Chapter Eight
Kristen
“Thank God for wine coolers,” Melody said as she handed me one.
We weren’t even bothering with glasses. We were just sitting on the floor of Melody’s living room, drinking straight out of the bottle. I loved evenings like this, when there was nothing else to do but talk and drink and eat. It was especially perfect when there was something to bitch about.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Pizza or shall we order in some sushi?”
“How about both?” Melody suggested.
“Both?” I repeated. “Italian and Japanese…that sounds strange.”
“Fuck it,” Melody said. “I want pizza, and I want sushi, so I’m ordering both.”
I laughed. “Fine,” I said, jumping on board. “Pick any pizza you want; I’m game either way. And sushi… I’ll go for a California maki and a spicy tuna maki.”
“Done and done,” Melody nodded, as she dialed in the delivery number and started to order.
I glanced at my phone and saw that I had new emails from my work account. I sighed and turned my phone over. Work had been particularly awful the past week. Jake had been ignoring me completely, and he hadn’t even addressed what had happened at his place that night.
I had been confused at first, but confusion had quickly given way to anger. He hadn’t even thanked me before kicking me out. It was obvious he was going through something, but that didn’t excuse his behavior…did it?
“So,” Melody said, having finished ordering our dinner. “How are things going at work? Any improvements?”
I had been so upset by what had happened that night at Jake’s house that I’d confided in Melody. She had reacted with the appropriate outrage, and I had felt better for a few minutes.
I sighed. “Awful,” I admitted.
“He’s still ignoring you, huh?”
“Ignoring me, avoiding me, barking orders at me without even glancing up at me,” I said. “It’s like I’m not even a person.”
“He’s a fucking asshole,” she said.
I sighed. “Well…”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, glaring at me. “By your own account, he’s been treating you like shit after you did him this huge favor. Actually, while you were doing him this huge favor.”
“I know,” I nodded.
“I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head at me. “Why are you cutting the guy so much slack. You admit that he’s not the nicest guy and yet, it’s like you want to make excuses for him at the same time.”
“I just… He’s had a rough time, okay?” I said, knowing that I was being extremely inconsistent. “I guess I feel bad for him. Maybe he’s in such a horrible mood all the time because life’s been a bitch to him.”
“Have you ever heard of karma?”
“I have, and I believe it,” I said. “But I also believe that sometimes shitty stuff happens to good people.”
“And, you think that Jake is a good person.”
“He served in the military,” I reminded her. “He fought for our country; he risked his life over there.”
“Being a soldier doesn’t automatically make you a good person,” Melody pointed out.
“Doesn’t it?” I asked. “It’s this huge sacrifice…and you never know if you’ll end up coming back home.”
“So what are you trying to say?” she asked, pursing her lips at me. “That justifies his right to treat you like crap?”
“No, of course not.”
“Your crush on him is really getting out of hand.”
“Hey!” I said defensively. “I do not have a crush on Jake.”
Melody rolled her eyes at me. “Sure, sure…if you say so.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, with annoyance. “I’m being serious. In any case, I can’t like him.”
She frowned at me in confusion. “What do you mean, you can’t like him?”
“Uh… Nothing… Just that, he’s my boss is all,” I said. “I can’t possibly have feelings for my boss.”
“That again?”
I laughed. “I’m not giving him a free pass, okay?” I said. “I just feel bad for him sometimes. He has a young son, and he lost his wife early in their marriage. He was plunged into single fatherhood without any warning. I mean, you have to sympathize.”
Melody shrugged. “Okay, it’s a sad story,” she acknowledged at last. “How do you know about his wife, anyhow?”
“Office gossip,” I said quickly.
“You seem to have got all the gossip on your hot boss,” she observed. “Very suspicious if you ask me.”
I rolled my eyes at Melody. “I didn’t move here to meet men,” I said firmly. “I moved here to—”
“Meet me?” Melody interrupted.
I laughed. “Most definitely,” I nodded. “You just might be my soul mate.”
“You sure know how to butter a girl up,” she smiled, giving me a cheeky wink. “How about we get this part started and crack open the ice cream.”
“Ice cream and wine coolers before dinner?” I asked.
“Why the fuck not?” she demanded.
“We’re going to gain back all those calories we burned up at the gym,” I pointed out.
“That’s the whole point,” Melody said. “We both have sexy bodies, which means we work out in order to make up for the calories we’re going to consume later.”
“That makes sense.”
“Everything I say makes sense,” she agreed as she walked to her freezer and grabbed two cartons of ice cream and two spoons and walked back to our cozy little huddle in her tiny living room.
I opened the half-empty carton and poured on some of the wine before dunking my spoon in there. “Damn that’s good,” I sighed.
Melody shook her head at me and popped a large spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “Men are idiots,” she said.
“Oh dear,” I said.
“What?”
“When you say something like that, it’s almost always because there’s a story that goes with it.”
“You know me so well,” she smiled. “Remember the guy I met in the grocery store?”
“Uh no.”
She looked at me with an annoyed expression. “Yes, you do.”
“I honestly don’t,” I said. “You never mentioned him to me.”
“Shamus.”
