Filed to story: Can’t Get Enough Of You
We sat at our favorite coffee shop. June and I were both taking our lunch hour. She worked for a large firm in town as the communications director-since college she’d worked her way up in the company and she was doing well for herself. She’d been away on business for the past two weeks, and I hadn’t talked much to her about what was going on with Nolan. It just wasn’t the type of thing I wanted to talk about on the phone.
“What’s there to tell?” I asked.
“Come on, you can’t keep holding out on me. Tell me what it’s like working with him at the office! You can’t tell me it’s just run-of-the-mill. I mean, he’s the father of your child. God, if you clam up on me because I’ve been away on business, I’m never traveling again.”
I laughed and shook my head. “It’s just… weird to talk about. You know? I mean, it’s Nolan. The Nolan. The man that’s almost become a figment of my imagination.”
“I know,” June said with a sparkle in her eye. “And now he’s real. And he’s the father of your child.”
“Will you stop saying that? I know that. I mean, I think about it all the time. But he doesn’t know that, so it’s easy enough to pretend he’s just another person…” I groaned. “Who am I kidding. He’s not just another person, not by a long shot. And we’re getting closer.”
“I knew it,” June said with a smug smile. “If you’re working together, it has to go one way or another. And it doesn’t sound like it’s going wrong. Is there chemistry between the two of you?”
I glanced up at her, blushing. “Yeah. I mean… yeah. A lot.” I blushed harder, thinking about how he’d bent me over and fucked me on his desk.
June blinked at me. “Oh, my God. You slept with him?”
“How the hell do you know that?” I asked, giggling.
“It’s written all over your face!”
I shook my head. “It was a mistake. We weren’t supposed to do that. We’re both professionals, and we work together. He’s my boss. It was a mistake.”
“You don’t believe that for one second,” June said with a wicked smile. “Was it amazing?”
I blushed again. “It was… but everything about him is amazing. I just…” My smile started fading, and I felt the worry that had been growing over the past two weeks creeping in. “We’re really good together. And that’s a problem.”
“Why?” June asked.
A waiter brought the coffee we’d ordered and I grabbed my cup, taking a sip, holding onto the kick of caffeine as if it was a lifeline. June sipped hers, too, and glanced at the menu to remember what she’d decided on.
She ordered a Cobb salad. I ordered a gourmet sandwich.
When the waitress disappeared, June turned her attention back to me, waiting for an answer.
“Because I’m in danger of falling for him. And I haven’t told him about Liam.”
“So, tell him.”
I shook my head and sipped my coffee. “It’s not that easy.”
“I know it’s not,” June said gently. “But he’s here now, and you’re hitting it off so well. If you tell him, you could be more. You could be-“
“Together?” I interrupted her. “I don’t know. My coworker said he was a major playboy. I don’t want to get attached to someone who can’t be a one-woman man. Or someone who can’t commit like Ryan. If I do, and Nolan breaks my heart, where will that leave me?”
June nodded, not having an answer.
“Besides, I have no idea how he’s going to take the news, and that scares me. What if he freaks out about it? What if he never wants to see me again? Or worse, what if I lose my job?”
“He won’t fire you,” June stated.
“Why not?”
“Because that would be wrong. Unethical. You have HR on your side with that.”
I nodded. “I guess so. But still…”
I had no idea how I was going to approach it. When I’d seen him first, I’d been sure it was a sign. That he was back in my life had to mean that he deserved to know, and that this family didn’t have to be broken anymore. I had fantasized countless times about what it might be like to have him in our lives, to have him help me with the costs, to spend time with him and Liam together. To be a family.
But I couldn’t tell him. Maybe it would be better to keep quiet and just suffer through all of this. Maybe it was better if I didn’t tell him at all.
“I don’t know what to do,” I finally said.
“I think you should follow your gut,” June offered. “You’ve always done the right thing no matter how hard it was. You kept Liam and you raised him, and that’s not an easy task. You’ll figure this out, too.”
I nodded. Our food arrived and we started talking about other things. It was easier to make small talk than to talk about the big things that were so hard to face.
After lunch, Nolan was waiting for me in my office when I arrived.
“Oh,” I said when I saw him. “Did I forget about a meeting or something?” I feverishly ran through my calendar in my mind.
“No,” Nolan said and grinned at me. His eyes were the color of a clear autumn sky and his smile made me feel weak at the knees. “I just wanted to see you.”
I shook my head. “You can’t do this, you know.”
“What?”
“Come into my office to flirt with me.”
He chuckled. “I’m the boss. I can do whatever I want.”
“So, you flirt with your employees?”
I sat down behind my desk so that he had to turn to face me.
“Employee,” he said. “Singular. You.”