Author's Note: Any similarities between this story and
Laying in Bed at One in the Morning
are purely intentional. (See the postscript for details; reading that story is not required but encouraged).
*****
Stephanie Becker lay in bed next to me, her perfect green eyes bright. Dawn over the Atlantic had woken us.
"Hi Nick."
*****
After COVID was mostly over we got a bunch of new hires. To a one they were roughly around thirty, some more or less straight out of school, a few coming off a first job. Digital forensics is a growth industry; my company mostly worked with the financial sector. Stephanie's previous job was in finance doing analytics.
Being one of the senior people left, it fell to me to train the incoming employees. Some of them really weren't into the job for one reason or another. Some just weren't all that good. There were a few though that stood head and shoulders above the rest.
Stephanie Becker was one of them, the best of them. Smart, a fast learner, sometimes bloody single-minded, she was the definition of forensic, pulling things apart at the subatomic level and making sense of them. Not only was I a teacher and mentor to her but we also worked cases as part of a four person team. Right now, the team was in Florida.
*****
Last night...
"Hey Stephanie. Come in." She'd once told me that she never used Steph anymore, that was her name as a child.
She stepped into my hotel room. I'd seen her a whole 12 minutes ago when she went to change. Yeah, I counted.
*****
Our team hit the road four or five times a year. Basically, we were living in each other's hip pockets sixteen, seventeen hours a day for a week at a time. We'd put in ten, twelve hours and then find a local brewery and hang. I was 15 years older than them and wasn't accepted as anything but a coworker despite the drinking together.
Spend that kind of time with people and you get to know them. Mostly. Stephanie didn't talk about her past a lot. I knew she came from down South, not too far down, where the biggest event in years was when they opened the Dollar General. Whether it was because of our age difference or she was just intensely private I never knew. I suspected it was a mix of the two.
I'd learned quickly that her facility with the English language was beyond compare, she wasn't just funny, she was witty. Her ability to banter went beyond anything I'd ever seen before. I gave up trying to get the best of her.
And Stephanie was scary smart; she had no peers. She wasn't egotistical about it. It got to the point where we finished each other's sentences, professionally speaking. As her mentor I knew she'd arrived. So, we've got witty and smart. Only woman I've ever met who pulled off the hat trick; throw drop dead gorgeous into the mix.
Stephanie was in her early thirties and shapely, a species of curvy that I never knew I was into before meeting her. She clocked in at 5' 5" with dirty blond hair, (she colored it), and dark eyebrows. And the single most gorgeous pair of green eyes I'd ever seen. When she was dialed in you knew she was totally focused on you with those eyes, not thinking of what to have for lunch or something.
Where some women might go for clothes that concealed their curves she took the opposite strategy; most days she wore form fitting jeans and looked good doing it. Her choice of tops didn't run as tight as the jeans; she was more modest where her not inconsequential chest was concerned. She was always exquisitely put together. But then again, I might be biased.
*****
"Let's sit down" I said.
Stephanie wore black leggings and a loose black tee shirt, (they were offset by her grey hoodie). There's a reason why blonds in black is a classic and I was looking at the living example. She was wearing running shoes so, as always at these times, I tried to get a feel for how tall she was without heels. (Stephanie was quietly sensitive about her height, she used heels to offset it). I've never really seen the problem.
*****
One day I was minding my own business at home when it hit me out of the blue; I realized I was attracted to Stephanie. I marveled at the feeling for about two seconds before everything came to a screeching halt. There was the age difference, I was her mentor, and based on her excellent work I'd been trying to get her a promotion: how would it have looked if we were involved? I was a cautionary HR tale. Topping it all off was the fact that she was uninterested in me. We got along great and had the cutting edge banter but that was it.
I came to the realization that I had a crush on Stephanie. (Yes, even at my age, it turns out they're not age limited). I did a lot of research on crushes and yup, I had one bad. Interesting thing about crushes, basically you rewire your brain to dump a ton of dopamine and oxytocin into your system when you have any contact with your crush. Even a picture can do it. The most perverse thing about all this was that when I was with her, I knew I had zero romantic interest in Stephanie. In time I wondered if it was because I couldn't have her, I convinced myself I didn't want her.
*****
"You want something to drink?", I asked. "I've got water, somehow I wound up with what was left of the wine from last night and Diet Pepsi."
"You and Diet Pepsi. Someday I'm going to get you to embrace Coke Zero fully." It had been a running gag with us.
"Oh, you've already gotten your hooks into me, that's what I get when I can't find a Pepsi."
In an undertone she started chanting, "One of us, one of us." If there was a close second to those eyes it was her smile.
How the hell was I ever going to do this?
"I'll take water, I had enough to drink while we were shooting darts." Steve, Mandy and the two of us held an impromptu competition at a bar after dinner. It was an elimination kind of thing, the two of us were matched against each other. Stephanie, despite all protestations to the contrary, was
good
