I let my eyes meet his for the first time after we leave the phone closet to an empty hotel lobby.
He raises a brow. “Dinner?”
“Dinner.”
10
Maybe I should have refused. I didn't realize, in my post-orgasm lack of brain, that accepting a dinner invite meant putting off my plans of taking my clothes off, laying in bed, watching TV, and wallowing in my usual anxious state.
Maybe I should let Vlad know that I'm the sort of person who needs to recharge her social battery with a true crime podcast for the next ten hours after talking to one person for more than ten minutes. But my tongue is pressed hard enough to the back of my teeth that I couldn't manage any kind of backing out.
We can at least get through dinner, and maybe we can figure out what exactly is going on between us, I reason to myself as I start to follow him to the hotel restaurant. I don’t know about him, but I’ve never gotten off with my manager in a closet.
Just dinner.
And it’s still a work trip, so therefore it’s a business dinner, because it’ll be reimbursed by the company. So, we’re having dinner as coworkers, nothing else. I don’t know why the idea of dinner is starting to freak me out. Everything untowardly horny between us has already happened, it’s not like things can get any worse.
Maybe it’s because it’s a business dinner. He’s already been intimately acquainted with the sound and sight of me orgasming in heat, but the part where I have to go and pretend to be good at my job when he knows I’m a wreck makes my jaw tense to new levels.
And maybe he isn’t my boss, or department head, or anyone in my line of direct reports, but I kind of hate that he’s seen all the worst sides of me first.
I hate always feeling like I’m lying to everyone about being competent at my job, but somehow someone seeing the truth firsthand is worse. I don’t want to be seen for what I really am: a scattered mess of a person struggling with my body, because I didn’t handle my PTO properly beforehand.
Things are quiet, even easy, as we arrive at the restaurant and are seated. We spend a few minutes not talking and just reading the menus.
It’s a generic sort of place, fake plants, the utensils wrapped up in burgundy cloth napkins, that brick and faux industrial design that seems to be everywhere. There’s a tealight candle in a volcanic salt vase, flickering between us as we’re seated.
I hide my attention in my menu for as long as I can, because every time I look across the table, I’m desperately trying to merge the Peak District persona I expected with the person he’s shown me he is and failing miserably.
Still, it’s already nicer than going out with everyone else would have been. It might be the endorphins from earlier, or I might really like him. I don’t know if there’s a difference. A bit of tension that had been holding my shoulders up by my ears seeps away.
He already knows I’m a wreck. Maybe for once I don’t have to pretend any differently.
The moment we give our menus to the waiter and have to look at each other, he folds his hands on the table and says, “I was actually hoping, earlier, to get a moment with you to discuss some things.”
Terror, panic, fear. Tension returned.
“Something that wouldn’t fit in an email?”
He shrugs, his smile easy. “Well, I have you here now.”
After everything else, I don’t know why that’s what finally makes me blush. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from telling him he can have me anywhere he likes. He’s just helped me out of a couple rough spots, it’s not like we have that kind of relationship. Do we?
“And besides. You’ve emailed me about them so much already.”
Oh.
“Kathy and Ted,” I realize, and let out a breath. “Those, uh, rascals.”
“I wanted to discuss some of the mediation techniques you were currently implementing, and maybe take some of the burden with them off your shoulders,” he says, and I don’t know why it surprises me that he actually wants to do his job and not just leave me to handle it.
That gives me just a hint of ease, of warmth, before I realize—he doesn’t know. I try not to immediately be weird about it, with what little control I have over that.
“Oh. Well. Um. My initial plan was really just to babysit Kathy and stare her down whenever she gets snide. That’s not really an approved mediation technique or anything, but it’s worked somewhat for me when we’re in the office, so it’s just kind of my off-the-cuff go-to. But, uh, hm,” I ramble, and he has the gall to pull out a notepad.
While it's not an unusual part of my job that I have to inform someone's superiors that there's been some unprofessional intimacy, it's usually done through paperwork. I don't think I've had to do it face-to-face before.
“The other night, I was leaving the bar, and I ran into the pair of them, somewhat ruffled...”
