“I’m heading to the meeting,” I say, not slowing.
“I know. I’m… sorry.”
“It was one kiss,” I say, quickening my pace.
Here I am trying to outrun this mistake, and he’s following me.
Every year, I warn my team that the company holiday party isn’t the place for drunken confessions, cathartic arguments, or dressed-up bad decisions. I usually sneak out early to watch a movie or spend time with Jenny and her family.
Last year, I ignored my own advice, stayed too late, and drank one too many whiskeys. I wasn’t falling-down drunk, just warm and careless enough to stop treating Chase like someone I needed to manage. I noticed the softness of his red jacket, wondered what was underneath his black vest and pressed white shirt, and let his hand stay on my shoulder through Troye Sivan.When the song ended, he pulled me in, and I acted like the room had narrowed to two people. Company parties never narrow to two people, and certainly not to a manager and his report.
Reality slammed back in the second we broke apart. I scanned the room as my shoulders tightened at every laugh and clink of glass. I knew enough to be afraid then, even before someone reported it.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, barely loud enough for Chase as we head onto the glass bridge between buildings. “Against company policy? Maybe. But wrong? No. There must be loads of manager-report… things. Query has a process for this, I’m sure.”
A process that might end with a cardboard box and a security escort.
“Yeah,” Chase says, staring at the polished floor.
Walking the glass West 14th Street bridge is no longer eye-poppingly surreal, with traffic crawling below us and sunlight flashing off windshields. Today it feels like a long, public walk to my own execution.
“You okay?” I ask, hating that I have to.
He’s still cute, but panic has a way of bleaching the attraction right out of a person. He’s an employee with high potential and even higher ambitions, full of the same sharp-elbowed confidence I had when I started. The difference is timing. Query was still growing when I got here. Now the place is logjammed and top-heavy, and it’ll take him years to climb where I got in three months.
“I just…” he says.
Of course he’s nervous. I’m his manager and the guy he kissed.
Should I reassure him? Hold his hand? Explain the HR process to him like this is happening to both of us in the sameway? It’s becoming painfully obvious why these relationships are frowned upon.
“Hey. I’ll be fine.” I stop walking and force some version of managerial calm onto my face. He still won’t look at me. “Hey,” I say again, until he finally lifts his eyes. “I’d love to chat, but I’m trying to get in the zone. Let’s talk later?”
“I told them,” he blurts.
“I’ll see you at the team meeting,” I say, not really hearing him.
“I told them we kissed. It was me.” Chase’s eyes are a watery mix of fear and misplaced compassion for the bomb he’s dropping on my career.
“You what?” I bark, too loud, heat flooding my face as I glance around to make sure no one heard.
Hekissed me.Hemade the first move. And nowhe’sthe one reporting it?
“I’m newer here,” he says quietly, as if that explains anything. As if I’m one log he’s clearing out of the way.
“You’re kidding.” He isn’t, but I say it anyway, staring out the window at the traffic below and trying not to imagine shoving him into it.
“You’ve worked here forever,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”
I force a laugh that sounds as miserable as I feel.
“When it happened… I didn’t mean for it to happen, but then it did, and?—”
“You kissedme,” I snap, stepping closer. “And now this is serious for me. This is my career.”
“It’s my career too.”
“Are you meeting with HR today?”
