12. KYLE
12
KYLE
I can hardly focus when I get back to my desk. I know what Taylor is thinking. I could practically see him doing the maths in his head when he saw me and Larry in what appeared to be a locked room in the office. The optics of that are not so good.
If Taylor hadn’t been on his way to a meeting he likely would have talked to me about it then, but instead I got the absolute joy of stewing on it for the next couple of hours. What joy.
But in a lot of ways, it is.
Because all I can think about is Larry.
He leaned in. He went for it, didn’t he? After I…
My pulse races at the thought. I calmed him down. He was so worried and I just wanted to protect him, wanted to make sure he was okay. Then he kissed me.
And then I kissed him back. I just couldn’t help it. I can’t control myself around him and I know how dangerous that is. He’s my assistant. We can’t be going around doing this, can we? HR would have a bloody field day.
There’s a knock at my door sometime later. I call for whoever it is to come in, getting a glimpse of Larry sitting at his desk just outside the door as Taylor steps into view.
“Good meeting?” I ask, trying to preempt what he’s going to say. He looks a little worn out, so maybe it didn’t go too well.
“Fine enough,” he replies, looking out at Larry before he shuts the door. “I need to speak with you.”
“Okay, what can I do for you?” I’m trying to keep it casual, trying not to let him know that this is absolutely rattling me.
“Can I sit?”
“Of course!” I say. If he’s sitting, he’s planning on being here for a while. I swallow hard, putting my hands in my lap, gripping them together tightly. What is he going to say? Could I get fired over this?
“I’m going to try not to make a big deal out of this,” he starts, staring hard at me. Taylor has a pretty serious face as it is. A hard life has made him… well… hard, and there are walls all around him, the kind of walls no one would dare try and scale. He’s my friend, but he’s also my boss, and when it comes to the business that has to come first. “Do you want to tell me what I walked in on?”
I open my mouth to respond but think better of it. “I want you to tell me what you think you walked in on and then we’ll see,” I say, trying to get a laugh out of him. It seems to work. He cracks a smile at least. Maybe I’m not fired.
“Fine,” he says. “Were you and Larry… Were you… I don’t know the best way to put this without sounding like an old man.”
“Okay, well now you have to finish that sentence because I need that in my life.”
“Were you hooking up?”
I chuckle. “Okay, that was worth it,” I say. “We weren’t… hooking up, as you so delicately put it. We… we kissed.”
“You kissed?”
“How much do you want to know?”
“How much did you do in that copy room?” His eyes are wide now.
“Christ, I don’t mean today,” I say. “I’m getting mixed up now. We… we might have hooked up before he started here. I didn’t know he was about to become my assistant, and when I realised, I said it would have to stop but…”
Taylor leans back in his chair and raises an eyebrow. “But you couldn’t help yourself?”
I can’t help but smirk. “Something like that.”
Taylor takes a deep breath, apparently considering his next words carefully. “Okay, that’s more than I thought, if I’m honest,” he says. “I figured the kissing had happened, but I didn’t know about the first part. Oh, Kyle.”
“You did tell me to put myself out there,” I say. “Don’t you remember? The other night?”
“I do remember,” he says. “I’d rather it wasn’t someone in this building but?—”
“Taylor, I’m sorry?—”
“Don’t apologise,” he says. “Just… please keep in mind that dating your assistant is not a good look.”
I wince. The word dating hits me square in the chest. That’s not even what’s happening, certainly not right now and probably not at any point in the future, but the implication still stings. “Noted,” I say. We aren’t dating. We just… can’t keep our hands off each other. Which isn’t ideal.
“Seriously, Kyle,” Taylor says. “It’s not just about gossip. People will talk, they’ll assume things about you, about him, about how he got the job in the first place. It’s a mess waiting to happen.”
“I know,” I say quickly, practically treading over his words, my voice coming out like a cry. And I do know. The second he walked into my office on his first day, I told myself I was going to cut it all off, nothing else was going to happen, but then he kissed me and I… I lost all my resolve. He has this hold on me, clearly, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.
“Okay,” Taylor says, getting to his feet. “Just… just be careful, okay? If you’re going to… If anything is to…” He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t want you messing up your career for some boy, okay?”
“Understood,” I say. He leaves, and the silence I’m left with is enough to drown me. I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, willing my racing brain to settle but it won’t. I can’t get involved with Larry. Not just because of the optics, but because it’s not fair to him. He deserves better than to be just some office scandal.
I decide then and there; nothing’s going to happen between us. It can’t. I can’t let it.
I open up a chat window with him and start typing.
Everything’s fine with Taylor. Don’t sweat it. Maybe, let’s not get locked in the copy room together again lol.
He types back immediately.
LARRY
Do I still have a job?
Yes, we both do. Don’t sweat it.
The next few days are absolute torture but Larry seems to have settled a little bit. He doesn’t seem worried about getting fired, and deciding we’re going to turn over a new leaf as far as this job goes means that he seems to be doing quite well. He doesn’t mention the copy room again, and neither do I, but that doesn’t mean I stop thinking about it.
But then the lunches start…
It begins with him poking his head around the door, telling me he’s popping out to get something to eat and asking whether he can get anything for me. I go with him instead, to stretch my legs, and… it’s nice.
He tells me about this show he’s been watching, some crime drama where the guys are falling in love while solving these murders, and he’s so passionate about the two main characters I can’t help but laugh. I tell him about a disastrous holiday I went on last summer, where I basically ended up getting sick on the first night and spending what was meant to be a beach holiday trapped in my hotel room.
For a little while, I forget about the copy room. I forget about Taylor telling me it’s a bad idea, because we’re just two people having lunch. Me and Larry getting to know one another. No complications.
Except there are complications. Because the more I get to know him, the more I want to know him, and the more I want to know him, the scarier all of this gets. Because I find myself trying to make him laugh so I can see the dimples pop in his cheeks, or surprise him with something so I can see the way his eyes go all big and wide. Or I find myself recognising the faces he pulls, the extra hard concentration look when he’s working on something and gets a little crease in the middle of his forehead, or his listening face, where it feels like I’m the only person in the whole wide world.
And I know I’m in trouble. I’m in far too deep. And he doesn’t even know it.
I make it through the week, and manage to not think about him too much over the weekend, though I find myself looking for him at the gym, not focussing on my workout, and even going for an extra long steam just in case.
On Monday we take our little walk to the sandwich shop, coming back to sit in the refectory downstairs and chattering away. He takes one of my crisps, popping it into his mouth and giving me a cheeky grin, and I’m not sure I can take it anymore.
I clear my throat and Larry stops grinning, his happy little face fading when he thinks he might have actually offended me. “Sorry, do you not like to share food?”
“No, no, it’s not that,” I say, taking a deep breath and trying to stop the butterflies from dive-bombing my stomach long enough so I can speak. “I was wondering if you… if you’d want to…” I clear my throat again. Why is this so hard? “If you’d want to maybe go out sometime. With me. Outside of work I mean.”
Larry swallows, a nervous sort of look on his face. I want to take it back immediately. I want to rewind to sixty seconds ago so I can stop myself from making this huge mistake that might be about to ruin?—
“I was starting to think you’d never ask,” he says, and my heart practically stops in my chest.
“So… yes?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, reaching forward and taking another crisp. “I need to get these tomorrow, they’re really really good.”
He said yes.
He said yes.
I swallow. He said yes. Shit.