Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
He sat at his computer, deleting email after email. There were hundreds to go through, most of which were spam he was sure he had never signed up for. The more he deleted, the more that seemed to appear, until finally he selected all of them and hit “delete all.”
“Fuck it,” he said to himself, “if it’s important, they’ll get back to me.”
He went to take a sip of coffee, but the cup was empty. Still, he still felt the need to look inside and double-check.
Yep, empty.
He looked at the rings on the white porcelain and wondered if anyone read them like they used to do for tea leaves. Did they still do that? He wasn’t sure, but was confident that someone, somewhere was giving it a go. Not that there was much you could tell from tea leaves.
Now, coffee stains, that was a different story entirely.
They were, he realised, intimately related to the individual and the speed with which the coffee was being drunk. The slower the drinker, the more numerous and darker the rings. The quicker, hardly any rings at all.
His cup had barely any indication there had ever been any coffee in there at all, except for a few drops here and there.
He tried not to think about what that said about him or what it meant for his future, and put down the cup.
He got up and began to pace. He had plenty of work to do, but he had other things on his mind.
Stepphy for one.
He tried not to think of her, of the way she had spoken to him on the phone when he had called her from Spring Break.
Yes, sir.
Or the way she had encouraged him to get laid, in fact,
had sent him there specifically to get laid!
And he certainly wasn’t thinking about her long legs spread across the desk, or kissing up them, spreading them at the knee as he made his way up between them, kissing her soft skin as he made his way to taste her.
He picked up a pile of envelopes and began sorting through them rapidly. Anything he didn’t recognise, which was most of them, went straight into the bin, the others he began tearing open one at a time and either binning or throwing back on his desk to deal with at another time.
As with the emails, most of them were either junk or something he could put off until later.
He threw the pile down in frustration.
Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?
She had been his assistant for ages, but it was only now that he had ever thought of her like
that
. Of course, he had realised she was beautiful, who wouldn’t, but now there was something else, something that had awoken in her that he could see for the first time. Or perhaps it had always been there and it was only now, after a much-needed vacation, one that had opened his mind to so many possibilities he had never before considered, that he could see it.
Or perhaps, he thought, there was nothing there to see at all.
That was it, he realised, it was all in his head.
He had had the most amazing Spring Break and now that it was over, he was having a hard time letting go. So, in a desperate attempt to keep that feeling alive, to keep the holiday feeling going forever, he was projecting his desires onto Stepphy.
He didn’t want to
fuck
Stepphy, he just wanted her to want to fuck him!
Of course, it was all so simple!
He sighed with relief, feeling a weight lifting from his shoulders. It was all so clear to him now and nothing he had to worry about. All he had to do was get on with his life, let the wonderful memories of Spring Break fade into the background and everything would become as it was once again.
Of course, there was still the case of his pounding heart and rock-hard cock, but those were symptoms of the post-holiday blues, not of anything greater. These, as all things eventually do, would pass.
Feeling a sense of peace, he returned to the pile of letters on his desk and began to dig through them once again. There, in the middle of the pile, was a large envelope, thick and heavy. He opened it and, as expected, found a pile of documents. Flipping through them, he realised these, unlike anything else he had so far seen, were
actually
important.
He dropped the rest of the letters on the desk and went hunting for a pen, but the only one he could find, a cheap plastic one chewed to bits at some unspecified point in the past, didn’t work.
He rummaged through his top drawer, sure there was an actual quality pen somewhere. He knew it, in fact, as he’d bought it as a present for himself. It was smooth and heavy and
really
expensive, but he had considered it an investment.
After all, even with the rise of Information Technology and Personal Computers, there was always going to be a need for a personal signature of ink on paper, right?
Frustrated, he gave up and, realising he still had the plastic pen in his hand, threw it across the room, giving himself a mini fist pump as it landed neatly in the bin.
He thought for a second, thinking about Stepphy. She was bound to have a pen, a whole box of them most likely. After all, it
was
her job to keep the stationary supply topped up. Not that
that
meant much of anything.
He walked to the office door, put his hand on the handle, and froze. He took a moment to breathe and to remind himself that his feelings towards Stepphy were simply misplaced longings for the women he had just left.
Transference
, that’s what therapists in movies called it. The imprinting of emotions about one person onto another unrelated person. In this case, his desire for Chiho, Aiko and Emi onto Stepphy.
He opened the door, ready to see her as nothing more than his employee. But as soon as he stepped out of his office, his heart sank.
Stepphy wasn’t there.
That’s a good thing
, he told himself as he walked towards her empty desk,
avoid her for the rest of the day if you can, give yourself some time to let it all fade away
.
He examined her desk, but there was no sign of any pen.
There was her phone, the screen cracked, a pair of wired headphones, some pieces of paper, and her laptop.
He sat in her seat and opened the top drawer. He could feel her body heat on the chair and immediately stood. The drawer was full of battered stationery that had entered the “it still works so we shouldn’t throw it out, but no one will ever want to use it until the day after it's gone” phase of its life. But in amongst the mess, were several pens.
He pulled one out and grabbed a piece of scrap paper, scribbling on it until he was sure the pen didn’t work, and then tried another.
As he continued, his scribbling got more and more frantic. Stepphy, wherever she was, surely wouldn’t be long and he wanted to get out of there before she arrived.
“Yes!” he proclaimed, finally finding a pen that worked.
He stood up straight and stretched his back, ready to return to his office. But as he went to move away heard a…
PING!
…and instinctively looked down.
Stepphy had received a message.
It was innocuous enough but still, he felt bad for accidently reading it. Or at least he would have, if he hadn’t seen something else on her phone.
Her background photograph.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up and saw Stepphy standing there, cup of coffee in hand.
“Is that my phone?”
He looked down and realised he had, without thinking, picked it up.
“I was looking for a pen…” he began, “you had a message.”
“I know I made you a coffee,” she said, walking over to the desk and putting her own drink down, “but that doesn’t mean we’re at the stage of our relationship where we get to read each other’s messages.”
Relationship.
She took the phone from his hand and checked her message, typing out a response rapidly. Once sent, she looked up at him, as if
he
was
her
employee.
“Anything else?”
“Err… no,” he stammered.
“Ok,” she said, then resumed texting.
He turned and walked towards his office.
“Oh,” said Stepphy, causing him to turn around, “you might want these.” She held out the documents he had put on her desk whilst looking for a pen.
“Thanks,” he said, not looking at her as he took them from her and headed back into his office, closing the door once and leaning against it once again.
This time, a completely different thought was running through his mind.