip. There’s football in the center, and the grass is actually painted with white stripes I didn’t see before. “Still like football I see.”

“Yeah, how’d you guess?” he asks jokingly. “Still like art?”

“Touché, Lyle Vox, you got me.”

He laughs, relaxing back into the chair with a carton of food. “Seriously though, it’s nice to know that you stayed with it. You were an incredible artist back then, and you’re even more incredible now.”

My cheeks flush, and I dip my head into my chest. “Thanks, I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else.”

“I mean it you know, even in school your art was so much better than anyone else’s. I was always blown away when I watched you draw.”

“You watched me?”

“Only when you didn’t know I was looking.” He chuckles, swallowing a bite a chicken and giving me a big grin. His cheeks are puffy, stuffed with food as he waggles his brows.

A painful memory bubbles up in my head. I don’t want to talk about anything that has to do with high school. It makes me think about what happened, and it stings. I can still feel the same emotions that I felt that day.

Time didn’t do anything to make me forget. It might have dulled the memory, it might have given me new memories to create a gap, but there are certain moments in your life that just stay with you, hurt and all.

And I have a few that still feel fresh even after all this time.

“I saw on your resume that you went to RISD on a full art scholarship. That’s impressive, that’s a hard school to even get into, never mind get fully funded.”

Smiling, it warms me inside that he pays attention to these details most wouldn’t. But Lyle does. Bashfully, I stuff my face with more food because I’m not sure what to say.

“You really are amazing; you know that right?”

“Amazing how?” I ask.

My eyes float to his lips, the same lips that once tasted like fruit punch and felt like velvet. The same lips that almost kissed me a day before. The same lips I’ve thought about over the years, and only ever had in my dreams.

He runs his tongue across his bottom lip, and sets down his food. “You’re different than the other artists I’ve met. I’ve been around so many since Sandy and I started this company, and none of them talk like you.” He’s somber, his eyes trace mine, the piercing blue so bright I can see my own reflection. “You have passion, you talk about art with such emotion that even I can feel it. That’s not just amazing, it’s refreshing.”

A breeze rolls across the rooftop, making me shiver. Lyle’s eyes move around my body, noticing the light shake. Pulling his jacket off, he comes behind me, and wraps it over my shoulders.

I inhale, a deep, slow breath. His cologne swirls across my face, seeping into my body like a warm drink. It heats my lungs, and it warms my belly like a shot of whiskey.

It’s not the same scent I remember from when we were kids. Back then, he was a boy, despite how much I looked at him like he was a man. I can smell the difference between the boy and the man now.

The boy smelled sweet, he lacked the confidence a man has. But the man now, he knows what he wants, and that’s all it takes to make my muscles feel like wet spaghetti and my head to swim.