Unstuck

by Liliana Camarena

  And then, we stopped. He put his forehead against mine while his hands were at each side of my face. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t dare to look at him. Kissing my boss was wrong, but it felt so right.

  “How did you find the sorbet place?” what? I heard myself whispering the idiotic question. I heard Patrick chuckling.

  “I took a picture of one of the pints we shared,” he whispered back not letting me go with his forehead against mine.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want to face the consequences of what had just happened and I didn’t want the moment to end.

  “What’s this?” I finally asked. We were still forehead to forehead, sitting in the floor and I assumed he had his eyes closed but I had no way of knowing that because I still had my eyes closed.

  “Whatever you want this to be, “he said. I chuckled at that.

  “What?” he asked finally letting my face go and I wanted to cry because I didn’t want the moment to end. I opened my eyes and he had a half smile on his face.

  “Whatever I want this to be? We are not in a movie,” I said smiling. He laughed and looked at me again. I think I was shaking, I wanted to kiss him again and that was something new for me because never before had I felt any kind of attraction towards Patrick.

  “So,” he said looking at me still smiling, not looking the least worried about the fact that he had just kissed his assistant, that his assistant had kissed him. That it wasn’t the first time it had happened. FUCK! I was officially panicking. “What do you want this to be?” he finally asked.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was shocked. I didn’t even know what I wanted from this.

  “I’m with Brian,” I said. Fuck! Brian! I was a slut. Officially. Undeniably. A slut.

  “I know that. I’m asking you what is it that you want to do about this kiss,” ugh! Could he stop smiling?

  “I’m not a cheater,” I said.

  “Again, I’m not saying that.” Arrogant mother fucker!!! I wanted to bitchslap him.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I asked. He wanted to play, bring it on!

  “I know what I want to do about it. I’ve known for a while,” he said. “What?” I asked. What. The. Fuck? “I want to know what YOU want to do about it,” Oh fuck. Fuck was my new favorite word.

  “I don’t know,” That’s all I could articulate. Patrick took my hand “Lucinda, you don’t have to tell me right now,” I didn’t? “You can think about it a week, two, a month, a year but the moment you tell me what you want to do with that kiss I will go through with it, it doesn’t matter if it’s exactly opposite of what I want,” “A year?” I looked at him in the eye. He seemed happy.

  “Yes, a year. I want you to be completely sure,” he kissed my hand and I wanted to jump him right there but I was pretty sure that it all was product of the emotional day I’d had.

  “Ok,” I nodded. He nodded.

  “Good. Now, let’s put all the dishes in the sink. Sarah will have a lot to do tomorrow morning,” he said getting up from the floor and suddenly it was like nothing had happened. How could we go from talking about the future of our relationship, personal or career wise, to cleaning the kitchen? Living with Patrick was so weird.

  Next Morning I woke up a bit earlier to prepare everything for work. I knew I was going to NY so I had planned to take the “scrapbook,”, as I called it these days, to work on it during the flight and the moments where I had to wait for documents or whatever I needed. I dressed in the most comfortable way, making sure I wore pants and a good jacket or coat because we were finally feeling the coming winter.

  I tried to cover the bags under my eyes with makeup and it was almost impossible to do that. I hadn’t slept a lot. I kept thinking and thinking about Patrick, the kiss, my job and Brian. I felt something in me, something that I couldn’t put a definition on but I felt something about the whole situation. Was I attracted to Patrick? Hell yes! And it was all so new to me because I realized I was attracted to him yesterday. When he kissed me I was ready to jump his bones and take him to bed. That attracted I was but I still didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t just get over it and sleep with him. He was my boss. I definitely was not up to a relationship based on attraction and I had no fucking idea what Patrick wanted. I decided, before falling asleep, that I was going to think about it whenever the chance arrived and I wasn’t seeing this as a chore; if I did I wouldn’t be able to do anything else until I found the solution and that would definitely lead to a stupid decision.

  I realized that the chance would arrive pretty often the moment I poured Patrick’s coffee. He looked so good on his black designer suit and green tie. Almost as green as his eyes. What the fuck? I was thinking all this shit all of a sudden? I told myself to snap out of the stupid trance his stupid eyes were putting me through and get on with my day. I managed to do so. Almost. Something close to that.

  “Good Morning,” I said sounding almost normal. Something close to normal, like I said.

  “Morning,” said Patrick. He talked and he hadn’t had his first cup of coffee. I poured a cup for him and looked at him looking at the papers. “You are in the papers again,” he said showing me a picture not exactly of me but I was in the picture.

  “Let me see,” I said grabbing the paper and reading. It was a picture from Saturday’s gala. It was a picture of Patrick but you could clearly see me in the background waiting for him. They’d drawn a red circle around me. The article said that they’ve seen Patrick with me again and that they knew by then that I was his assistant but still they wondered. Ugh! Stupid people. “I still think that we should say something,” I said giving him the paper back.

  “Nah, they’ll get bored,” he said placing the paper on the table.

