Working Late

It’s 5:35 p.m., and Mikaela is at my desk wearing a smile that I can’t reciprocate, but I try. I can’t help it; it’s involuntary. She gives me hope. I have had a stressful day in the end. All my daydreaming eventually replaced by stacks of work. My groinal discomfort replaced by an irritable fidgeting caused by stress. But there’s camomile in her smile. She soothes the stress away with minimal effort, and now I’m in her debt. I fear I’m in so deep I’ll never get out of it.

“Thanks for staying late with me.”

With me. Why’d she have to say it like that? With that playful inflexion at the end. She smiles and waves at Elsa and the others as they file past, leaving me alone with Mikaela in this corner of the office. Her hair falls over her right eye, and when she turns back, she brushes it behind her ear, lowering her eyes at me like we’re standing under candlelight. My heart flickering to a new beat. It has a different rhythm around her.

“Are you ready?” She asks.

I swallow and croak out a nothing response. My mouth has gone dry. I clear my throat and sip some water. She just waits patiently for me to speak. “Um, yes. I’m ready.” For you, I’m always ready. Even when I’m not. I glance around the office. It’s already thinning out, leaving just a handful of bodies mulling about at their desk or collecting their things ready to head out into central London. I don’t blame them. Nobody wants to work late on a summer’s evening, not even me. I didn’t know what I was signing up for, but I don’t regret it. Not yet, anyway.

“I was thinking we could grab one of the booths and work there.”

She gestures to the other side of the office, which is already empty; the motion sensor lights have already fallen dark. It looks private. Intimate. My throat feels dry as my imagination floods with images of the two of us "working late." I gulp back some more water, clear my throat and hum a “mmhmm” with a nod in response.

“Great.” She says and turns away with a swing of her pendulum hips. As my eyes oscillate back to the rapidly emptying office, I notice two more people leaving the far end of the open-plan area, and I realise we’re going to be alone. I’m in trouble.

I take a few extra seconds to collect my things to distract myself from watching her walk away, but the corner of my eye betrays me. The motion lights triggering above her head, highlighting her beauty with every step, don’t help. I try to shake my thoughts away, but they intrude with vivid images of the two of us butt naked on the table, up against the glass... I want to leave her ass print smudge on the meeting room glass for someone to notice. So they can feel the sting of jealousy, like I do all too often. I want to be the guy they gossip about just once. I want to—Mikaela turns back to me as if she’s expecting me to follow her, and I hustle into action, trying to hide the heat of desire burning beneath my skin. You’re at work, David. She wants to work, remember. This is not a '90s teen movie. It is strictly professional. So, be professional. Right, right. Got it. Grown man, professional, business.

I shimmy into the booth beside her without realising how close I’m getting. I set out my notepad and laptop in front of me and then turn to find her inches from my face. A waft of Bergamot and Jasmine flaring my nostrils with warning. Damn it. There’s a light tug at the corner of her mouth, a hint of a smile that’s almost indistinguishable. The only acknowledgement I’ll get from her as to how inappropriately close I’m sitting. Without so much as a whisper, I shuffle a few inches to my right and turn to face her all business. She opens her laptop and begins explaining the task at hand. Phew. That’s a relief. She’d probably let me sit that close without complaint, but I wouldn’t hear a word she is saying if I hadn’t moved. Mikaela explains to me how an important client that she’s been trying to land for a while has finally allowed us to pitch for a project, and she doesn’t want to pass it up. We’re already busy as a team, but this is important to her. I can hear it in her voice. I love the way she gets excited about certain projects and then others… I don’t think anyone else knows this, but she has a wicked sense of humour. She’s so sarcastic and playful, like me. I’m the only one she swears around. I’m the only one who has heard her complain about clients, projects, or colleagues. She shows me a side of herself that no one else gets to see, and I love it. I thrive off it, but it’s a drug I can’t keep.

I dial back into the meeting, and we get to work. Two hours fly by. We work well together. She asks me questions and actually listens. Mikaela is also one of the few directors who appreciates it when I challenge her. I can’t help it. I’m a curious guy, and she knows that it’s a part of my process. I ask a lot of questions so I can see the whole picture. I think about things a little differently to others. I’m a creative thinker but also a bit of a perfectionist. It causes me a lot of issues in my personal life because I scrutinise everything. I’m always overthinking, but with Mikaela, I seem to find the perfect balance of inquisitive and collaborative. I’m the one who encourages her when she doubts herself and tease her when I know she wants to say something she would consider unprofessional around anybody else. She drops her guard around me, and I think that makes her cautious.

