Tuesday --
I awoke from an uneasy sleep with my body aching and my head spinning with feelings of mingled guilt and dread. It was a feeling I had felt many times before, a true sexual hangover. I rolled over, hid my head under the pillow, but the alarm clock was persistent. Reluctantly, I sat up and stretched. I felt a tight, stinging pain on my chest and peeked beneath my nightshirt to see a small amount of dried blood surrounding the perfect impressions of Sledge's teeth in my left breast. Memories of Monday's excitement flooded in through the morning brain fog and suddenly the guilt and dread were overshadowed by a renewed sense of excitement.
I got out of bed, showered, dressed, and headed to work. A million questions circled my mind as I faced rush hour. How would Sledge react today? Would it happen again? And the biggest, most exciting question of them all, what if we had been caught? The question and all of the possible scenarios of what could have happened the day before took on a life of their own. We were right there in Aspen's office. She could have come back at any moment. Would she have been pissed? Would she have walked away? Or, my favorite thought, would she have joined in?
I hate to put labels on myself, particularly when it comes to sexuality. Lesbian and straight both seem far too confining and the term bisexual seems so indecisive. I like to think of myself as a people person, attracted to the person, not the gender. But when Aspen is around, all other ideas of attraction are swept away... only she exists. I've had a thing for thin, blonde-haired, blue-eyed women since that day in the tenth grade when Kristin Corley raised her hand in that sleeveless shirt and gave me a glimpse of pubescent perfection. Add to that the fact that Aspen was an authority figure with a creepy Mrs. Lovett quality about her and oh my God, she was complete perfection. I passed the monotony of traffic fantasizing about what she would have done had she walked in on Sledge fucking me on her desk. It seemed this was going to be another dangerous day.
The morning passed pretty uneventfully. There was more noise than usual with people coming in and out, moving furniture and computer equipment to the new office down the street. Sledge avoided making eye contact with me causing me to want to put my foot out in front of him each time he walked by carrying something heavy. But this feeling of anger faded each time Aspen passed my desk, the smell of her perfume immediately calming me. By mid-afternoon, the movement around me slowed and I was better able to concentrate on my work. I was actually making some progress when I heard my name called in that voice that has a way of both exhilarating me and making me feel as if I don't exist. I stood and stepped cautiously into Aspen's office.
Aspen stood in the middle of her office, arms crossed, staring up at the ceiling. I looked quickly around the office which, strangely enough, looked very different today. I swore I could almost smell the sex in the air. Oh God, she knows, I thought. She's getting ready to fire me. But she said nothing like that. In fact she said nothing for a moment and I stood there feeling awkward, like I usually did when I was around her. "Help me out for a second, would you," she said simply. I braced myself for a barrage of questions. Instead she pulled her office chair out from under her desk, placed one foot on it, and reached out to me. Confused, I slowly stepped forward. She placed her hand on my shoulder and pushed herself up so she was standing on the chair.
I stood directly in front of her, watching her movements with curiosity. "I need," she said slowly, cautiously raising her arms toward the ceiling. "To disconnect Frank's and my computers from the network so we can move them over to the other office." She grabbed hold of the cables and pulled, but they seemed securely attached to the ceiling. "I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to attach these fucking things to the ceiling instead of running them under the carpet." I stood there, ready to catch her if she fell, trying really hard... well sort of hard... okay admiring the view of her body as she seemed not to notice.
Aspen's waist was at eye-level and as she stretched toward the ceiling, her shirt rose slightly, exposing the smooth skin of her belly. I bit the inside of my cheek as I imagined how her skin would feel against my lips, how her body would tremble at my touch. She shifted on the chair, trying to get a better grip on the wires above and the fluorescent lights glinted off of the small metal bar in her belly button. I wasn't all that surprised, given the amount of metal in her ears and eyebrows, but I started to wonder what else she might have pierced. My eyes carefully scanned their way up her body, searching for little bumps in her clothes, some sort of sign of more little treasures. As my eyes reached her breasts, one of the staples in the ceiling gave way and the chair wobbled, threatening to throw her to the floor. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed her hips, trying to steady her. She stood still for a moment, trying to regain her balance, then looked down at me with an uncharacteristic smile in her eyes. "Thanks," she said simply and returned her attention to the cables. I reluctantly dropped my hands to my side.
