I stay late at work all the time. Not to actually work, that is. It’s more that I like to have an hour or so to myself without anyone else around, and I can’t always get that at home. So, I linger in the empty office and spend my time de-stressing. I might write, pull out a coloring book, read a book, or lie on the floor listening to music. If anyone noticed, they never said anything to me about it, and it was never an issue.

Our building was in the middle of an overhaul, sprinkler and electrical systems were being updated and automatic fire doors were being installed on all floors. Those doors would shut if the mechanism lost power or a fire alarm went off. They wouldn’t lock but given I worked on the fifteenth floor of the building, I would not be hoofing it down that many stairs unless the situation were dire. Even then, you better believe I’m rigging something up to make my descent easier and faster than running.

Our floor had not yet been upgraded, so we still had doors that locked if the power went out.

I was lying on my stomach on the floor of my office, feet kicking in the air behind me as I colored in a book of ornate swear word designs when my entire office lit up for a split second with a blue-white light. A huge crash of thunder made me jump and drop my colored pencil.

A second strike lit up the sky followed right by another big crash of thunder that sent a chill down my spine. The power flickered then faded, and while annoyed, I didn’t feel panicked at all. Then I heard Bill come barreling out of his office yelling, “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, shit! Aww, shit.”

I hadn’t even realized anyone else was still in the building.

Making my way out to the reception area, thanks to some well-spaced lightning, I saw Bill standing at the door. He was shaking it and hitting it, trying to dislodge the door from its electronic lock and failing to do so.

I used the subsequent lightning strikes to stealth my way over to the door, uncertain of what to think about what he was doing, “Are we locked in?” I asked.

He jumped and spun to see me standing a couple of feet behind him, “Jesus, Alanna. What are you still doing here? You clocked out half an hour ago.”

“It’s quiet after everyone leaves. I didn’t want to go home yet, so I stuck around and figured I could get some things done. Are we locked in?”

“Yeah. I didn’t think anyone would still be here when the storm started. My system was closing down and I was about to head home,” he sighed as he hit the door again.

“I don’t think that’s gonna help. We can get out, right?”

He sighed, “Yeah, as long as we call the fire department to come up and get us. This means we both have to fill out a form stating why we were still in the building after hours and why we felt it pertinent to call for help to get out. Without an immediate threat to us, they might make us foot the bill should the fire department decide we were not in a genuine emergency and wasted resources.”

I laughed, “I thought these were on a generator? It would suck if the building caught on fire right now, wouldn’t it?”

The look on his face was priceless as he stammered, “Y-you’re kinda disturbing sometimes, you know? The generator is being changed out next week. It was a big fire hazard and they decided the bill for fire rescue during work hours would be more worthwhile than the generator lighting the place up.” He whined and leaned back against the doors, “Though, if the building did catch on fire, we would have reason to call the fire department for rescue, wouldn’t we?”

“How long do you think the power will be out?”

He shrugged and scrolled through his phone, “It’s supposed to storm all night and the power company is reporting half the county is out. They are working on it, but it could be a while.”

“Shouldn’t you call your Wife and let her know so she isn’t worried?”

He half-laughed,though the sneer evident in the soft blue light of his phone gave the laugh a sinister tone, “For her to worry she’d have to give a shit about me.”

Ouch. I hadn’t seen that coming. I furrowed my brow, “Marriage problems?”

He shook his head, “Nah. Marriage I have no issue with, it’s Wife problems I have. Well, ex-Wife, now,” a heavy bitterness hung in the air as he spat out the last part of his complaint.

“You guys divorced?”

“Apparently. I haven’t seen my Wife for more than a few hours over the past six months until a week ago when she handed me divorce papers. I suspected she was cheating on me, but as far as I could tell, she left home when I got there then sat in her car for hours upon hours.”

He sighed before he continued, “I don’t know what I did that made her want to divorce me. She won’t talk to me. I wish she had been cheating instead. At least that I could get mad about and have a reaction to. What fucking reaction am I supposed to have to her sitting alone in her car for 8 to 10 hours doing nothing instead of spending that time in the house with me? I signed the papers and gave them back to her. She said, ‘Thank you,’ and has been packing her stuff up ever since.”

