“Yes, sir,” I said, taking a deep breath and pulling out some sticky notes so we could make a mess of the plan before finalizing it – hopeful that neither of us would ever have to mention that embarrassing incident again.
And that I would soon forget the lingering sensation of his huge, warm hands and steady arms, which I could still almost feel pressed against me in all the places we had touched.
Olly
The weekend had been brutal.
There wasn’t much of a concept of a ‘day off’ or a weekend when you were in sports.Sports happened at weekends.There was no chance of me taking time off in the week when all the sponsors and CEOs were at their desks.
There were not many days I could cross off my calendar.The weekend was a chance to fit more work in and meet with as many people as possible from my list.It was a chance to show my face at games and make sure the world knew we weren’t worried about Ridley.A chance to head out and scout at college games and keep an eye on the competition.
But Keaton wasn’t scheduled for work on weekends.
He had said he would work with me whenever I needed him.He had promised to stay late and come in early.But the contract he had signed said five days a week and I couldn’t overstep that mark.Not when it was the cause of at least half of my previous secretaries folding.
I still remembered the look on my first secretary’s face when he quit.
Andy had been with me from the start.We had grown the company from a tiny thing into something bigger.We had been fresh out of college back then.Young men with no other commitments.
But then he met a woman.Got married.The final straw came when he had a child.
“I just can’t do it anymore, Olly,” he’d said to me.The last secretary I allowed to call me by my first name.“I don’t see my wife awake.I missed my daughter’s first steps.I’ve changed about five diapers, total.”
I had frowned at him.“You want to change more diapers?”
He’d sighed and said he knew I wouldn’t get it.That he was leaving and there was nothing I could do to stop him.The workload was just too much for one human being.He said there was no way anyone could keep it up for an extended time.
He had been wrong.A decade later and I was still going strong.
But his words hung in my head whenever I looked at Keaton.I knew it was true.Every one of my secretaries who had not been fired for incompetence had quit.Almost all of them said the job was too much.
I didn’t want Keaton to think the job was too much.
I’d work every weekend without him just to keep him a little longer.
This had been a weekend fraught with tension and heavy with apologies.It felt like I was under attack on all sides.Every client and every sponsor wanted to know if we were losing our grip.If our star player was about to go fully off the rails.If we were going to have enough time to spare for them.
Reassuring each and every one of them personally was a mammoth undertaking.But it was the only way they were going to believe that they weren’t about to take a backseat.
I was a tired man.Almost a broken man.But I wasn’t going to give in.I wouldn’t let our saboteur get the better of us.I was going to find out who it was one way or another.
I was a determined man.
That was the man who waited for Keaton when he arrived on Monday morning.When he appeared like a balm for my soul.The one thing I had wanted all weekend but had not been able to grasp.
“Sir,” he said.There was something odd about his manner from the second he stepped into the room.He didn’t go to his desk.He stood in front of mine.He didn’t take his messenger bag off over his head.He didn’t take off his coat.
He just stood in front of me.
His hair was slightly wet from the rain outside.I wanted to reach out and push it back from his forehead.Stop the water from running into his eyes.
“Keaton,” I replied.I narrowed my eyes.I had been so busy all weekend that I had done a successful job of not thinking about it.Seeing him in front of me again made my mind go right back to that moment.
The feel of his body in my arms.The overwhelming urge to pull him closer.To use his fall as an excuse to kiss him.The sheer disappointment of knowing the right thing was simply to set him back on his feet.
“I… have something…” he said.He seemed to not know quite what to say.Then he reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a white envelope.
A small rectangular white envelope.The kind that you would buy to enclose a sheet of A4 paper folded in three across the longest side.The kind that you would use to hand over a resignation letter.