“His name is Shamus?” I asked.
“Shamus,” Melody nodded. “Dark hair, brown eyes, killer smile, and a great butt.”
“Still not ringing any bells.”
“Okay, I guess I didn’t tell you then,” Melody said, with a shrug. “So basically…I met him at the grocery store.”
“Right, got that part.”
“And we bonded in the cheese aisle,” she continued. “We ended up at my apartment, and we had just finished fucking—”
“You had sex with him?” I asked incredulously.
“Uh yeah… Why?”
“You had just met him.”
“What’s your point?”
“He was a complete stranger, and you brought him back to your apartment?”
“Still not understanding where you’re going with this?”
I smiled. “He could have been an ax murderer or a rapist or something,” I said, thinking momentarily of Jake. “And even if he were none of those things, he could still have had like three different STDs.”
“We used a condom, obviously,” Melody said.
“Still,” I said. “The man was a complete stranger to you.”
“So?” she asked. “I’ve known couples who’ve been married within a week of meeting one another, and they’ve had epic love stories.”
“With each other?” I asked teasingly.
“Very funny,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “It’s possible.”
“So you’re saying that you met Shamus at the grocery store and thought he had the potential to be ‘the one’ and so you brought him to your apartment and slept with him in the hope that one day you might marry him and bear his children.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds naïve and cheesy.”
“If the shoe fits.”
“Bitch,” Melody laughed. “I thought we had a connection, okay?”
“And…did you?”
“We did for the first hour. It sort of disintegrated the moment he came,” Melody said, with distaste. “He put on his pants, and I was expecting some kind of…conversation, I suppose.”
“And, I’m assuming he thoroughly disappointed on that front?”
“He disappointed on all fronts, my friend,” Melody said. “Even the sexual front. Basically, I was trying to engage him in conversation and was on the verge of asking him to stay for dinner when his phone started ringing. He answered it, said like three words, and then hung up. When I asked him if he could stay for dinner, he turned around, looked me in the eye, and said, and I quote, ‘Sorry I’ve got to go; that was my wife, and she wants me home for dinner.’”
“He was married,” I said.
Melody sighed. “Naturally, I got pissed off and asked him what he was doing fucking random women when he had a wife at home.”
“What did he say?”
“He assumed I was just looking for a fuck, too,” Melody said. “So I got angrier and started yelling, and he got the hell out of my apartment. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.”
“Geez,” I said. “The guys you attract are seriously insane.”
“It’s not my fault I’m a hopeless romantic.”
“I don’t understand how you can just jump into bed with a random stranger.”
“Are you telling me that you’ve never fucked a guy you’ve just met?”
I hesitated a second. Melody didn’t need to know that I was a virgin. I knew she’d freak out if she did, and I’d have to spend the rest of the night explaining my choice to her.
“No,” I replied.
“Such a Virgin Mary.”
I snorted with laughter and Melody looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face, obviously unaware of the secret…my other secret. I realized suddenly that I was juggling a lot of different secrets all at the same time. Of course, being a virgin wasn’t such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially in light of my position as Jake’s assistant.
But the reference did almost made me laugh out loud, especially given that I was exactly like Mary in that I was a virgin, too—a closeted virgin, but a virgin nonetheless. I still didn’t want to admit that to Melody, though. It wasn’t that I was ashamed or anything. I just didn’t want to have to explain my reasons to her. Nor did I want to have to fend off all the guys she would undoubtedly throw my way.
“You’re thinking of your boss again, aren’t you?” Melody asked.
My eyes went wide with surprise, and I knew I had just given myself away with that reaction. “Uh, no.”
“Liar,” Melody laughed. “I can tell.”
“How?” I demanded, more than a little impressed.
“You have this look on your face when you talk about him,” she said. “It’s like you want to save him and fuck him all at the same time. It’s precious.”
“Shut up.”
She laughed. “You know, have you ever considered the possibility that he might actually share your feelings?”
“Okay, number one, I don’t have feelings for my boss,” I said firmly. “And number two, what the hell are you talking about?”
“The way he’s acting around you,” she said. “You obviously bring out strong emotions in him; maybe all the sexual tension building up inside him is what’s causing him to behave like this.”
“That makes no sense.”
“The male mind is complex,” Melody said. “Sometimes the reasons why they behave a certain way is not immediately obvious. I think Jake might have a little thing for you—otherwise, he would have behaved normally towards you after that.”
“I think you’ve had enough wine for tonight,” I said.
“You just don’t like that I may be right about this.”
“Jake is a pretty straightforward guy,” I said. “I think if he were interested in someone, he would just come right out and say it.”
“But you’re forgetting that you’re his employee,” she pointed out. “Maybe he’s scared to approach him because in the event it goes wrong, you could sue him for sexual harassment.”
“You think too much,” I said, shaking my head at her.
Just then the doorbell rang, and Melody rose to answer it. “Fine, stick to your guns as much as you want,” she said as she headed towards the door. “Go ahead and cling to denial. But I see you, Kristen. There’s more to your relationship with Jake than just superior and subordinate.”
I bit my lip and suppressed a sigh. If Melody only knew, I thought to myself.