Monday, May 18, 1998
I found the slip of paper that began it all sticking out of a stack of bills I was processing. I'd just come back from lunch and was booting up my desktop when I noticed it - a beige color amid the standard white, a ripped line standing out among straight edges. I pulled it away from everything. The writing was in pen, carefully-drawn blocky letters that seemed like they were meant to disguise someone's handwriting.
"
Hotmail username, alexatwork_98. Password, 2cute2ignore.
Check at home, not here."
It was signed, simply, Secret Admirer.
Alex was my name.
I stared at it for a minute, processing. Then, just as quickly as I'd found it, I slipped it into my pocket. Around here, a note like that could be a problem.
I worked in the midsized headquarters of a local chain store. It was far from a job I wanted forever, but it was a paycheck and it kept me fed and in my apartment. I didn't particularly want to lose it over something like that, and I knew that was possible. Company policy was clear and it was strictly enforced: no personal relationships in the office. Ever, at all. I'd known people who were fired for it, and I couldn't really afford to join them.
No one totally knew why the policy existed. There were stories, of course: one was that the CEO's wife had caught him cheating with an employee, and this policy was his attempt to make things right. Another was about an affair gone wrong that ended in tragedy. I'd heard a couple more, to the point where I doubted there was really a good story there at all - just management being prudes, most likely. But even if the stories weren't real, the policy was, and they took it seriously. Hell, my friend Matt had a one night stand with a woman from legal named Rachel last summer and was gone within a month; no one even knew how management found out.
The result, more often than not, was that despite having a pretty solid core of younger people, few of us ever hung out after work, even for a happy hour down the street. It all seemed too risky.
As I started in on my data entry, I kept coming back to the paper. Alexatwork_98 was clearly me. But what did 2cute2ignore mean? Was that a description of me? I didn't want to flatter myself but I sure as hell wasn't bad looking. Or was it a reference to whoever left it? My first thought was that if it was real, it was probably not from anyone I'd want it to be from. Like... ugh, Leslie in accounting who smelled weird and always called me honey.
But what if? There were several cute women in the office, from my age - early 20s - and older. I supposed it could also have been one of the men, of whom there were more, but out of personal preference I started to catalogue attractive women in the office, starting with those my age, who I interacted with.
There were a few that off the bat seemed intriguing if unlikely. Lisa was closest to my desk. She was mid-20s, cute, with long blonde hair and a great body. We were friendly, and worked together a lot given we shared a similar job. She had a serious boyfriend who she was quite happy with, as far as I knew. Plus she wasn't in the office today. None of that ruled it out, but it made her less likely. There was Andrea - not really my type, but her curvy figure undoubtedly got her a lot of attention, and she was friendly and probably a lot of fun outside the office. Margaret was upstairs, pretty religious, a little older, lived at home. Single as far as I knew, and even pretty in her way, but certainly didn't seem the type. Rebecca was in her early thirties, good-looking, and divorced; we did get along really well, but that was probably a long shot. All of them were more or less long shots. No, there were really only two that seemed like real possibilities.
The first was Emma. Her desk was on the other side of the large cubicle space, near the wall of windows. Physically exactly my type: small and devastatingly cute, with light skin and light freckles, shoulder-length light brown hair, and a long elegant neck. She was slender, with a runner's body, and full but not overly large breasts, though she dressed conservatively enough that I had to estimate some things. She'd started at the company only about a month after me, and used to be a regular on my bus, though she got on before me so I didn't know where she lived exactly. We'd talked pretty regularly, become friendly. She also had a sharp, sardonic sense of humor I found really attractive. I'd started to look forward to the rides with her, and she acted like she did too. I was falling for her hard. If it hadn't been for company policy, I'd have asked her out, but... it did exist. I still had those bus rides, though. Then, one morning early last fall, I commented on how much I liked her perfume, and after that it seemed to change: I stopped seeing her in the mornings, and when I saw her at work she was businesslike and nothing more. For a while I tried to think about ways to apologize, or even what to apologize for, but couldn't come up with anything, so I stopped trying. Given all that, Emma didn't make a ton of sense to me, but she made more than anyone else on the list.
Anyone else, that is, except Jen. She was new - started last month, as the assistant to one of the managers I had to interact with. Also a blonde, though more of a dirty blonde. Stunningly hot, with penetrating blue eyes and almost a set sultry look on her face. She had long legs that she showed off with skirts every now and then, with a small but cute ass, thin waist, and full breasts, none of which she worked all that hard to hide - she wore business dress, but managed to wear it in a way that made it clear what kind of body she had. She had a picture on her desk of her and some friends in bikinis at the beach that proved it, if her simple appearance wasn't enough. Beyond the looks, she was one of those people that could talk to anyone any time, a skill I didn't possess - I wasn't shy or anything, but had an introverted side that made me less likely to seek out conversation. That wasn't Jen. In only a month, she'd probably learned more about me than anyone else in the office. She laughed at my jokes, even the bad ones, and sometimes went out of her way to walk by my desk and say hello. I'd suspected for a couple weeks that she had a crush on me; she was a knockout, yes, but I wasn't particularly hard on the eyes either. Was she my personality type? No. She wasn't someone I could see myself in a long relationship with. But... I could see other things, and given the way she and I interacted, she was easily the top prospect.
After that... just a long row of nos, either because they were even more severely unlikely or because no secret liaison with any of them seemed even remotely enticing.
So now I had this piece of paper in my pocket that I didn't know what do do with. Hell, I didn't even know what it was. A prank? A trap? An actual overture?
I realized my mind had been wandering too far afield, leading to a couple of stupid entry errors, so I did my best to put it out of my head and get back to work. I mostly succeeded, and made it through my pile just before 5.
--------------
Only once I was on the bus headed home, with no one from the office on board, did I take that paper back out of my pocket and look at it again. I kept it in hand until I got home. My roommate Tom wasn't home yet, and so the phone line was free. I started up the computer in my room and got online, the familiar tones of my DSL dialup sounding. Opening Netscape, I went to hotmail and entered the username, then the password, and clicked Log In.
For a moment, I wondered if it would fail - a weird prank after all. But it didn't: it opened up to an inbox, with a singular unread message from "
secret_admirer_x0x0
". "
Thinking about you
" was the subject line. It had been sent early this morning.
With a brief anticipatory hesitation, I clicked on the message.
"
Alex,
You know me, and I can't stop thinking about you. At first, I ignored it, knowing that where we work, nothing could happen. I couldn't risk it.
But I can't stop thinking about you. Your eyes, your smile, your chest in that cute blue polo. Your hands. I think about you touching me with those hands. Sometimes I can't concentrate on work, thinking about it.
Sometimes I lie awake in bed, thinking about it. Imagining it. Fantasizing about it.
I can't have you, but I came up with this to channel it, and maybe find a way to connect despite the challenges.
Maybe you never saw the slip of paper I left you. Maybe you ignored it, or laughed at it, and it's in the trash. Maybe someone else found it, and they're reading this right now.
