This is a story based on actual events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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Don't dip your pen in the company ink. That's what I've always heard. And I believed it, too. I could imagine how complicated working relationships might get if sex was involved. But I did violate that unwritten law once.
I had been a victim of downsizing. The company I worked for merged with another one and I was a casualty. I really didn't take well to being 29 and unemployed. I had felt like I was finally getting somewhere in my life and career and now I was back to square one. Weeks of anxiety and uncertainty followed. I eventually ended up with a worse job in a similar field for worse money, and I hated every minute of it. It was very fast-paced, which I actually enjoyed, but the clients were difficult and unreasonable, and some of my co-workers were miserable human beings and not afraid to take it out on you. Also, they insisted that I work until 6pm every night, which during the winter meant I left the office every day long after it was dark outside. I liked sunlight, and I couldn't stand not seeing it at the end of the day. To add insult to injury, the management used to gather us together for a meeting every month to remind us how good we all had it, which I used to scoff at. It was hell, pure hell. Except for the gorgeous women, that is.
I don't know if it was a subtle part of their hiring strategy, but there was a disproportionate amount of attractive women amongst the small staff. And they were the type of women who liked to show off their assets too. They frequently wore short skirts, low-cut blouses, and lots of make-up. Work was like a fashion show, and it made suffering through work every day just a little bit easier.
There was one woman in particular who caught my eye. Her name was Kelly. She was in her mid-twenties, with dirty-blonde hair and a well-proportioned body that she frequently showed off with short skirts and sweaters that revealed plenty of skin. She had a series of small moles that started on her neck and shoulders and kind of made your eyes follow them down to her cleavage. She was hot in a wild-child way.
To my surprise, she was the one who kept trying to catch my attention. Within a few weeks of my starting there items began to mysteriously disappear from my desk. I used to keep a number of little trinkets around, like a toy a former co-worker gave me, and a number of little plastic doo-dads that I won playing skee-ball at the boardwalk one summer. It gave me some character, you know. Why be boring? They would disappear from my desk and reappear on hers on the other side of the office. Once I figured out the game I would go and retrieve my things and return with something of hers. This went on for months. We hardly ever spoke to each other. This was our mode of communication.
My attraction to her was cemented one morning when we arrived at the office at the same time. I pulled into a parking spot a few spaces away from her, and realized that I heard the song "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin. I was really surprised when I realized that it was coming from Kelly's car, and she was singing along at the top of her lungs. She was a hot young Led Zeppelin fan? This was too much. I was able to make some idle conversation with her on the way into the office. She seemed like a nice enough girl. She was telling me about a college class she was taking. There wasn't much said. It wasn't a long walk.
After that day I started making subtle inquiries with my co-workers about her. Unfortunately everything I heard about her convinced me that she just wasn't my type of girl. She was the 'drink herself blind, wake up in a dumpster in Connecticut' kind of girl. It was a big-turnoff for me. I didn't drink, and I didn't really enjoy being around drinkers. I wrote her off and moved on to other romantic opportunities. Only there weren't any other romantic opportunities for a 29 year old man still living at home working a crappy job, so Kelly continued to be my fantasy woman.
So, now that I thought I knew what time she usually showed up to work, I started subconsciously making an effort to show up at the same time. It wasn't easy. I got the impression that Kelly wasn't really a punctual person, so even though I thought I was being clever pulling into the parking lot at the same time every day, she rarely did.
As it turned out, it was good old-fashioned fate that set us on our path together. When I finally did show up at the same time as Kelly again, it was a couple of weeks later, and I was actually running a few minutes late. That was the kind of random timing that allowed me to show up at the same time as Kelly. I hated being late and was silent and disgruntled as I walked alongside her into the office. Our office was on the second floor of a squat little three story office building. I always took the stairs but I noticed Kelly heading for the elevator and I almost instinctively followed her. We walked into the elevator alone together and Kelly pressed the button. The doors closed and the elevator started to climb, and then stopped with a screeching noise and a stomach-churning lurch. We were stuck!
Kelly went right over to the emergency phone. "Yeah, this is the elevator in building 2, and we're stuck," she said. I heard some 'Peanuts teacher mumbling' and then Kelly said, "Okay, thanks," and hung up the phone.
I had a very mild case of claustrophobia. I got more anxious when I was underground or in low-ceilinged rooms than when I was in an enclosed space like an elevator, but I must have still looked a little worried.
"Are you okay?" Kelly asked me.
"I'm fine," I replied.
"You're not claustrophobic, are you?" Kelly asked.
"A bit," I replied, "I'm fine, really."
"It's okay," Kelly said, moving closer to me, "Here, hold my hand."
I was about to protest again that I was fine, but I realized that she was offering to actually make physical contact with me, and I wasn't going to pass that up. She turned to me and looked me right in the eye. Well, she looked up a bit. I was 5' 11" and she was probably about 5' 8" in heels. I noticed for the first time that she had blue-green eyes that were similar to mine.
"It'll be okay," Kelly was saying to me. "I've been stuck in this shitty elevator three times already. They'll get us out but it usually takes them a while to get the maintenance staff over here to get it moving again."
"Great," I said, "And we were late to work to begin with."
"Don't worry about that either," Kelly said, "They never docked me while I was stuck in here."
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was worried that I'd end up spending hours stuck in this stupid elevator and this crazy company would dock my time or expect me to make it up later. Being stuck in here with a hot girl on company time? I could live with that.
Kelly started making small talk with me. She was mostly trying to get my mind, and probably hers too, off of our situation. We talked about where we came from, our families, our educations, and then we talked about music. I told her about catching her singing along to Led Zeppelin when we got to work together that morning. I mentioned that I was stuck alone in my dorm's elevator in college once, and I passed the time by turning Aerosmith's 'Love in an Elevator' into 'Stuck in an Elevator'. She got a kick out of that and we ended up singing a few bars, each doing our own lousy Steven Tyler impression. We were still holding hands, and I took her and spun her into me as if we were dancing.