  “Breakfast?” I asked and he nodded.

  “Miranda’s oatmeal,” he said and I nodded and went to order his breakfast.

  Fourteen

  The ride to the office was quite easy. Patrick was in a surprisingly good mood and we didn’t have any awkward moments so when he said, right before I left to the airport, that he was going with me because he needed to sort out something in the NY offices I was ok with that.

  “Lucinda, were you planning to stay the night?” He asked me while we walked towards the plane and I was handling my bags. I laughed.

  “No! It’s the project I’m working on. I figured I could use the traveling time and all the time I spend waiting in the office to do something productive,” he just nodded and helped me up the stairs and into the private airplane.

  As soon as we were in our seats I took out my scrapbook (I really needed to stop calling it that) and worked on it; Patrick took his computer out and worked on some spreadsheets. After a while I caught looking at me.

  “Are you stuck?” I asked him and he smiled and shook his head.

  “Worried,” he said in a very serious tone.

  “About what? Can I do something to help?” Would you like me to get you something to drink? Anything to help your boss right?

  “The contract with the construction company is not going well,” He finally said. He was looking into building some offices for the publishing branch of May, Inc in NY. According to him having the publishers, editors and the whole branch in May, Inc’s building was not “artistic,” enough and wouldn’t encourage writers to come through. I didn’t see that but he was the boss.

  “Can I do something to help?” I asked again.

  “No, not really. You’ll know if you do,” he said. Oh! I’d know, he’ll make sure I know.

  The flight went by pretty fast and I got to work a bit on the e-course project. Truth was it wasn’t about e-course anymore; somewhere along the line I began working on something bigger and better for May, inc and I was sure that if I planned it enough I could show Patrick something worth listening.

  Patrick was in business mode long before we reached the offices; he seemed death set on achieving what he wanted and I was happy that he was going to
be busy because I could run around the offices firing people, gathering papers and picking up signed contracts without worrying if he had something for me to do.

  By noon I got a text from Patrick asking me to stop by his office when I was done doing whatever I was doing so, around 2 pm, I found myself in the same office where I met Patrick.

  “I’m done,” I said going in and finding him standing up looking down at the street through the window.

  “Good,” he said but didn’t move from the window.

  “Are you ok?” I asked coming closer.

  “I hate when things don’t go my way,” he turned and looked at me.

  “I know,” I nodded.

  “Anyway, seems we are spending the night here because we are signing the contract tomorrow morning,” he finally said and jumped and hugged him.

  “I thought you said things weren’t going your way,” I said still with my arms around him.

  “I did say that,” I heard a smile and stood back to examine his face.

  “I don’t get it,” I was confused.

  “You don’t have to,” I just scrunched up my nose “So,” he continued “you’ll have to call my NY apartment staff to let them know we are staying there tonight so they have everything prepared for whatever we need, you know what we need.” I nodded.

  “Clothes, Patrick, we’ll need clothes,” I said scribbling everything on my yellow pad.

  “Yeah, I think I have clothes in here… I don’t know but you’ll need a change of clothes I guess…,” he said going to sit on his chair.

  “Ok, I’ll go shopping then,” I said putting my notepad away.

  “I’m going with you. I’m done here and we need to eat so…,” he got up, took his jacket and walked towards the door. “Ladies first,” he said opening the door for me.

  Off we went. First we had lunch somewhere where he liked the smashed potatoes and then we went shopping. I’d already gone shopping with him and knew that it could get boring but we were just shopping for on change of clothes so I assumed that I would smoothly. He was looking at the scarves when my phone rang and I saw it was Brian.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey you,” he said. I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t calling as Brian HR but Brian the boyfriend.

  “Hey,” I said while shaking my head furiously at Patrick that was holding a purple scarf that was horrible.

  “What time will you be back?” Oh, right, we had agreed earlier on going for dinner and sorbets through texts. The whole sorbet thing….I wasn’t up to sharing sorbets with Brian anymore. Not after the night before.

  “Oh,” I said trying to find a way of letting him down easily. We hadn’t had time to spend time together; at least not quality time.

  “What is it?” he asked. I already could hear the disappointment in his voice.

  “We are spending the night here. Patrick is finally signing the contract tomorrow morning,” I said walking away so I had more privacy to have this talk.

  “Why are you not coming back?” What? What kind of question was that? It was simple: because Patrick wasn’t coming back.

  “He’ll probably walk to tomorrow’s meeting wearing the same clothes as today and with a stain of burned coffee,” I said and heard Brian laughing.

  “True,” he said between his laughs. “Tomorrow then?” he asked and I nodded before replying “tomorrow,” I finally said.

  “Ok, then, beautiful I’ll talk to you later ok?”

  “Ok,” I said.

  “Take care, bye.”

  “Bye,” I hung up but couldn’t help but let go of the question. Why was I not coming back? If I was being honest it was because I didn’t want to. Simple as that.

  “Lucinda,” Patrick’s voice brought me back “I’m done,” I nodded and my thoughts were completely forgotten.

