Lunch plans makeit easier to suffer through my game of pretending a certain M-person doesn’t exist. We invite Anne along, and before you know it, we are in our favorite sandwich/ salad bar. Chewing on a bite of my delicious honey glazed ham sandwich, I steer the conversation away from work topics to more fun ones.
“Ok, Rins, still waiting on that skin care routine. Anne, Rina is about to tell us how she got this special glow about her.”
“Oh.” Anne quickly catches up.
Out of the three of us, I used to be the most adventurous, open one. Rina was the repressed one and Anne was the cute, shy one. Now, Rina is giving me stiff competition in the sexually adventurous department, probably surpassing me, and Anne’s still the cutest, but glaringly less shy. The stuff she reads in her little romance books could put both Rina and me to shame, but she’s pretty vanilla in her real life. She says romantic, but it’s the same thing.
“Yesterday was the anniversary of the first time he took me to L&L.” Anne and I aww in unison. “So, we celebrated by putting on a show in the vojeur’ room.” I’ve never been to L&L, but seeing how much I’ve heard about it, I feel like I have. That’s another thing that changed. Rina used to be so shy talking about sex. Not anymore. She’s not ashamed of her sexuality now and it shows.
“He fucked me in the ass on the spanking bench after he, of course, spanked me till I came,” she whispers, as to not traumatize the salad bar. Fuck, that sounds hot. She shrugs as if it’s just another Thursday, which for her—it is.
“God, you’re living the life out of my romance books,” Anne says with a giggle.
“I really should visit that place; this drought is not good for me.”
“What drought, Nats? You’ve been sharing stories just last week.” Anne continues giggling. I shrug as if to say, ‘a week’s too long.’
But the truth is, my last week’s story wasn’t fresh, I took it from the archives. I haven’t had any new stories in a while—if you don’t count the boring tattooed hand guy. And it’s been messing with my head. Seeing the last guy to make me come at the office every day, in fucking glasses, certainly doesn’t help.
Rina notices I’m deep in thought. “Maybe you should come to the club one day, Nats. I’m honestly surprised you didn’t already.” And she’s right. If you were to ask a random person on the streets which one of us frequents a sex club, nine out of ten would point to me. But sex clubs require a level of trust I’m not comfortable with.
“What do you say about that, Anne? Wanna join me?”
“I don’t think so, Nats. But you go and have fun.” She’s not interested in casual sex. She’s looking for someone to marry and have his babies.
“What an interesting group of friends we are. One afraid of commitment, one only looking for commitment, and the only committed one who gets ass-fucked in front of a crowd.” They both burst out in laughter, and I join them.
We continue laughing all the way back to the office. But my day turns sour quickly, when Kiara calls me into her office.
Matt is already sitting there, his stupid glasses on his stupid face.
“Natalie, glad you joined us. Matt approached me with an idea for an extra project, and I love it. Here are some details about his proposal so you can get into it, but I want you twoto work together on this.” She hands me a folder. “It’s basically PR, so you should be heavily involved. Can you both stay a little longer today and hash things out so we can start next week with a decent plan?”
Look, my boss is great. She’s great at what she does, she’s fair, and goes out of her hand for her employees. But when she hears an idea she likes, she’s pretty impatient to get it going.
“Of course, Kiara.” Matt is the first to answer—the kiss ass.
“Natalie? Of course, you don’t have to stay at the office, feel free to work on it wherever you prefer.”
“Sure, Kiara. I’ll do my best.” But we’re definitely staying in the office.
“Great, I’m looking forward to hearing what the two of you plan on Monday.”
We’re dismissed. Ignoring Matt, I head to my desk, reading the folder she gave me. He wants to offer free law consults, but not only to the families we work with. He plans to go into impoverished neighborhoods, setting up a pop-up law clinic and helping a wider community.
Tapping his foot, he waits for me to finish reading.
“Can I help you?” My voice is dripping with sarcasm.
“Yeah, in fact, you can. Maybe you can listen to what our boss said and work with me on this?”
“Of course. But you can’t seriously think I’ll drop everything this instant and get to work on your little side project? I’ll meet you in the conference room at...” I check the watch, “four o’clock.” He scoffs, but heads back to his desk.
At 4:08, because he can wait a few minutes, I enter the conference room. His hands are crossed over his chest, and there’s an indifferent look on his face.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say with a dazzling smile.
“Mhm,” he murmurs.
