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“Did… did I do alright?” she asked, the nervousness in her tone reminding me that even a modern day Aphrodite could have some insecurities.
“Yeah. You did fine,” I said shortly, closing my eyes against the after image of exactly what she had done. I didn’t want to get hard again. I needed time to think, to gather myself.
“Oh… okay. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I answered quickly. Too quickly. Since when had I lost all my smoothness, my charm? “I just realized I forgot several correspondences that were important.” I looked to her with what I hoped was a reasonably polite expression. “Why don’t you do your normal runner’s tasks while I get caught up?”
“Uh, I… alright. I can do that.”
She slid off my desk and I could almost see the uncertainty in the air around her, but I couldn’t allow myself to comfort her. No, doing that would have me sliding back in and then I wouldn’t know which way was up or down again. I’d just been drowning in everything that she was and my hindbrain wanted her to be.
She left, and I sagged in my chair, thinking. We were just sex. That was it. Sex. It couldn’t be anything more than that because I didn’t believe in anything other than that. I was never going to marry. Never be a couple. Because that was stupid.
But if that was true, why was my gut twisting so hard? Like I was denying myself something I needed more than anything else?
No. That was stupid. It was probably just something I ate.
Bev
I was confused.
I was also probably leaning towards a little hurt.
But mostly confused.
Fitz was avoiding me.
At first, I thought it was just in my head, because we worked together after all, but after a few days and a weekend without so much as a text from him, my brain put two and two together and I realized he was giving me the cold shoulder.
“Oh hey, Bev. He got you doing grunt work down here?” I recognized the voice of Donella, a one of the lovely managers that worked a floor above Chris. She was in charge of wardrobe, if I remembered right.
I pulled my head from the fridge that was cleaning and nodded. “You know how it is, there’s always something that needs done around here.”
“I dunno,” the woman retorted. “The way I hear it, if you were allowed to work more overtime then this whole building would be ahead of schedule and wrapped up with a bow.”
“Oh, well I don’t know about that,” I said with what I hoped was a warm smile.
But it didn’t reach my eyes. How could it. The reason I was doing so much work outside of Fitz’ office was because he had started locking his door.
That had been a particularly unpleasant shock. I’d walked towards his office Monday morning after the weekend where he hadn’t talked to me at all only to find the door shut fast. When I used the intercom, he said he was occupied and would email me my tasks.
And that was what he continued to do. I didn’t even see him lately, only communicating through email and it hurt me more than I ever thought it would.
“Are you alright?” Donella asked, stepping a bit closer and I realized I had let my expression get to my face.
“Oh yeah, sorry. The wipes I use sometimes make my eyes sting. Anyways, I’m gonna finish up. Wasting electricity with the door open and all that.”
“Ah, right. Of course.”
She tottered off, no doubt with her own important list of things to do and I stuck my upper body right back into the break room fridge to continue cleaning.
I just felt so awful.
I had told myself that it was stupid to get involved with my boss. And then I had told myself that it was just sex and I needed to be practical about it.
But then he had to go and ignore me, and I was faced with just how much bullshit I had fed myself.
What had I done wrong? Did he think I was fat? Ugly? I would think that he had just gotten tired of me, but the transition had been so sudden from him being seemingly mad about me to mad at me was far too sudden.
I didn’t know, and it was making me absolutely miserable. Would it be so wrong to ask for an explanation? I thought that we were friends at least, and wouldn’t a friend tell me to my face that he wasn’t really interested anymore? Wasn’t that what adults did? They broke up with each other and moved on to their next friend with benefits? I didn’t know, but I felt like I deserved at least that much.
But it wasn’t like I could tell Fitz that over the intercom, so I just kept on cleaning the fridge. Maybe that was all that I was good for anyways.