  After shopping for my clothes, which was completely awkward for me because Patrick was like a stray puppy walking behind me while I looked for underwear, we went back to his apartment. It was amazing. That wasn’t an apartment; it was the size of a decent sized house. Two levels, completely different from his home at New Hope. It was all in shades of black, grey and white and I couldn’t help but think about steel when I was in it.

  Patrick said he’d be working in his office that I could come if I needed a place to work but to feel free to relax for the night. Relax… I had no idea what that word meant.

  I changed into the only comfortable clothes I had with me: my pjs. I had carefully bought some pjs that wouldn’t be revealing and were comfortable; the kind of pjs I wear everyday and during midnight munchies. I wasn’t that kind of girl; you know the kind that accidentally has to change into her pjs but since the only night wear she has is lingerie designed for your wedding night that’s what you wear to work on your boss’ office. I hated that. I put my hair up in my nest and went to the office.

  “Hey,” I said walking into the office carrying the scrapbook and my computer.

  “So relax is not an option,” he said smiling he had his tie undone and sleeves rolled up to his elbow “Of course not,” I smiled and sat on a leather couch with everything I needed to work.

  “Will you already let me see that?” said Patrick looking at the binder I had in my hands “It’s not quite ready, Patrick,” I said whining.

  “I don’t care, Lucinda, maybe we can get it ready together,” he said getting up from his chair and walking towards the couch.

  “Ugh,” I said shaking my head, “might as well already show you,” I said opening the binder on the first page. Patrick sat on the floor facing the couch and I began pitching my idea.

  I began talking about the project showing graphics and numbers. My idea was that May inc. could take the idea of e-course and take it to the next level. May, Inc. could get all the knowledge within the company, within the employees and create the May Inc. online business school (with some cool name, of course) and use that to prepare every promising intern. It would also be aimed at employees who wanted to pursue a second career. Eventually, it could be for every student that wanted an MBA but also needed a dayjob to survive. This could also work as an amazing way of recruiting prospects for May, Inc. and it could also work as an incentive for the best employees. May, Inc. wouldn’t need a physical campus or facilities since it would be online and the main investment would be for the platform that a project of this nature would require. With the money and knowledge in May. Inc an only MBA online school could be created and that would be amazing.

  I showed him numbers, graphs and even, as embarrassing as it was, some magazine clips that I had been pasting on the binder. He never said a word he just nodded and showed no emotion. So, when I was done, and let him know so, he stood there, quiet, going through the pages of the binder. I was sure that he was looking for the exact words to let me down.

  “You hate it. It’s ok, you can say it,” I said biting my nails. He shook his head but still said nothing. He was in deep thought. “Ok,” I said looking everywhere but him “Could you just say what you are thinking already.”

  “I love it,” but… I was waiting for the but. “You are a genius, Lucinda,” he finally looked up from the binder to me and smiled. He liked it! I had to smile.

  “I’m putting on hold the publishing branch project,” he finally said and got up and began pacing from one side to the other on the office. What does the publishing building had to with all of this. “We are using the building for this. It’s going to be huge and amazing; I am buying the academic content from Stinson. E-course needs the money and we could use a base to start from. Yes, this will work.” He finally looked at me. I had been nodding all along because I hadn’t thought of buying the content from Stinson but it was a great idea. “Of course, Lucinda,” said Patrick kneeling in front of me while I was still sitting on the couch “You’ll lead the project. It will be your project. You’ll need an office and...” he began pacing again

  “No,” I said before he could go further.

  “What
?” he stopped and looked at me.

  “No, Patrick. I don’t want the project,” I said getting up from the coach and going towards him “I don’t want to change the life I already have. I am not doing this because I am eager to go back to Miss Stuart. I am doing this because you had interest in this project, you have personal interest on this project and I wanted you to have it. I want to be your assistant. Besides, you promised my mother that I was never going to be Miss Stuart again; I want you to keep that promise,” I said really fast with my hands on his shoulders trying to get him to understand me because I knew that once he had the idea on that head of his no one would stop him until I was in charge of the project.

  “I always keep my promises,” he said smiling.

  “Good,” I nodded “I will gladly be next to you as the project grows but please don’t ever give me a promotion,” He chuckled and nodded.

  “Fine, no promotion. Let’s work on this so tomorrow I can go into the offices and stress everybody out with this new project.”

  And so we did, we worked until morning. We had a feast of junk food that we’d found in the kitchen and so much coffee. I lost count on cup number 6. What we put together was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen in our lives. Once we were done, and sure that it didn’t look like something we had worked overnight, we stared at the binder for some solid 15 minutes. I had to contain the tears over the magnificence of the project we had created. I’m not kidding. It might have been the sleep deprivation but we were so proud of what we had just achieved. Finally around 7 in the morning we both went to get ready to start, or continue, the day at the offices. I tried really hard to work with the few make up items I carried on my bag but the bags under my eyes were visible from miles away. I sighed and let it go. It really didn’t matter how bad I looked because I was content with what we had achieved over night.