Page 98 of Say My Name

I pick up my jacket.

She faces the whiteboard. “Send me your committee notes.”

“I will.”

I stop at the door, but she doesn’t turn around.

I spend the rest of the afternoon wondering what she would have said if we’d had another ten seconds.

Most of the executive floor is dark when Elena’s message arrives.

Elena: My office.

She gives me no explanation. She asks for me without attaching the request to an appointment or a test. I’m out of my chair before I can decide if a reply would make this easier for either of us.

Maya is still at her desk when I cross the hall. She has her coat draped over one arm and is shutting down her computer.

Elena stands behind her desk with the acquisition model open on one screen. “Go home, Maya. I’ll finish the committee notes.”

Maya looks at the time in the corner of her monitor. “They can wait until morning.”

“I know.”

Maya glances at me, then back at Elena. Curiosity passes over her face, but she keeps whatever she’s thinking to herself. “All right. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I wait until the elevator doors close behind her.

Elena moves around the office without speaking. She lowers the blinds across the glass walls, checks the hallway, then closes and locks the door. No one outside can see us now.

She turns to me.

“You called me in here,” I say.

“I did.”

“We agreed yesterday that sex at work was off limits.” I state the fact, giving her one last chance to stop this.“”

“I remember. I wrote the rule.”

“And now?”

She walks to the front of the desk and rests one hand on its edge. The screens behind her show every correction she made this afternoon. This is her office, and she called me here.

“Now I’m breaking it,” she says.

I don’t move. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you want.”

She spent almost twelve days avoiding those words, then said them yesterday because I refused to accept another excuse. Tonight, she has called me here after admitting exactly what she wants.

“I want the version of you that has been restrained across from this desk for four years.”

Her eyes hold mine, daring me to refuse. “Come here,” she says.