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At least that was what I thought. Since being with Shelly, all of that had turned around. I now realized how much I’d been missing in my life before her. I was really not living. Now everything had a purpose, everything had a reason behind it. Everything felt like it was exciting and new. It was crazy how my perspective on things had changed so quickly.
I grabbed a big pot and filled it with water, which I set on the stove to start boiling. As I waited, I grabbed myself a beer and popped the top before bringing the foamy can to my lips. It tasted good and sweet. I wondered if it might calm my nerves a bit and improve my cooking ability. Maybe I’d start a YouTube channel about cooking and drinking. Would that take off?
“You are a nutball, Gary. You know that right?” I asked myself out loud with a chuckle. The answer was yes. I did know that. And I’d also made peace with that awhile back. Shelly seemed to get me and my sense of humor. I found I could be myself with her more than I could with anyone else that I knew.
And it was so odd that we had to pretend to be total strangers a majority of the time. At work, it was all business. And it was so damn hard. Wow, it was hard. I hated what we had to go through just to be happy. The longer we did it, the more I resented where I worked. I hated being an underling. Even with the seniority I had built up by being a veteran of the company, I was still nothing more than a peon. I was a cog in the machine—nothing else. And I was fooling myself if I ever believed otherwise. I was disposable. I hated that. I figured by my age that I would have achieved some level of higher ranking within the company, but I liked the company I worked with and until someone above me moved on, there was little in the way of moving up that would happen.
So, right now I was stuck. I could have started looking around and seeing what else was available with other units, other cities. But that would have been like starting over with a brand new crew. I told myself before that I was content where I was, and that was true. Until now. It was true until it began to affect me in negative ways. The fact that I had to hide a big part of my life in order to keep my job made me angrier day by day. I desperately wanted to storm into the Chief’s office and tell him straight to his face how much this policy of theirs sucked ass and that he could shove it if he didn’t like the way that I felt about it. That would have been satisfying on so many levels.
But I had Shelly to think about now. I had to consider how my actions would affect her. I would never do anything to hurt her.
The water was boiling now, so I put the spaghetti into the pot and stirred it occasionally as it boiled. Then I heated up a small sauce pan and poured the sauce into it. After ten minutes it was pretty much done. I popped the garlic bread in the oven and began to mix together the salad while I waited.
After washing the veggies and putting everything to simmer, I took a look at myself in the mirror and decided that I was as good as I was going to get. Shelly seemed to like me anyway. That was good enough for me. I had never really felt that handsome or sexy until she had come into my life. I knew that women seemed to find me attractive, but for whatever reason the idea of myself being some sort of a great, handsome guy had not really appealed to me. I just didn’t care. That was superficial nonsense. But now that I had Shelly, I wanted to look my best at all times. Then again, she liked me before, so I was starting to think that I was overthinking this. What was wrong with me? I’d never acted like this before.
I laughed and removed my sport coat, unbuttoned the top button on my collar and rolled up my sleeves to be more natural. I was not going to be comfortable and quell the nerves coursing through my body if I was dressed all stuffy and not being like
myself.
“You’re a geek,” I said to myself in the mirror with a smile. I’d never cared what anyone really thought about me. I didn’t see a reason to start now. Shelly liked me for me and that was the only way I wanted her to like me.
I certainly wasn’t going to try to change her. She was perfect in every way. I thought of her constantly and the way I had to keep my feelings inside all day at work was pure torture. How much longer would it be that way? How much longer would I have to wait to declare my love for her to the world? That was all I wanted to do. I had a feeling that this would make me the happiest man in the world. It felt dirty somehow to keep it all a secret, as if it wasn’t real, or like we were ashamed of it.
But then again, it also felt exciting. Shelly had even told me how much she enjoyed the sneaking around, to an extent. It was fun to do what was considered Taboo. It was the same reason people had sex in public, or pretended to be strangers just meeting in a bar. It was just that little something extra that made life a bit more exciting.
I set the table with my best dishes, laying the food out in as expert of a fashion as I could. This included the basket of garlic bread right in the middle of the table. On either side were two candles which I lit. Then I put on some soft music on the stereo and dimmed the light to be just perfect.
It was all ready.
A few minutes later Shelly arrived. She was instantly impressed by the work I’d put into our lovely feast.
“Wow, you really outdid yourself,” she said. I was pretty sure she knew that I did little more than add water and heat, but she was being gracious anyway. I think it impressed her that I had just made the effort. Not that I was secretly some wonderful chef.
“Thank you, my dear,” I said.
We sat down and started dinner. I was hungrier than I realized, but I could not take my eyes off Shelly. She was so beautiful. She was wearing a tight, sleek, sexy black dress, which showcased her perfect cleavage just right. And it showed off her long, slender, but toned legs as well. In the lighting, her skin looked even more tan than usual, and her soft, wavy hair rested comfortably on her shoulders. She wore little makeup, which was her usual. She was so beautiful that makeup would only cover up the beauty of what was already there.
“So, I almost dragged you into the ladies room today,” Shelly admitted.
My interest was piqued. “Really? That sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, it was an impulse. I have to admit, those are getting more difficult to control.”
I nodded. “I have to agree with you on that.”
“I’m just so tired of the sneaking around,” Shelly said.
“I was just thinking the same thing. But I have faith that one day we won’t have to. I’m not sure how or when, but I think eventually we will find a way out of this.”
“We could just chuck it all and say to hell with it. If we get fired, we get fired.”
I looked into her eyes to see if she was serious. She was. I knew that. And I believed that she truly felt that way in the moment, but our relationship was still so new, there were still so many things that we weren’t able to predict, that it would have been reckless for both of us to throw it all away.
“I think we should wait,” I said. “My thinking is, if this happens, then they win.”
“I’m not sure I care about winning or losing,” Shelly said. “I just want to be free. And with this sort of crap hanging over my head, I don’t feel free. I feel oppressed. It’s like we are working for some fascist dictator or something.”
“A lot of jobs feel that way. When you have a boss, that’s basically what that means. We both love what we do and for us to allow this entity to tell us we can’t do that anymore feels awful, but I don’t think we should ever enter into anything like this lightly. Let’s just keep playing along for now and see what happens.”
