‘At one point she joked that she should have that on her gravestone. Gallows humour at its best.’ As those words left his mouth, he physically sagged where he stood. He was staring at the small up and down buttons in the space between the first and second lift and he was slowly disintegrating. The memory of his wife was obviously ravaging him, dragging him back to the recent past when he’d lost her, throwing him forward to all the days he would have to spend without her, drilling him down into the present where nothing much made sense.
Slowly he breathed out. ‘Turns out drinking and talking about your late wife are not a winning combination,’ he said.
Still not quite trusting myself to speak, especially now when he was so in need of a hug, I reached out and rested my hand on his bicep. Just a comforting gesture so he knew he was not alone. I hadn’t been through anything like that, hadn’t lost anyone like that, had barely had a proper relationship, so I didn’t completely understand. But I could be there. I knew from other times in my life, with other people, that sometimes all you needed to be was there.
After a few seconds of us standing like that, Mr Palmer reached up and encompassed my hand with his. After a few more of those seconds, I looked up and my gaze collided with his. My dark eyes were studying his face, his equally dark eyes took in my face, pausing dramatically on my lips.
This was one of those moments where I could choose. I could take my hand away, shift my gaze to a safer space, move away. Or I could shiver slightly as he took his warming hand away from its place on mine, and I could take a step forward and lift my face to his as he pulled me towards his body and kissed me in one smooth move. Yeah, I could do that. I could definitely do that – so that, of course, was what I did.
When we crossed the threshold of room 612, our hands greedily reached for each other, hungrily pulling the other towards us, desperately finding our lips so they could be together again. He pressed me back against the wall, not bothering to slot the card into its place so the lights could come on. His lips crushed mine under his, his hands roamed my body as though trying to take in the whole experience of suddenly being allowed to touch me. Just as frantically, I explored his cool skin with the tips of my fingers, trying to read him through every line and wrinkle and imperfection I could reach. He broke away momentarily and then his lips were on my neck and I sighed, pleasure turning the sigh into a soft, throaty groan. His hands found their way inside my clothes, mine slid over the erection straining in his trousers. I reached for the buttons and suddenly it was gone. He was gone. He was stepping away and leaving me panting as the wall held me up.
‘What am I doing?’ he asked himself, horrified. Even in the dark of his hotel room, the shapes of furniture barely visible from the streetlight that threw a little light our way, I could make out the shock on his face, in the rictus of his body’s muscles. ‘What am I doing?’ He covered his mouth with his hands. Pulled his hands away again. ‘You’re young enough to be my daughter. What am I doing?’ He balled his fists against his temples. ‘I can’t believe I did this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
I straightened up and tried to sort myself out. Tried to slick down flyaway strands of hair, pulled my top down and tugged my skirt back into place. I felt so foolish. Because, come on, girl, what was I doing? The man was literally old enough to be my father. Not even a teenage dad, my full-on-adult-when-he-had-me father. What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t thinking, I was fantasising.
‘This is so terrible,’ he said. I didn’t move as he scrabbled around with the key card and the slot beside where I was standing, but I cringed, screwed up my face and put my hand to my eyes, when the lights came on.
Oh, but things were better in the dark. So many things are. In the light, this was a man who was very clearly older than me, who was more senior than me, with whom I was participating with in potentially screwing over my career.
He took another step back. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, calmer, more like the Mr Palmer I knew. How messed up was this situation? He was still Mr Palmer in my head even though he’d had his tongue in my mouth and I’d had my hand on his cock.
‘You don’t have to say sorry,’ I replied.
‘Oh, I do. This should never have happened. You’re a junior member of staff, this is sexual harassment.’
‘No, it’s not, because I wanted this as much as you did. I didn’t feel any pressure.’
‘And there was none, but it’s not good. Because you might have felt pressured but had no real confidence to tell me no. This is what they mean about sexual harassment. How do I know that when I kissed you, you weren’t too terrified for your job and your reputation to tell me no and walk away?’
‘I was fine. And I kissed you back. I’ve had a crush on you for ages.’
‘I shouldn’t have done this.’ He massaged his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. ‘I’m going to have think about what to do next. I’ll have to tell HR, of course.’
‘Nooooo,’ I said, eyes wide with horror. ‘Nooooo. You can’t. That’ll go down on my record. And if I ever am sexually harassed, even if it’s elsewhere, no one will believe me. They’ll just think this is what I do.’ I knew that was how those things worked. No one gave women the benefit of the doubt. They always brought up your past as an example of why they shouldn’t believe you.
‘That’s not—’ Mr Palmer couldn’t even pretend that wasn’t the case. He lowered his hand and looked at me. He sighed eventually and then asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ Like I’d know! He was the grown one, the one with the big age in this situation, shouldn’t he be the one saying what should happen?
‘I think I’d better go,’ I stated, to myself more than anything. I had better go and pretend this never happened.
‘Again, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Well, I do, it was talking about Felicia and you being kind to me and being incredibly flattered by the attention from someone so beautiful.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, how to respond without getting myself into even more trouble.
‘Any other situation, I would have asked you out, properly. Dinner and movie or gig. This would come at the end of a very nice time together.’
Now why did he have to say that? It just made it more difficult. ‘I’m finding it hard to leave,’ I confessed, facing him full on. I wanted to see his reaction, to find out if what I suspected about men was true. They just needed the opportunity . . . the green light to do what they wanted. They could be restrained and noble; considered and considerate until they saw a little ‘in’, a hint that they could get away with something they really wanted to do, so they twisted that ‘in’ to be permission to do whatever they liked with a defence handy if challenged.
His face, as handsome as it still was in the bright light of his hotel room, creased into a smile as he lowered his gaze momentarily before it was focused on me again. Focused on me and quite openly undressing me. ‘I’m finding it hard to keep my hands off you,’ he replied. ‘But this can’t happen. It just can’t happen. Ever. For both our sakes, I think it best you leave.’
At the door, as I moved my hand to the handle, I felt him come up behind me, press himself against me, nuzzle my neck, run his hand down the length of my body, move it between my legs and rest it on my bare thigh. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ he whispered, his voice heavy with longing. ‘You have to go, but the last thing I want is for you to go. I want you to stay. I want to make love to you so much it’s almost painful. You need to know that. I want you to stay, but this can’t happen because of everything else, not because I have no desire for you.’