Chapter 16
ANSON
Like I told Benji, I’d done my research during the days that Benji and I had spent apart. It hadn’t taken long, even though imagining all of the obstacles that a relationship with him would present had kept me up all night anyway.
New Day Technologies, my company, had an HR policy for fraternization.
While it was written to discourage workplace romance, the policy did in fact acknowledge that people could meet at work and decide they wanted to date.
It was actually a fairly progressive and reasonable policy, and I was proud it was ours.
I assumed Erin and Beck had had me sign off on it at some point, but it was one of many items that I trusted Beck to handle on our behalf.
Was the language stronger when one person was higher up on the organizational chart than another?
Of course, it was. But Beck and the legal team and the human resources professionals had mapped it all out years ago.
They may not have had the owner of the company in mind when they wrote it, but I was also an employee of New Day Technologies, the same as Benji.
Not unlike Benji’s instinct to create a pro-and-con list, or to solve an equation as he had called it, during those days we were apart, I had read and reread the policy, mapping a solution as to how we could be together.
The only part of the equation I didn't have a solution for was the “B” factor. I had convinced myself that Benji thought our kiss had been a mistake. I’d traveled down many rabbit holes since he’d left me in the lab, each time concluding that Benji had never really wanted to kiss me that night.
That some residual inner teenager had emerged in him and fulfilled a fantasy of kissing the Anson Day.
That he was just like all of those other men I’d been with and all of the men, and women, who had thrown themselves at me over the years, hopeful for their chance to spend time with, or maybe to even nab a rich, successful, if somewhat eccentric tech-bro.
Benji and I had continued to work, texting and talking through shared documents.
And without Beck over our shoulders, we’d even done so through the night one night.
The next night I’d forced him to stop working, urging him to get some rest for his big weekend.
It was as close to a personal conversation as we had after the kiss, but he didn’t bring it up, so neither did I.
Then I spent time with him and his father, drifting between the fear that he didn’t want what I wanted and the impossible hope that I could feel a longing in him that mirrored my own.
Impulse and instinct had led me to his apartment after dinner.
Or maybe it was desire and desperation. I had done one-and-done more times than I could count.
If that’s what Benji had to offer, my feet marching toward his apartment told me that I was willing to take that even as my heart hoped for more, even as it hoped for everything.
He’d simply said, “All I want is you,” and sure, that could easily have been interpreted any number of ways. That may have been the affirmation of a one-and-done. And I’d never been one to read facial cues, but I thought I could read Benji’s. It was one of the reasons I felt so close to him.
And his face? It was telling me, in clear and certain terms, that he wanted me. All of me, the real me.
A plus B didn’t equal X. It equaled Y. “Y” for yes.
I pulled away from him, missing him immediately, my mind a crazy whirr, a tingle running from my mouth to my groin. I moved my hands to his hips to keep our lower bodies locked as he had done to me. I could feel his hardness against my leg, and mine throbbed in commiseration.
“You’ll need an attorney,” I began. The look on Benji’s face led me to believe I had started this conversation in the middle, something Beck had gently pointed out to me on any number of occasions.
A shadow of confusion crossed his face, but he nodded in agreement.
Reluctantly, I took a half step back and wrapped my hands around his, leading Benji to the couch.
I sat, but Benji didn’t follow for a beat, one hand still in mine before he gave it a squeeze and then sat in my lap, his legs curled on the couch, his arms wrapped around my neck.
He kissed me again, but I pulled back quickly. I could feel the tension in my own forehead, mimicking his look.
“A … are you planning to sue me for harassment?” he stuttered, a forced lilt framing the question.
My hands around his waist felt like the lifeline of a drowning man, his arms around my neck the anchor keeping me safely in place. Our eyes spoke volumes in the moments of silence that followed. Eventually, I gathered my thoughts and continued.
“New Day Tech has established policies for interoffice dating. I didn’t realize, because in the past it was strictly against the rules, but it turns out Beck and the HR team updated those rules a few years back.”
Benji nodded encouragingly, his grip tightening around my neck as he relaxed in my lap.
“You can’t report to me,” I began. I felt him stiffen.