I check the time. 8 p.m. It’s getting late. The office is silent but for my heartbeat. During the day, the office is abuzz with life. People typing away at their desks, chatting to their deskmates, colleagues mulling about in the kitchen area making tea and gossiping, the rest making casual meetings on the breakout sofas and booths like the one we’re sitting in, opposite the semi-private meetings taking place in the glass rooms of varying sizes that line the far wall. There are also a couple of meeting rooms in the middle of the office, which split the floor in half. I hate those. I began the day in one of those, trying to hide my rising erection, not from Mikaela, but from Elsa, who was sitting across from me, outside the looking glass, staring in. I swear she’s always watching me. Especially when I’m around Mikaela. I think she knows I’m into her. Or maybe she’s jealous? I shake my head. I swear, the longer I go without sex, the more ape-like I become. My intrusive thoughts are now being operated by a pubescent Neanderthal. I don’t normally think like this. I don’t think I’m desired by everyone in the office. I’m not that lucky. I’m too normal. When I say normal, I mean anxious. I’m too anxious to hold anyone’s attention except Mikaela. Perhaps that’s why she flirts with me, because I actually flirt back for a change.

Mikaela must sense my thoughts because she’s looking at me. We made eye contact three split seconds ago. I know that because I counted. That’s how quickly my heart is beating; it is slowing down time. Her eyes are blue, cerulean, blue. The kind of eyes that make a man look up colour shades just so he can describe them in a detailed rich manner, like he’s Sir David Attenborough narrating the discovery of a rare species. She has that kind of beauty. The kind of beauty you hear about before you see her. That’s what happened to me when I transferred to the London office. Everyone told me about her. Even the girls asked if I’d met her yet. I thought it was odd until I saw her. I was standing in the third-floor kitchen, enjoying my first office drinks on a Friday, trying to find the courage to overcome my social anxiety and join the conversation, when she walked in. I felt her presence first. The hairs on my skin stood up to get my attention. Then, I began tracking her movements out of the corner of my eye involuntarily. I could sense something important was about to happen, and then I saw her. Mikaela looked at me, like straight at me. There must have been twenty people in the room, but all I could see was her. I’d be struck by Cupid’s arrow, and I couldn’t move. Our eyes were locked just like they are now,

“You have,” she pauses ever so slightly, “really nice eyes.”

“Um,” I have green eyes. Green eyes are rare. Only about 2% of people in the world have green eyes, and I forget that. Almost as rare as the compliments I receive from girls. That’s probably why I don’t know how to take compliments, especially from women. My instincts kick in, and I break eye contact, looking a million different places before she shoots another one of those deadly arrows.

Mikaela places her hand on my knee. “You should learn to take a compliment.”

“Um, thanks,” I manage, lifting my eyes. They land on her lips and the deadly curve of her Cupid’s bow.

She bites her lip, and I look up to catch her eyes flit to my mouth and back again. I can’t tell if I’m leaning in or she is. Maybe we both are. My heart is pounding in my ears. Is this really happening? She’s so close now that I can feel the frog in my throat urging me to take the leap and find out if the opposite is true. If I kiss a princess, do I become a prince? Then she says something, and I totally miss it. Not because I’m entranced by the closeness of her beauty, which I am. But because she said it so softly, I don’t think she even meant to say it.

“Huh?” The air suddenly thick with foggy desire. My voice is deep, trying to sink her back into the moment so we can stay a little longer, but she pulls away, lifting her hand from my knee and running it through her hair.

“I said we should order Chinese food.” Her voice a little clearer now, the glint fading from her eyes. “If we’re going to be here another hour, we should eat. Don’t you think?”

She sits back, and just like that, the moment passes so quickly that I’m back to questioning whether we were in it together or if my dreams are playing tricks on me. But the way she’s looking at me now suggests she wants me to play along and bail her out of our almost kiss. Pretend like it never happened, but all I want is for her to acknowledge it. Prove that I’m not crazy. Because am I?

...

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