"Thanks," Arlo said and reached out to take the overly large cup of soda.
His fingers touched the young woman's hand when she handed the cup out the drive through window, the instant lingering for much longer than just the second or two of actual contact before he glanced up to catch her eye. She smiled perfunctorily and turned away without a word, seemingly without even noticing that fleeting moment of skin to skin contact, Arlo taking his foot off the brake to ease forward.
He took a sip of diet coke and swallowed past the lump in his throat. He coasted through the parking lot, one hand reaching into the brown paper bag to retrieve his breakfast, his mind replaying that momentary touch, soft cool skin pressed against his fingertips.
The ache to touch another human being assuaged and redoubled.
Arlo followed the flow of traffic through the stoplight onto the highway and accelerated, juggling his sausage and cheese biscuit with one hand while he drove to work, the momentary touch quickly forgotten along with the ache.
Daphne was swept onto the elevator in the press of people, barely able to glance at the floor indicators to make sure that the seventh floor had already been selected. She wasn't even able to squeeze into a corner or against the wall as she always did, the jostle of the crowd keeping her towards the center of the claustrophobic car, a hip bumping against her side and staggering her forward into a man's butt.
Daphne held her breath and stared purposefully at the square patterns of the pile carpet, her body pushed and pummeled by the crowd. She had the mental image of a piece of flotsam, no more than a piece of Styrofoam tossed by wind and tide and closed her eyes against the ache. On the fourth and fifth floor Daphne was again swept around the small car, people jostling her to get off the elevator, the man's ass directly in front of her again pressing against her stomach for a moment.
Dark black slacks, shiny black leather belt, and an off white button down office shirt, the material of the man's slacks molding to his body so that Daphne could see the outline of his ass through the material.
She could feel her face heating, knew that she was a bright red, the memory of the man pressing back against her made the temperature in the tiny car seem to soar. The moment there was room after the doors closed on the fifth floor Daphne quickly slipped to the side to press herself against the wall, eyes staring at the stained carpet. When the elevator reached the sixth Daphne glanced furtively up to watch the unknown man's ass slip out of the elevator before the doors closed again, only moments later arriving at the seventh.
Daphne tried to recall the last time she had felt a man's ass, her hands squeezing someone's twin cheeks. Two years... or was it three.
The last few people in the elevator shuffled out with Daphne being carried along with the flow, the crowd dispersing into Dilbert Land, Daphne just one more faceless person until she found her assigned cubicle to take a seat. She felt her face heat again as she logged onto her computer, the memory of a man's ass pressing against her stomach, even if only for a moment making her heart race.
Arlo walked through the aisles of Dilbert Land with his coffee in hand. It was always a hassle to stop by the café and get a cup of coffee in the mornings, the layout of the cups, coffee urns, cup sleeves and lids seemingly arranged to cause congestion, to force the people to jostle together. But the coffee was free and not to god awful, so he dared the crowd before making his way up to the seventh floor.
He arrived at his cubicle and stepped inside with barely a glance across the aisle at the short, plump woman with mousy brown hair tied back in a ponytail wearing tortoiseshell glasses who had already arrived. He knew her name, but they rarely spoke, the woman glancing over at him furtively. He nodded politely, the woman's lips thinning in what he took to be a smile before she returned her attention to her computer.
Arlo sat down and began to log in, his glances straying across the aisle to the cubicle Daphne occupied. She appeared to be in her mid thirties and dressed in the obligatory tan slacks and button up blouse. He took a surreptitious glance down at her feet that he could just catch a glimpse of behind the wall of her cubicle since she had them tucked up beneath her chair with her ankles crossed, a small smile playing over his face at the view of the sandal flats she was wearing, the tan straps crossing over her forefoot just behind her toes and then wrapping around her ankle. The sandals gave him a glimpse of her French style toenails, the white edging standing out and drawing the eye. He caught himself staring and had to pull his attention back to his computer.
Shoes that really weren't appropriate for work, but he had never complained when he had noticed her wearing them in the past and wasn't about to now, either.
Arlo finished logging in and concentrated on the list of emails that he had to slog through before getting to work, still baffled at how forty plus emails could be generated overnight when everyone was supposed to be off work.
Daphne finished sorting through the list of emails that had filled her Outlook overnight. Most were autogenerated corporate fluff, self congratulatory back slapping, or the latest nannying over ergonomics and the proper way to position your head to view one's computer monitors.
She deleted the last email and then opened her Excel. She had a meeting at nine so had close to an hour to enter in yesterday's test results and review the data.
Daphne glanced at the man sitting in the cube across from hers. She knew his name, but not anything more beyond that. He was quiet and rarely even said hi, just a cursory nod or smile when they happened to make eye contact coming and going. She liked how tall he was and guessed he was over six feet, enjoyed the athletic shirts he normally wore that hugged his torso. He tended to be more casual than many of the men at the office, preferring jeans over slacks, UnderArmor shirts over button up office shirts. He already had gray shot through his black hair and looked to be in his forties so that Daphne assumed he wasn't as diligent at chasing the corporate ladder as some of the younger men who were always dressed to impress.
Even his shoes were more casual, leather Keens without even any socks instead of the shiny black Oxford's that was the norm around the office.
Daphne glanced over at Arlo out of the corner of her eye and then got to work.
Arlo was a bit annoyed at finding three separate emails that actually required a response instead of being instantly shit canned. He hit send on the third and final one, his boss asking for an update on two of Arlo's less pressing projects that had been on the back burner and leaned back to stretch. He glanced over at Daphne, but with her chair scooted forward while she worked he could only catch a glimpse of her back, the fine hairs along her neck catching the light beneath her ponytail. He could hear her typing diligently with an occasional pause and he turned to his own work.
For the most part Dilbert Land was quiet with only the susurration of the air handlers and an occasional muted conversation to fill the void. Quiet enough for Arlo's mind to wander while he worked, to recall the fleeting feel of skin against skin when his fingertips had brushed the hand of some random stranger.
Daphne paused and stretched, the ErgoBreak computer program locking her keyboard for a minute or two. She hated the ErgoBreak system, hated the inane videos of some sixty year old serial killer librarian following a bouncing blue ball with her eyes around the screen. But the ErgoBreaks were also tracked, a ready made micromanagers wet dream come true, so Daphne was very diligent to observe the lock outs if not the 'recommended stretches' that went along with them.
She arched her back with a series of pops and quickly glanced over in embarrassment to see if Arlo had noticed. He was busy with his own work, her eyes lingering on his tight shirt that outlined his shoulders nicely. She glanced at the computer screen, an Asian woman sitting in a swivel chair and twisting left to right while a timer counted down, and then back to Arlo, her eyes lingering for a moment on his jeans.
She recalled the man in the elevator who had been wearing black slacks, his ass pressing back against her stomach. She felt her face flush at the memory and glanced at the ErgoBreak which still had her locked out for another minute.
Daphne used her hands to lift herself up to peer over the waist high cubicle walls, the aisle empty. With a final quick, guilty look she lowered herself down and pulled out her phone. With a quick glance across the aisle at Arlo she unlocked her phone and opened the app that she had downloaded a week ago.
