12. Rebecca
Rebecca
It’s Friday evening. Unusual for me to work late. But for some reason, Eric asked me to stay late tonight and reformat meeting notes.
In other words, grunt work. Meaningless busy work.
It feels like a punishment. Like the way a teacher might ask you to stay after class to write lines. Little to no value in doing it, other than making your writing hand cramp up, and making you miss out on hanging with your friends after school.
Did I do something wrong?
Eric isn’t the type to dish out punishments like this, though.
I’ve witnessed him chewing out an employee before; Eric doesn’t mince words, and ultimately, he’s not afraid to give someone the ax if it comes down to that.
So if I’d done something wrong, something to displease him, I would definitely know about it.
But then, why else would he be making me stay late like this?
All week, Eric’s been different. But in a good way. We’ve crossed the line multiple times. With him making excuses for me to come see him in his office, the blinds closed, the door locked, and…
Well. You can guess what happens next.
Let’s just say that the church pew from Alyssa’s wedding isn’t the only thing he’s bent me over.
I pull my phone out of my bag and check the screen for missed calls and texts.
Nothing from Eric, not even a response to the text message I’d sent him earlier today.
A single heart emoji. Maybe that was a step too far.
But god, how can a heart emoji be taking things too far when having sex in his office isn’t?
The man confuses me.
One minute he’s hot and one minute he’s cold. Telling me that he’s lonely, telling me that he thinks I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.
And now this.
I shouldn’t be so insecure. Men hate insecurity, don’t they? And clinginess. And desperation. And…
“Fuck,” I say under my breath. “Shake it off, Beck. He’s not even your boyfriend. He’s just your…”
My what?
I don’t even know. My booty call? My…boss-slash-booty-call?
Doubt creeps into my mind. Since the wedding, I thought maybe we were getting somewhere. Like maybe Eric and I were building something more than a booty call.
But I know what Eric wants. A wife. Children. All of the usual things. Things I’m not even sure I could provide for him, even if I wanted to. But I’m not sure I want to, if Eric can’t promise that he could love me – if not now, then some day in the future.
The worst thing of all is that I think I’m falling for him.
Really falling for him. It’s something I never expected, something happening so quickly that I’m hardly aware of it.
Not until I get home from work at night, stripping off my work clothes and remembering the way that he touched me, the way that he looked at me that day.
It makes my heart skip a beat, gives my stomach butterflies, and I replay all of my favorite moments of the day every night when I get home.
Like I’m in high school again with a new crush, holding my breath and waiting for the next time he looks at me, smiles at me, pulls me into his arms and kisses me.
It’s the most amazing feeling.
Until it’s not.
Until I begin doubting myself, doubting him , wondering what the hell I’m thinking. Sleeping with my boss? Eric Stone, the guy who looked right through me for seven years? Eric Stone, the alleged robotic man who could never feel love towards me or any other woman?
He did me a favor by going to that wedding with me. In his mind, he was trying to help, trying to get my mom off my back about dating and marriage.
But what’s his explanation now? If the point was to help me out so I didn’t show up empty handed to my sister’s wedding, why are we still doing this with the wedding behind us?
And why the hell am I staying late at the office on a Friday night re-organizing meeting notes that nobody will ever read?
Suddenly I hear the elevator doors on the other side of the room ding, opening up. Footsteps that sound hurried and heavy. In seconds, Eric Stone himself is standing in front of me, holding a thick, frayed book.
“Eric, what’s -”
THUD .
He drops the large book in front of me.
“What the fuck,” I begin, pushing the book away from me.
“Look,” he says, tapping his finger on the page it’s opened up to. “Read this.”
I tear my confused gaze from his face and look down at the weathered old book.
It’s a dictionary.
His finger jabs an entry halfway down the page.
“You want me to read the definition of love,” I say flatly, looking up at him. “Why? Is this some kind of weird test, Eric? Or you want to prove a point to me? You already told me. I know how you feel about it, and you know how I feel about it.”
“Just read it,” he says.
“I know what love is,” I reply.
He sighs impatiently and turns the book around to himself, reading aloud.
“Love,” he says. “Strong affection arising out of kinship.”
He takes a marker from the cup of pens in the corner of my desk, drawing a thick black check mark over the entry.