“Maybe I should …”
“Wait!” I slid him off me, my entire being feeling the loss of his heat and weight, but my mind needing to focus. The marker had rolled to the floor at some point, and it took me longer than I would have liked to find it, my thoughts scrambling.
A+B=Yes, I wrote underneath our lists, then I added the numbers one through three underneath it.
“One.” I wrote Project Orthos.
“I haven’t talked to anyone yet, but I think the project has to be completely independent.
We’ll have to form a separate entity and agree to sell the patent to NDT.
Owned jointly and equally between its two collaborative creators, with some acknowledgement that we will be using New Day’s equipment and resources.
” I underlined “and equally” before looking back at Benji.
“I would split it unequally. Give you more of a share, but it seems cleaner, safer, if we’re equal partners. That’s what you and your dad should confer with the attorney about. Make sure you agree. Have a third party confirm that I’m not taking advantage of you.”
He shook his head. “Equal partners in Project Orthos. But we already have the profit-sharing agreement?”
“Yeah, but this way, where Project Orthos is concerned, you’re my independent collaborator, not an employee.
Both parties would have to agree to tear up the existing agreement.
My team won’t be happy about that, but I am the boss.
I don’t want you to agree to anything until you’ve really thought about it, but this would be one way we could keep working together on Orthos. ”
I worked hard to read his face. Eventually, he smiled at me and nodded. “I get it. Number two?” It took me a beat before I remembered my list and turned back to the paper.
“Number two,” I repeated before writing, You cannot report to me.
“If you want to stay at New Day, you’ll have to be assigned to a department. The job of scientific research assistant to Anson Day can never be yours. From this moment forward …”
Benji’s supportive nod helped me complete my joke.
“Should you choose to sit on my lap again, I can never have any input as to your continued employment at NDT, and you can never work directly for me.”
Benji’s silence gripped my heart. We’d had comfortable silences in the past, but I wasn’t sure at that moment what he was thinking. I gripped the pen and felt the heat of my eyes boring into Benji’s, trying to understand his lack of response.
A slow smile brightened his face. I wanted to scream at the juxtaposition of my anxiety with his apparent gaiety.
“What’s number three?” he asked, without commenting on number two.
“Number three?” I repeated absently, still waiting for whatever bomb Benji’s pause was priming.
He pointed at the paper. “You have a third point.”
“Oh! Funding for Project Orthos would have to be separate and … can’t come directly from NDT to you. So …” I added an “a.” and a “b.” below number three.
“So, we either work full-time on Project Orthos, and … you don’t get paid, or we get you set up in your new department, and we work on the project after hours.”
“Have you run any of this by Beck, or Erin?” he asked, and I shook my head no, drawing a bracket on my numbered points and then an arrow to where I had underlined HR ISSUES more than once.
Benji popped up from the couch quickly, but then he sauntered over to me, his limbs loose, his face alight.
I wished I could alleviate my own tension, but all I could do was watch as he stood close to me.
So close that I could smell the scent of him, reminding me of the hours we’d spent together in my office and in the lab.
His clean-linen smell, mixed with a whiff of alcohol from the champagne we had shared, and the stale smell of crab from the appetizer that I ordered every time I ate at Beantown Prime.
He took the pen and was writing before I even realized he had grabbed it.
A+B=Yes, he wrote before drawing a check mark before numbers one and two.
“I need to pay my rent, Anson. I can’t … I don’t want to rely on anyone. Not Dad. And not you, obviously. It’s important, no, it’s vital, that I don’t rely on you …
“People might think you're taking advantage of me, Anson. I think that might be what Dad thinks, that you stole my work? An older, richer, more powerful person sees the potential in an MIT dissertation project …” I opened my mouth to object, but he beat me to it.
“You and I know that’s not what’s going on, but we have to do everything in our power to avoid the appearance of it.
We have to make it as clear as possible that that is not the case.
Equal partners in Orthos. It’s the truth, so people will have to believe us.
” He checked off number three but not before writing the words “Beck” and “Ben” underneath what I had written.
Then he tossed the pen on the coffee table, where the remote control kept it from rolling off.