by Carlos Dash
I don’t know whether or not he means that as a compliment, so I just shrug my shoulders and keep looking around. “Anyone else here?”
“It’s just going to be the five of us. My daughter is the only one you haven’t seen yet. She’s upstairs right now, but she should be coming down soon. Come on, I’ll introduce you to my wife’s sister, Susan. She’s been dying to meet you.”
I don’t have any choice in the matter. Mr. Reed grasps my forearm and guides me towards the woman. His body language and the strength of his grip make it clear that he doesn’t want to be alone with her any longer.
Chapter 31
“You must be Dorian. Jonathan didn’t tell me you were so easy on the eyes.”
I smile at the older woman and nod my head very slightly in greeting. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s nice to meet you.”
I leave out the part about how I haven’t heard a single positive thing about her.
“Take a seat, Dorian,” my boss says to me in a voice that doesn’t give anything away. “I’m just going to go and check whether the food is ready. You two get to know each other.” He hurries out of the room as if afraid it’s about to catch fire.
I watch him go and then turn to look at the woman called Susan. I almost flinch when I see that her face is mere inches away from mine.
What the…
She’s looking at me like she’s never seen a man before.
“So what exactly do you do at Jonathan’s company? Judging by your age, you must be an assistant.”
“I’m a PR guy myself, actually.” The woman’s eyes widen. I’m now used to people reacting that way upon hearing of my status at the company. “But you’re so young. Isn’t it too much of a risk to trust someone so inexperienced? They must only let you deal with the lower-priority clients.”
Inexperienced? Who does this woman think she is?
“I know what to do and how to do it,” I reply curtly. “Mr. Reed wouldn’t have hired me if I was an imbecile.”
The woman starts to replace her look of surprise with a grin. “Now don’t get offended,” she says in a light tone. “I was just thinking aloud.”
“I’m not offended, ma’am.” I say it as calmly as I can, but I’m not sure I convinced her.
“You’re too formal. Call me Susan.”
“Right.” I lace the fingers of my hands through each other and faced the front of the room. Only then do I notice that there isn’t a television there. “No TV?”
“Huh? No, they don’t own one. Strange, I know.” Susan puts a hand on my shoulder. “You should see my place. I’ve got three of them. One in the living room. One in my bedroom. And one in the guestroom. Good thing I remembered to DVR all my shows. If I had come here without doing that, I would have missed everything.” She snorts in amusement. Her hand is still on my shoulder.
Is this actually happening? Is my boss’s middle-aged sister-in-law hitting on me? Hitting on me while we’re sitting in his living room. Hardly a “Dear Penthouse” moment. How am I supposed to react to this?
I can’t just shrug her hand away, so I have to play it cool. I act like I don’t feel her body touching mine. I sniff the air and even though I can’t smell anything, I say, “Something smells delicious. I’m starving. When’s dinner?”
Susan cocks her head slightly to one side. “Hungry?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
She leans towards me and in a voice dripping with implications, she says, “Oh, yes. I haven’t eaten anything in a long time.”
This is a very unwelcome surprise.
She isn’t unattractive, and it’s possible that under different circumstances I would be intrigued at the thought of sleeping with an older woman. But not now. Not like this.
No one wants to be known as the guy who picks up women at his boss’s house. That kind of reputation is hard to shake.
I need an excuse to get away from her. Saying that I have to use the bathroom is the logical thing that comes to mind. Yeah, I’ll say I have to use the bathroom, and then put as much distance between us as possible without running away from the house. Not an ideal plan, but I’ll take what I can get.
I hear footsteps coming from somewhere to my left, so naturally I turn my head to see who it is. I see a shadow first. The figure is that of a female. I assume it must be Mr. Reed’s daughter. A grown up version of the girl from the pictures. I have my fingers crossed in the hope that she isn’t very attractive.
She walks into the room. A girl of about twenty. Her brown hair goes down to the middle of her back, and her eyes capture your soul with one glance. And her face… it’s the face of a delicate angel who’s come down to earth to mingle with us mere mortals.
Normally, a single man my age would hardly mind the presence of a beautiful female being nearby. This time around however, I feel my heart jump into my throat as my entire body is overcome with pure shock.
My luck can’t possibly be this bad.
It’s her.
It’s Emily.
She’s standing right there in front of me.
Chapter 32
There she is. The girl from the bar. The one who I’ve been struggling to get out of my head. Just when I thought I had finally gotten over her, she appears in front of me, looking just as pretty as she did the night I first saw her.
I wish I could tell you that I was really calm and composed about her sudden appearance inside my boss’s house, but it’s too late for me to start lying to you.
“What the fuck are you doing here!?”
That’s right. That’s what I say to her. And I say it to her in front of another human being. Susan.
It’s all coming back to me. I remember Emily telling me about an aunt of hers who’s visiting her family. That has to be Susan. And Mrs. Reed is the mother she doesn’t always get along with.
That means Jonathan Reed is her father.
Kill me now.