“Do you want to color?”

His expression was a priceless one of confusion and annoyance, “What?”

I grabbed his hand and led him back over to my office. My coloring book was still on the floor, the page held open by the smattering of colored pencils I was using. I picked the book up, letting the pencils slide from the page to the floor, and scanned through it. It only took a moment before I found the page I was looking for then showed him by the light of his phone.

It had various scrolling designs with bursts of flowers. In the center of the design, in gorgeous, hollow flowing script were the words, “Vapid Cunt.”

He took in the image and laughed, “This is the ‘getting things done’ you were talking about?”

I smirked, “Well, this was mine,” I flipped back to my page and showed him the “Motherfuckers” with a cute little frog on a lily pad lingering in the corner of a scrolling pond scene I was working on when the power went out.

“This is a thing now? Curse word coloring books?” He seemed perplexed as he took the book from my hand and held his phone up to light the pages as he flipped through the different images.

“And Porn, pin-up, horror, et cetera. Adult coloring books are huge draws for people dealing with mental health issues.”

“You have mental health issues?” His eyebrow ticked up.

I smiled, “I don’t have to answer that, and you shouldn’t ask from a legal standpoint. I like coloring. It’s relaxing and nostalgic, and, honestly? Dumb fun.”

He handed the coloring book back to me and went over to look out my office window. I put the book down on my desk, then picked up the scattered colored pencils and lay them next to the book.

Lightning was still lighting up the sky every minute or so followed by a jarring roar of thunder as I walked over to join him at the window. The occasional rolling thunderous clash still made me jump.

His eyes never left the window, but his gaze shifted to my reflection standing next to his, “You know, you’ve got the best office. My view overlooks a fucking parking garage. Joe’s looks into an apartment building. But you, your window is over the park. Lots of green space and even a pretty little pond.”

I shrugged, “I don’t look out the window much, and it gets the worst glare on the screen from eleven until two this time of year. I’ve been asking for a shade from maintenance, or at least some help to switch my office around, but they keep denying my requests.”

Bill looked around before finally settling his gaze on me and asking, “We have lanterns around here somewhere don’t we?” He started to move away from me as he asked.

“Yeah, I keep them in the cabinet by the door in the break room. I swapped the batteries out last month so they should be fresh.”

“Isn’t that maintenance’s job?”

I laughed, “Yeah. But when we rely on others we’re often left in the dark. I’d rather do it and know it’s done than hope someone else took their job seriously when an actual emergency pops up.”

He took his phone and went into the other room. Cabinets opened and closed and I yelled out to him, “By the main door, not the bathroom door.”

Another cabinet opened and he came back bearing the lighting devices. He set them up around my office and looked at the furniture, “How did you want to change it?”

My head tilted with curiosity as I watched him roll up his sleeves, “I wanted to turn the desk forty-five degrees to the right so the sun isn’t behind me but I can still see people coming into the office.”

“Grab that end, we can manage it on our own,” he said.

I shook my head, “No, this desk is super heavy. Joe and I tried to move it and we couldn’t even get it off the ground completely empty.”

He held his hand over the top of the desk then bent down and picked up his end, shifting it to the right about half a foot.

I stared.

How the fuck did he do that? The desk was ancient. Heavy wood with solid drawers and every one of them full of office supplies. Moreover, Joe practically lived at the gym and I doubted Bill had seen the inside of one in years. Not that he was horribly out of shape, he just didn’t seem capable of lifting what was likely a desk that weighed well over two hundred pounds even when empty.

Bill looked proud of himself and motioned me over. I moved beside him and he put his hand on mine and placed it on top of the desk for a few seconds then I followed his lead and bent down to pick up my end of the desk to pivot it toward my desired angle. We did this a few more times, scooting it back a few feet as well.

It was still heavy, but it was like a tie holding it down broke when we put our hands on top of it first. It made no fucking sense to me so I asked him, “What was that thing you did with your hand?”

He laughed as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, “A trick my dad taught me when I was a kid. I don’t know what it does. Maybe it’s a subconscious thing, a mind over matter kind of thing or something? But whatever it does, I’ve always been able to lift things I shouldn’t have been able to, albeit for very short distances.”

