I smile back at Ben with my filthiest smile, like a witch about to unleash a curse. He’s amused as I pull off my jacket, but I see something in him, a quiet eagerness, and it flares to life when I reach for the top button of my blouse. He watches it opening, as if it’s a bomb being defused, as if nothing could induce him to look away.
I reach for the next button and notice the ungodly bulge in his pants, straining the zipper. I lick my lips and my smile widens. “You’re enjoying this a little too much.”
“I’m about to enjoy it more,” he replies, pushing me flat onto the seat, pinning me there, while his free hand slides inside my skirt. And just before his hand arrives where I want it most…I wake.
I’m in bed, panting, my t-shirt flung across the room. I can’t even pretend to be disgusted. Right now, I’m simply furious that I woke up before he could get the job done.
How completely like Ben Tate to be disappointing, even in dreams.
I wear a fuchsia skirt to the Monday morning staff meeting because Keeley says I wear too much black. It’s paired with the same heels Ben suggested a dominatrix would wear. I do not, even once, wonder if my outfit screams sexy librarian.
I stride into the conference room with the devil a delicious flame in my chest, ignoring Ben as I take my seat and chat with Terri about her weekend. I feel his gaze and can’t stop myself from meeting it.
“How was your weekend, Gemma?” he asks, his tone sickly-sweet, baiting, but for some reason the sight of my name falling off his lips makes that flame in my chest double in size.
“Just lovely, Ben. And yours?”
There’s a flicker of delight in his dark eyes. “Ecstatic,” he says. Ecstatic implies sex, some dumb InstaModel slavishly serving his every whim while posting grammatically incorrect captions on social media.
“Ecstatic for one of you, anyway,” I reply. I mean for the words to trill lightly, ambivalently, but they emerge sharp instead. That thing in my chest, that childish glee, has suddenly gone sour. It was champagne, freshly poured—now it’s a glass of milk set on a sunny stoop all day.
“Did you have a few popovers this weekend?” he asks, and he’s smiling but there’s an edge to his voice too.
“Loads. So many popovers.”
“What the hell is a popover?” asks stupid Craig, entirely missing the point of this conversation.
“Yes, Gemma,” Ben says, nostrils flaring, “tell us all about the popovers.”
My mouth opens to reply, which is when I realize I’ve only read about popovers, and in my head they were much like turnovers but fancier, more like cream puffs, and I’m not sure that’s true. For all I know they’re another word for pancakes, a food which, inexplicably, has ten thousand synonyms.
I shrug. “You’d have to try them to understand.”
His responding smile is irritatingly victorious. I would like to grab him by his tie, yank his face down and sink my teeth into his jaw until he begged for mercy. I’d like to dig my nails into his skin until he…
I clench my fists to stop my imagination in its tracks. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, why I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anyone else.
I just know I need to make it stop.
Early in the evening, the office hallways are abuzz with laughter, empty chairs being slammed to desks, dinner plans shouted from one cubicle to the next.
It is, as always, the loneliest period of the whole day.
I was like them once, though it’s getting harder to remember. Sometimes it feels like all my joy is treasure buried so deep and far that I have no clue where to start looking for it. At other times, it feels like a myth I’ve just convinced myself was once true.
The office is entirely cleared out when I call my mom. She’s eating a “surprisingly good” Lean Cuisine and watching a Hallmark movie about an advertising exec whose car breaks down in a rural village in upstate New York.
“Who’s rescuing her?” I ask. “Widowed farmer or wise bar owner?”
“He’s a veterinarian,” she says, “but he is widowed.”
We laugh, and then grow quiet. “I wish I was there.”
“I wish you were, too, honey, but don’t worry about me. I’m having a cozy night in and have no complaints.” My mother has never complained once because she doesn’t want me to worry or feel bad for her. She’s created a fiction in which sitting alone in a shitty apartment watching a Hallmark movie is as good as it gets. “What about you? Are you going out tonight?”
“Not tonight,” I reply. “I’m still at work.”
“Oh, Gemma. This late? You should be out somewhere.”
My mom wants a different sort of life for me and I want it for myself, but maybe it’s time we both accept the situation for what it is. “I like what I do, Mom. This is more fun for me than going to some bar.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I sense a gentle lecture coming, which is the hardest kind for me to hear because I can’t just ignore it. “I know you’re driven,” she finally says. “But is what you’re doing going to make you happy in the long run?”
“It’ll make me partner, which is better than being happy.” I phrase it like a joke, but the truth is, if I were offered a choice between happiness and making partner…I’d probably choose the latter. “And I’m not sure happiness is really in my makeup.”
“Of course, it is. You’ve forgotten the little girl who used to spin in the yard for the fun of it and jump in every puddle, but I haven’t,” she says.
I quietly crumple a Post-it note in my hand and leave it clenched in my fist. I haven’t forgotten the kid she described either, but I think I may be too broken to get any of it back.
When the call ends, I rise and head to the break room. It’s late, and I should probably go home and eat a real meal, but I suspect the emptiness of my apartment would get to me tonight.
I take two steps inside and come to a sudden, graceless halt. Ben is there, reading on his phone while he waits for coffee to brew.
The coward in me would probably turn and walk out except I’ve already been seen. His gaze—startled, then predatory—starts at my face and finishes at my shoes, where it remains for a long, long moment.
I continue forward, doing my best to act like he’s not here. If it weren’t for ten straight years of dance training, I’d definitely be stumbling right now, however.
“I heard an interesting rumor about you, so I investigated,” he says.
My stomach drops.
“Your mom’s Etsy shop is endlessly fascinating.”
It’s not what I thought he was going to say, but it’s a bad night to have anything involving my mother thrown in my face.
I give him my best dead-eyed look. The one that says If you continue discussing this, I’ll make sure they never find your body. “Maybe you should be doing a little work on the Lawson case instead of online shopping.”
He gives a genial shrug and opens up his phone. “We’ve got a few spare moments. Outfits for cats, right? I might need to contact her.”
“Looking for a special bondage outfit for yours?” I ask, jerking a drawer open more roughly than is necessary. “My mom won’t support your weird habits if that’s what you’re hoping.”