It seems like a mean practical joke, one that the universe is playing on me for some crime I can’t recall committing.
How in the hell is this possible? It can’t be a coincidence. And yet what other explanation is there?
Susan is looking back and forth between me and Emily. Her eyes are bulging out of her head, no doubt caused by my use of profanity in front of her. I’ve given it away. I’ve made it clear that I know Emily. I need to find a way to save myself, to remedy the situation before my boss returns to the room.
“Oh, um, sorry. I thought you were someone else.” I clear my throat, cough into my hand, and hastily continue with my lackluster explanation. “You look like someone I knew a long time ago.”
Emily is looking at me, but her eyes aren’t meeting mine. It’s as if she’s making a deliberate effort to avoid eye contact. And just like me, she seems to be frozen to the spot. I can only imagine what’s going on inside of her head. She must be panicking worse than I am.
Susan, on the other hand, seems to be regaining some sense of normalcy. “Do you two know each other?” she croaks, still alternating her focus back and forth between me and Emily.
“No!” Emily and I answer her at the same time before launching into our own individual replies:
“Never seen him before in my life.”
“I just said that she looks like someone I once knew. That’s all.”
“Why would I even know a guy his age? He’s too old to be a student and too young to be a professor.”
“Pretty much the only people I see nowadays are my coworkers. Everyone else’s face is just kind of a blur.”
I don’t bother to look at Susan to see if she’s buying it. It’s now to the point that I can’t pry my eyes away from Emily’s face. I’m still in semi-disbelief about the fact that she’s standing there in the flesh. I genuinely thought that I would never see her again. For her to be in this home of all places is basically the equivalent of being punched in the stomach.
Mr. Reed chooses this moment to come back into the room. The sound of his voice breaks me out
of my trancelike state.
“Ah, Emily. I was just about you call you down. Dinner is ready. Have you met Dorian?”
I turn to see the unconcerned look on the man’s face. He really has no idea what’s going on. How could he? If he knew what I did to his daughter, he would probably attack me on the spot.
In many situations, ignorance is bliss.
“Yeah, dad. I just met him right now.”
“No, you didn’t,” Susan chimed in. “You just came down here and he—”
“I mean I was just about to introduce myself.”
It’s smart of Emily to cut off her aunt. Mr. Reed doesn’t need to know that I cussed at his daughter. That’s the sort of thing that can kill the mood of any social gathering involving a man and his boss.
“Dorian, is it?”
“That’s correct. Dorian Alexander. Nice to meet you.”
Emily and I shake hands right in front of her father. The whole thing makes me feel dirty, but not necessarily in a bad way. There’s a certain sense of forbidden danger hanging in the air. I’m feeling a little enjoyment about knowing something that my boss doesn’t.
God, I’m sick. A part of me is getting off on this.
What the hell is going on in my head?
Seeing Emily again is bringing out a very dangerous side of me. A side of me that could cause my promising career to come to a sudden halt.
Chapter 33
The contact between myself and Emily is electric. For a fleeting moment, I think about not letting her go. Seeing her again and being able to touch her triggers something in me. An inner possessive animal.
I wonder if she’s experiencing a similar sensation. If she is, she’s doing a good job of hiding it. The smile on her face doesn’t have any mischief behind it. It’s the ordinary smile of someone meeting a stranger for the first time.
A good actress.
“Right then,” Mr. Reed says, clapping his hands together. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s converge on the dining room. Sarah tends to get a bit moody if the food gets cold.”
Emily rolls her eyes, which gives me an idea about how to get her alone.
“I’d like to wash my hands first, if that’s okay. Where’s the bathroom?”
Mr. Reed opens his mouth to say something, but Emily jumps in, catching on. “There are a couple of them, but they’re all on the second or third floor. Follow me, I’ll show you.”
Mr. Reed doesn’t look the least bit suspicious. He just tells his daughter to escort me to the dining room when I’m done, and then leaves to placate his wife.
Susan is a little slower to go, and her eyes linger on me and the girl. When she finally shuffles off, Emily sighs in relief and gestures for me to follow her. She doesn’t say anything until we’re on the staircase that leads to the second floor. “So do you actually have to wash your hands, or did you just want to be alone with me?
Admitting to the latter would have make me feel a bit pathetic, so I compromise. “Both, actually.”
“Alright then. Third door on the left. I assume you don’t need me to come in with you.”
There we go. There’s that wicked smile.
“No, I rarely require assistance while attempting to do anything. That’s even truer for when I’m in the bathroom.” She isn’t avoiding eye contact now, but there’s a sense of nervousness there that I can detect.
“What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like? I’m having dinner. I was invited by your father.”
Emily’s smile falters. “You’re the Dorian he’s been talking about. Didn’t see that coming.”
“How many other Dorians do you think there are in this state?”
“It’s not that uncommon of a name,” she says defensively.
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Name one guy you know who has that same name?”
The girl scoffs and massages her forehead. “For all I knew that wasn’t even your real name. You never told me what you do for a living. How could I have known that you were my father’s Dorian? He never mentioned your last name.”