“We have that one,” he says excitedly, looking at my face to ensure I’m still watching. “Strong affection. Kinship.”
“Right,” I reply with uncertainty. “Kinship.”
“And strong affection,” he says. “Attraction, tenderness, based on sexual desire. We have that one too.”
He draws another thick black check mark beneath his first.
“Eric,” I say. “What is this?”
“I’ve been doing research,” he answers.
“You’ve been researching love?”
“Yes,” he says. He’s reading the entry below the second now. “Affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests. We have that. Most of that.”
“I can’t think of a common interest we have,” I reply truthfully.
“Sex,” he says.
“That doesn’t count.”
“It does the way we do it,” he replies darkly. “I’m counting it.”
Another thick black checkmark.
I sigh.
“Warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion,” he continues. He glances up at me. “I feel attached to you. Enthusiastic too. And as I’ve already told you, when we get married -”
“It’s ‘when’ now, is it?” I ask wryly.
“When we get married, I’ll be the most devoted man to you that you can imagine,” he finishes, ignoring me. “Especially when you’re pregnant. You won’t have to do a thing.”
“When I’m pregnant,” I shake my head.
“If you’re pregnant,” he says quickly. “No expectation. No pressure, Rebecca. I don’t mind. If we never had kids, if it just didn’t work out that way for us…”
I watch him closely, wondering how this man suddenly knows how to say the things I badly need to hear. That I’m not expected to have any biological children, that it’s okay if that’s not something I can ever do. That I’m more to him than just a vessel, someone to fulfill his dreams with…
“I’ll be devoted regardless,” he says. “Because I know that’s how that role works.”
“What role?”
“Husband,” he replies as though the answer is obvious. “That role comes with duties.”
“And what about wife?” I ask him. “What kind of duties come with that?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I’m not aspiring to be a wife. I haven’t looked into it.”
“But you know what you’d like in a wife,” I say, stifling laughter now.
“Just…I don’t know,” he says. “Be there when I get home from work. Can you do that for me?”
“Not if you keep assigning me this bullshit,” I reply, gesturing to my laptop.
“You won’t be working here,” he says. “I told you. Your writing career. That’s what you’ll be doing.”
Oh. Right. I forgot about that detail of his proposal.
“We’re getting off track,” he says, looking down at the dictionary between us. “Unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of others.”
I put my hand over the page he’s reading, forcing him to look up at me.
“Eric,” I say. “What’s this for? Because I don’t need to be told the definition of love. I know what love is.”
“But I don’t,” he says. “Or, I didn’t. I didn’t think I loved you Rebecca but look. It’s right here, right in front of our faces. I love you.”
I shake my head.
“You’re supposed to just feel love,” I say. “Not read from a dictionary and diagnose yourself with it. You’re reading all of these symptoms like it’s some kind of virus that you’ve caught.”
“It kind of is,” he says.
“How romantic,” I reply, still laughing. “Just what every girl dreams of one day. A man coming to her and informing her that his feelings for her are like catching the flu.”
“I’ve got bad news for you,” he says seriously. “If you want to be with me, the word romantic isn’t one you’re going to be using to describe me very much.”
“I’m aware.”
“But,” he continues, pointing at the dictionary again. “This is love. It counts, and it’s real. Just because I’m not like Romeo or…or that douchebag from The Notebook -”
“Noah,” I reply, recalling a detail from the movie I’ve seen maybe a hundred times at least. “The guy in that movie was named Noah.”
“Right. Well, fuck Noah,” he says. “First, her dad says they’re not allowed to be together, and he just accepts that and lets her go. Then she moves away and all he does is write her a bunch of stupid letters instead of growing a pair of balls and -”
“That’s so unfair,” I argue. “He was drafted into the war, letters were all that he could…wait. Are you saying you’ve actually seen The Notebook?”
I gape at him.
“We’re off topic again,” he replies stiffly.
“No, this is important,” I insist. “When the hell did you see The Notebook? We’re not moving on until you explain.”
“Elijah’s wife made us all watch it,” he replies. “Happy?”
“Wow.”
“Stupid sappy movie,” he says dismissively. “Two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. Can we move on now?”
“Fine.”
“This says that I love you,” he says, pointing at the dictionary and looking at me.
