Garin Pirnia

He comes over to you and flashes his seductive hazel eyes and kilowatt smile. You’ve been co-workers for a couple of months but until last night’s company outing and accidental sleepover, had never met. You know it’s bad to embark on a secret office romance, but it seems like a good idea at the time. Every time he walks by your cube, you feel butterflies and your palms begin to sweat. A couple of days later, he appears distant. He isn’t responding to you like he did the first night. You decide to call his extension, 2020. You think it either symbolizes perfect vision or hindsight 20/20. It’ll take you a year to figure out it’s the latter.

You talk to him on the phone and he says he thinks you guys should be friends and that he doesn’t like to get involved with associates. You try to convince him to get a friendly drink with you after work. He says to call him back around 5pm. On the dot, you call him back. He tells you he can’t go get drinks because he’s too attracted to you and simply can’t be friends.

Then he mentions he is, um, somewhat stiff. You tell him you can take care of that for him which is probably the boldest statement you’ve ever muttered in your life. But where? He asks. You decide on one of the three conference rooms. He’ll meet you there in five minutes. You can’t believe what you’ve gotten yourself into, but the thrill of getting caught and doing something unforgivable in a public place entices the both of you. After all, half of the office is still there.

You gather your stuff as if you’re leaving for the day and skulk into the conference room. It’s dark and there are no windows. No one sees you. A few minutes later he joins you. "What should we do?" he remarks in his oh-so-sexy voice. "I don’t know, what do you want to do?" you nervously ask. You know exactly what you’re about to do. You take care of what you promised, feeling dirty and exhilarated at the same time. The deed is done and the two of you carefully sneak out. You continue these "conference calls" for about a month. It’s the same every week: Wednesday at 5:30pm you call his extension, ask if he wants to get together, and proceed to sneak off. You begin to ask yourself why you’re partaking in such behavior, especially when it’s so one-sided. But, for twenty minutes a week you’re alone together. The rest of the time he hardly acknowledges your existence.

A few weeks later, the fling ends. He distracted you from getting work done, anyway. A couple of months later, you leave the position. A few months later, the romance is temporarily rekindled then dies a horrific death. You will never speak to him again, but at least you’ll always have conference room number two.

(2008-02-06)

Also by Garin Pirnia

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