She sat up and scowled at me.
“What do you mean?!” She mouthed back and waved her arms. The sheet she had been holding to her chest fell to her lap, and I was temporarily distracted by the sight.
“Benji!” She hissed. I quickly muted my phone and shot her a pissed off look. “What do you expect me to tell Peter to explain how I got ahold of you so quickly?” She snapped. I stared at her, and panic rose in my chest. The situation was already spiraling out of control.
“Think of something. I have to go; I’ll probably be out of the office this week.” I slipped on my shoes and started towards her door. The words that she threw after me in such a casual, cold tone froze me:
“Don’t expect me to lie to my boss for you Benji. I won’t lose my job for a man who doesn’t respect me.”
I promised to call her after I got my wife to the airport and then got the hell out of there. I had never given the psycho any reason to think I would be hers, but reactions like that were exactly why I had always followed my ‘no coworkers and one night only’ rules.
When I finally called her, I had to convince her that rushing to my wife wasn’t a lack of respect for her but an obligation that couldn’t be avoided. She didn’t buy it until I assured her that I wasn’t joining my wife in North Dakota. I never told her that I was staying for her.
No, unfortunately, she took my staying behind to babysit hercrazy ass as a sign that I wanted more. She had even convinced herself that I was going to leave my wife. Even though, until tonight, I hadn’t touched her all week.
“Which one? I’ll come to you.” She purred.
“I need time to figure out what’s going on.” I took a deep breath, “She could have eyes on me and if she had proof of you coming here it would look very bad to a judge.”
There was no way that I would let it get that far, but it sounded convincing.
“I’ll wear a disguise.” She giggled, as if she'd just announced a fun game. I rolled my eyes.
I will never break my ‘no coworkers’ rule again.
“Angela… why did Peter call me?” I needed to know how much she had told him.
“Oh, I—“ she sounded nervous. “When I tried calling you and you didn’t answer I got worried that she had done something…”
“Hmmm…” I hummed through a clenched jaw.
“I just told him that your wife had caught us and was very angry and I was worried about you and might need to take tomorrow off.” She continued. She had taken my lack of response as a good thing and sounded far less worried. “I know this isn’t how you would’ve wanted to announce our relationship but I—“
“Angela, we need to be very careful.” I interrupted, “If you are at work telling people that we’ve been having an affair how do you think that’s going to impact a divorce? If I lose my job and enact the infidelity clause in my prenup our future is ruined.” I let the words sink in.
The bitch had already caused enough damage when she lied to Melanie and told her that I had made promises to leave my wife and said that she had been at a spa instead of a funeral. Neither statement was true, but both were so damning it would take weeks of groveling to repair.
“What do you mean ruined?” She squeaked.
“Not only would I be financially ruined, but I don’t know if I could forgive you…” I trailed off and sighed. “Maybe I could, I mean I’d want to but, Angela... I’m a man and if everything I’ve worked for gets ripped away because of office gossip—because you said too much—I think my pride would get in the way of any future for us.” I knew that threatening to rip away a future I had only just verbalized was in her reach was a powerful motivator. She didn't need to know that it had never been, nor would ever be, a possibility.
I could hear her pacing.
“Alright, so damage control… what do we do?”
“You could—no, I couldn’t ask you to do that. We will find another way.”
“I could what?”
“Maybe, if you told Peter that there had been some inappropriate flirting, but nothing physical, until you decided to follow me home tonight…”
“He will fire me…” she sounded appalled.
“Maybe not. You are very good at your job.”
“How does that even help you… we were literally caught in the act tonight?” Angela argued.
“If we make it sound like it was just a one-time error in judgment, after weeks of being pursued, they won’t be able to fire me. I’ll work on convincing Melanie not to void the prenup over one mistake but if the narrative given by my employer is that we’ve been screwing for weeks she’s definitely going to be laughing all the way to the bank and then Peter will probably have HR fire me and sue me for breach of contract by having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate without the proper documentation.” I let real panic slip into the last half of my explanation. This was one of the few times when sincerity was in my best interest.