“I’m impressed,” I replied.

We sat by my office window and watched the storm for a little while as he wiped the sweat from his brow and neck. I don’t know if it was boredom setting in or what, but I caught myself glancing over at him, taking in his physique and features in a way I never had before. He wasn’t buff, and he didn’t have a strong jaw or chiseled face. His hairline was starting to recede, he was tall with a small gut on him, but he had bright eyes that seemed awestruck every time lightning lit up the sky. He also had an endearing, though lopsided, smile.

I caught him staring at me a few times, the slightest smile lingering on his lips as he turned away each time he got caught. I wasn’t anything special. Unlike Dee from accounting, I wasn’t a svelte blonde gymnast with big attention-grabbing boobs delivering a soft giggle at the dumbest jokes. I was a thirty-two-year-old redhead with a bust that ranged from a B cup to a C cup depending on the particular bra and band size I wore. I had an hourglass shape that was bottom-heavy with a round Ass and curved hips which were wider than my shoulders. My waist wasn’t slender, but it had a noticeable dip in from my hips, which my shapeless, though snug around the chest, T-shirt masked.

When I noticed him looking at me, I became a little self-conscious about the outfit I’d changed into after the workday. We were co-heads of the department. I oversaw the finances, set the schedules and deadlines to keep us on track and on budget and handled the HR side of our department. Bill ran the details of the projects and gave the daily expectations to the team while running as an intermediary between the team and the client. I couldn’t fire him and he couldn’t fire me, but both of us had the authority to fire employees in the department without approval from each other. If he chose to fire someone, I could only document it. If I chose to fire someone, he had no hand in what happened next, but he could plead their case if he wanted to.

I had a very business-oriented style in the office. With my hair pinned up and out of my way, I applied my makeup with an eye toward a professional and respectable appearance. I also ditched my glasses in favor of contacts in the office. I always paired my basic slacks and brightly colored blouses with the perfect accessories. That was the only side of me anyone at work had ever seen before. It was a look that was the complete opposite of who I actually believed myself to be.

What he saw that evening was quite different. I’d ditched the work attire, including bra, shoes and socks, for a snug black t-shirt depicting the main characters from “Basket Case”in a sepia tone, as well as dark blue boot-cut jeans. To top off the changes, I released my hair into its natural state of curly chaos, and I’d exchanged my contacts for deep-purple cat-eye glasses. I wasn’t sure which of these might have stood out as the most obvious difference.

No one outside of my family had ever seen me in my glasses and I wasn’t certain how I should feel about it. He sat there still in his dress shirt and slacks, while I had stripped down to the most basic expression of myself. Even with his sleeves rolled up he still held the air of boss while I felt like a rogue teenager out of my depth.

He broke the awkward silence that hung between us, “So, what is ‘Basket Case’?”

I blushed.

How does one go about describing that movie? “Well,” I started while trying to think of a way to make it sound less spastic, “it’s a horror movie about conjoined twins who are forcibly separated under the direction of their father. One of the twins has a deformity and the doctors and father consider him a parasite who isn’t even human. The other twin is acceptable to the father and tries to live life without his murderous telepathic blob of a brother holding him back. It’s amusing. Super cheesy, god the cheese… But, I Love it. It’s one of my favorite movies and it’s much better than I’m making it sound.”

He laughed, “Believe it or not, I know the movie. I was curious if you actually knew it or if this was a boyfriend’s t-shirt.”

“Oh. It would have to be a very small boyfriend,” I said as I looked down at it. I smiled as I glanced back up at him, “Most people have no idea what it is.”

He looked me over, “Duane and Belial, right? I never took you as a fan of horror flicks.”

“If I’m not watching a horror movie then I’m watching a Disney or Don Bluth movie.”

“Do you root for the villains?”

“Nope, I’m a ‘root for the good guys’ kind of person.”

He crinkled his nose and looked me in the eye, “Most of the guys in the office are a little afraid of you. They think you are the embodiment of a Disney villain, the powerful-cold-witch type.”