“I’m not your father’s Dorian,” I state firmly. “I work for your father. That’s all. No one owns me.”
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
We fall into a silence, one that we need to pull out of quickly. We can’t afford to be missing from the dining table for too long. Emily’s family will start to wonder where we are and what exactly we’re doing.
“I think your aunt is onto us.”
“Onto us? Meaning what? We’re not doing anything wrong. Just talking.”
“But if she suspects that we do actually know each other, that could lead to some unfortunate revelations.”
“She’ll drop the issue and start criticizing my mom’s cooking or my choice of earrings. Mark my words. You don’t have anything to worry about. By the time we get down to the table, she’ll have forgotten all about that little outburst you had when you first saw me.”
I recoil at the memory of that. Not one of my prouder moments.
“I panicked. Can you blame me? I’m sure you were just as shocked.”
“Sure, but I knew to keep my mouth shut.”
I reluctantly take my eyes off of Emily’s face and look around at the hall we’re in. “This is quite a house. Even nicer than mine.”
“It’s not a competition. You need to drop that inferiority complex you have.”
“Inferiority complex?” I say in outrage.
Emily doesn’t back down at all. “Yeah, like when you were showing off all that old furniture you have in your house. You did that because of an obvious inferiority complex. I think it has to do with your upbringing. You didn’t have a lot of nice stuff growing up because you weren’t exactly made of money, so you’re making up for it now.”
“It’s not old furniture. It’s antique furniture. Big difference.”
“See, you’re at it again. Give it a rest. No one is going to judge you because your couch only costs ten thousand dollars rather than twenty.”
I want to be upset at what she’s saying, but I know she’s right. She has me pegged. I do have an inferiority complex, and that’s why I’m desperate to project an image of wealth.
Plus, who could ever get angry at a face like that.
But there’s a noticeable difference between her personality here and her personality back at my place. She seems more confident now. More at ease around me. We’re in her neck of the woods.
Yet, the nervousness about seeing me in her home hasn’t tapered off completely.
“Look who came out of her shell,” I tease.
Emily crosses her arms and comes a little closer to me. The smell of her shampoo wafts into my nostrils. Her entire essence is intoxicating. It’s dangerous for me to be this close to her. “Hurry up and wash your hands. Any longer up here and my parents will think you’ve abducted me and taken me out the window.”
As I turn around and begin to walk towards the bathroom, I mutter something under my breath. Something that I would never be able to live down if Emily heard me say it.
“Don’t give me ideas.”
Damn! She’s doing it to me again.
What is this power she has over me? Witchcraft? It has to be witchcraft, right? Voodoo is an option, as well. Has to be something like that.
The only other explanation is that I’m losing my mind.
Chapter 34
Emily and I decide that it wouldn’t be smart of us to arrive to the dining table at the same time. The girl goes in first, makes a show about needing to guide me to a bathroom to prevent me from getting lost, and then about twenty seconds later I come in and sit down.
There are several empty seats around the large table, but only one of them has fine china in front of it. I sit down and try to get comfortable. Emily is seated directly across from me, but there are several white dishes between us.
I hope we won’t have to reach for something at the same time.
“There you are,” Mr. Reed says to me, not looking annoyed or impatient in the least. “I thought you might have discovered a secret passageway.”
“No secret passageways so far,” I answer, forcing a light chuckle. “So what’s for dinner? I’m starving, and something smells delicious.” I rub my hands together enthusiastically.
Mr. and Mrs. Reed both look at me with curiosity. I know what they’re thinking. They want to know what happened to the man who appeared to be so introverted and guarded a few moments ago—What exactly has come over him.
They can only imagine theories, whereas you’re going to get the actual explanation.
It’s Emily. Seeing her there and talking to her somehow makes me more tense and more relaxed at the same time. I’ve never met someone who can do that to me. Her mere presence makes me question who I really am.
Fight it, Dorian! The more you think about her now, the harder it will be for you to get over her later. Don’t do this to yourself. She’s just a chick. Plenty of fish in the sea.
This is a twist of fate I didn’t see coming, but I tell myself not to go gaga over her again. Needless to say it isn’t the easiest dinner I’ve ever sat through. I thought any difficulty I would encounter there would be attributed to Mr. Reed’s family asking me too many questions, but that isn’t the case. It isn’t their fault. It’s mine. I’m fighting an inner battle with myself the whole way, and it’s hard to tell which side is winning.
Whenever Mr. Reed’s family members do ask me a question (and it was always his wife or Susan. Never Emily, who stays as quiet as a mouse throughout the meal), I answer brightly and with enthusiasm, glad to have any excuse to think about something other than Emily, even if that reprieve only lasts a few seconds.
By the time dessert rolls around, I’ve talked about everything from my duties at the company, to my lack of family. Thankfully, no one presses me for information about why exactly my mother and father aren’t around. These are intelligent people. They understand that they don’t know me well enough to inquire about such things.