“Okay,” I reply. “That’s…very interesting. I’m glad you did some research on love.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What else is there to say?”
“I tell you that I love you and you tell me that you’re glad I did research and that it’s very interesting,” he says frustratedly.
“You said that the dictionary says that you love me,” I reply. “You didn’t say ‘I love you’.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It’s really not,” I reply.
He searches his breast pocket for something, pulling out a velvet ring box and setting it on top of the dictionary between us. I stare at it.
“Rebecca,” he says, his voice deep and soft. “I’m doing my best. This is new to me. I’ve never done any of this before, because no woman has ever made me want to try. So I’m learning. I’m going to need you to meet me halfway here.”
I’m still staring at the ring, speechless.
“Did you hear what I said?” he presses.
“You bought a ring,” I say. “You actually bought an engagement ring for me?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? When you want a woman to marry you? You go out and buy an expensive ring to sweeten the deal?”
“If you think an expensive ring would change whether or not I want to marry you,” I say. “You don’t know me well enough to marry me.”
“ Dammit ,” Eric says loudly, running a hand through his hair.
He strides to the nearby window, looking out at the city cloaked in darkness with his hands on his hips. When he turns back around, he’s staring me down with that familiar intensity in his hazel eyes, rubbing his jaw.
“I don’t know how to do this, Rebecca. And the more I talk, the more I’m going to put my foot in my mouth,” he says to me. “So I’ll stop talking. It’s up to you. You either want what I’m offering…or you don’t.”
“What are you offering?” I ask.
I expect him to answer with any of the many things he’s said before.
Stability. Freedom to change careers. A family. A home. A fancy ring.
“Love,” he answers. “I love you, Rebecca. That’s what I’m telling you, that’s what I’ve been telling you this whole time.”
I nod, fidgeting with the ring box in front of me.
“I love you. I want to marry you,” he continues. “The only question is, do you want to marry me?”
“I’m afraid,” I confess.
“Of what?”
“Of you changing your mind,” I reply. “You began to feel this way about me so suddenly. What if you stop feeling this way just as suddenly?”
“That’s not possible,” he replies. “Loving you is like…it’s like waking up.
Sudden and unplanned maybe, but not easily reversed.
I can’t just fall back asleep and forget about you.
I’ve been awakened to things I feel, things I want out of life, and they’re not things that I’m going to walk out of this room tonight and forget about.
They don’t just slip away like that, not for me.
You know me, Rebecca. I might take my time coming to a conclusion…
but once my mind is made up, it’s made up. ”
I nod.
He’s right.
I’ve watched this careful, thoughtful man for seven years and in that time he’s been steady. Dependable, reliable, consistent.
A man of habit and routine, a man who exhibits almost obsessive devotion to the things that he’s dedicated to.
What if his newest obsession really is me?
How would it feel, to be the object of so much intense attention?
I’m already getting a taste of it, I think. He’s staring at me, walking to me and taking the ring from my hands.
“Yes.”
“What?” he asks.
“My answer is yes,” I reply. “I want to marry you.”
He tips my chin up with his fingertips, taking my mouth with his.
“Before I take this off,” he murmurs, playing with the zipper of my skirt. “You need to put this on.”
He pulls away from me and opens the ring box. The gold band glides up my finger easily, the diamond sparkling in the glow of the nearby lamp.
“Don’t ever take it off,” he warns me.
“You’ve always said engagement rings are meaningless tokens,” I reply. “Now I can’t take mine off?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “I used to believe they were purposeless, just a thing to make women happy. Now I realize that the diamond rings are actually for the men.”
“How?”
“It’s our way of marking our territory,” he says. “This ring says ‘back off, she belongs to me.’ Other men see this and know.”
“Not all men respect a ring,” I tease him. “Not all men see it as a sign to back off.”
“I’m aware. And those men will be dealt with,” he replies.
With the ring now securely on my finger, Eric continues to undress me with hurried hands until I’m in nothing but a bra and underwear. Then he takes his arm and sweeps it across the desk, throwing the dictionary and my laptop to the floor.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Eric mutters, pushing me back onto the desk and kissing my neck.
“Pretty sure you just broke my laptop,” I reply. “Isn’t damaging company property against the employee rulebook?”
“Fuck the rulebook.”