I rolled my eyes, “Oh god, I’ve gotten that since high school. Do guys ever grow up?” I sighed.

He laughed, “We try our damnedest not to! Oh, we pretend to and give a good public image of growth, wisdom and maturity, but alone we’re still as likely to whip a rolled-up wet towel at a naked friend’s Ass as we are to dare them to eat the unidentifiable thing in the back of the fridge, which may or may not have been food at one point.” He smirked, “And do it right up until we take our last breaths I’m sure.”

I leaned my back against the window and gave him an exaggerated pout, “So disappointing.”

He ran his hand through his hair before he continued, “I don’t see it. I know you’re a hard-Ass to them sometimes, but you keep them in line. Since you started working here they’ve been getting more done within budget and I’ve had an easier time keeping the projects moving along on time. I’m not knocking your style, because it gets results, but doesn’t it get tiring to be so in control all the time?”

“It does. I actually hate that part of my job. I would Love to be one of the guys like you. I mean, I put up a good front, but when I go home at night I’m utterly exhausted at an emotional level and I pretty much go for a swim or bike ride then lie on my bed watching movies until I pass out. What about you? How do you feel about your leadership style?”

“I’m a fucking pushover. They all know it and take full advantage. I was never the ‘cool guy’ and I like being that guy now. It’s the path of least resistance. I pick up the slack and no one notices. That can be exhausting, too. It starts to wear on you after a while and you feel like a doormat,” he said as he sighed. “I’d like to take charge and do what I want without worrying about the repercussions or loss of social standing just once in my life.”

I bit my lip and tried not to smile as a dozen different scenarios of him taking charge of me ran through my head. He seemed to have similar thoughts as he smiled and looked me over.

I wasn’t sure how that would work or why I’d even thought of it.

Was he thinking about the same thing? Before I could think on it too long, he leaned over, his hand grasped the back of my head and his lips were on mine in a flash.

He’s married ran through my head as soon as our lips touched. It was quickly countered with, Now divorced. Very recently divorced. I should have objected and pushed him away, but I didn’t. I most definitely should not have returned his kiss and accepted being a desperate rebound, but I did, with wanton greed.

I had a fleeting feeling of shame thinking this was only a temporary thrill, but rather than push him away I welcomed his hand as it ran down my back while his tongue tangled with my own. That shame faded and a pure heady lust took over as my hand ran along the stubble on his cheek and jaw. I found it difficult to turn off my natural drive to direct and control things as I climbed on his lap and started unbuttoning his shirt.

He almost let me lead. But, before I got his shirt opened, he grabbed my wrists, lifted us both up and pushed me back against my office window.

It had been at least two weeks since I’d had Sex, probably closer to three. It had been with some random guy in the bathroom of a club on one of the rare weekends I actually went out. It’d seemed great for the guy whose name I can’t remember and mediocre, at best, for me. I had to take charge and direct everything to get even a modicum of pleasure from the experience. That always seemed to be how Sex was for me. One example after another in a long line of experiences where I took charge because I had to.

The cold of the glass seeped into the thin cotton of my shirt and sent a chill through me. The tingle down my spine swept away the memory of the bathroom fling. Bill put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes before he pushed me down onto the floor in front of him. My brow furrowed as I glanced up at him.

He got up and walked out of my office without a word. He hadn’t looked upset or angry. If anything he appeared deep in thought. Maybe he thought better of using a co-worker to meet his long-neglected needs?

I climbed under my desk and buried my face in my hands. I was ready to die from embarrassment for allowing myself to get caught up in such a gesture, especially with someone I worked with. I reprimanded myself as I sat there, imagining the horrible ways my lapse of judgment in aggressively returning his kiss could destroy my career. A few minutes later I heard the door to my office open and close again.

“Alanna?” I heard Bill say as he walked around my office. He came around my desk and I could see his lower legs and feet, “Alanna? Where’d you go?”

I sighed and he bent down to look in my hiding place, “You’re under your desk,” he said.

I nodded.

He held his hand out to me, “Do you trust me, Alanna?”

I took his hand and he pulled me from beneath my desk, “I don’t know?”