The next three staples popped out of the ceiling a little more easily than the first and I rolled the chair across the small office so that she could better reach the others. At that moment, the front door slammed and we both looked to see Frank in the doorway, glaring at us, me with my hands planted firmly on the arms of the chair, my head almost touching Aspen's knees and Aspen practically dangling from the ceiling. "Out," he said to me firmly. I didn't hesitate. I had never seen Frank looking this angry before and I didn't want to see what would happen. Just seconds after I re-entered the main part of the office, the door to Aspen's office slammed. I returned to my computer.
I pretended to be focusing on my work while at the same time struggling to hear the argument behind the closed door. The voices were muffled but both were obviously angry. Random phrases were able to make their way to my ears. "You fucked it up, you fix it," came from Frank. "Why the hell did you leave it there," was Aspen's response. The door suddenly swung open and I noticed a dozen pairs of eyes quickly shift back their respective monitors. "Find out," Frank shouted at Aspen as he stormed out of the office. There was absolute silence in the office save for a few straggled keyboard strokes.
Five minutes later, Aspen emerged from her office, her face pale as a ghost, her ears red as a fire truck. Her jaw and fists were clenched. She hastily motioned for me to follow her as she stomped across the office and nearly swung the front door off the hinges. I felt all eyes on me as I slowly stood and left the office as well. When I stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine, the little blue sports car I had seen the day before squealed to a stop in front of me and Aspen pushed the passenger side door open for me. I got in feeling my heart beating in my throat as loudly as the death metal music blaring from the car speakers.
I was used to Aspen venting to me after arguments with Frank. I have the kind of face that people seem comfortable opening up to. I've heard more life stories from five-minute acquaintances than I could possibly remember. I don't mind. I enjoy listening and hope that by listening I am somehow helping. But this... this scared me. Aspen was dead silent, speeding through the city streets, taking corners at full speed, ignoring stop signs and traffic lights. I didn't dare speak and don't think I could have as my voice box seemed to have been jammed into my stomach along with every other internal organ. I decided instead to hold on to the "oh shit" bar for dear life and pray for survival.
"I need to pick up an external drive," Aspen said gruffly as a means of explanation. I wondered why I was asked to come along, but decided anything that might take away from the little attention she was giving the road was a bad thing. I just sat in silence as she screamed at the other drivers, swearing like a sailor. She skidded into a parking spot in front of a computer store. "Wait here," she said, her voice hoarse. I watched her walk away. Everything about her at this moment screamed fury. I had never wanted her more.
Aspen returned twenty minutes later and practically fell back into the driver's seat. She sat there in silence for a moment, staring straight ahead, her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. "I need to blow off some steam," she said finally in a relatively calm voice. She turned to me, her blue eyes pleading. "You mind?" I shook my head and she whipped the little car out of the parking lot, down the street, and into a little gravelly alley behind a grocery store. Once the car was in park, she reached into the back seat and pulled out a brown paper bag. She unscrewed the cap of the bottle within and took a long swig before handing the bottle to me. I took a sip and immediately felt the vodka burn my throat and spread heat to my cheeks and ears.
We passed the bottle back and forth a few more times before Aspen began to talk. Frank had called her a "fucked-up kid" she said and accused her of something she hadn't done. This something, if exposed could mean death to the company and real trouble for her and Frank. I listened patiently as she vented, but I couldn't help but notice the vagueness of her statements. As she raged on and on, the sun began to fade and a light rain began to fall. "Who the fuck does he think he is," she said, pounding the steering wheel with her clenched fists. "Doesn't he know just how much I do for this company? The whole place would fall apart if it weren't for me."
I felt as if my ears were stuffed with gauze and her words seemed muffled. I went to hand Aspen the bottle and she waved it away. "Finish it," she said. "I don't want an open bottle rolling around in my car." Somehow it seemed more of an order than a request. I peeked into the bag and saw that only a quarter of the clear liquid remained. Aspen didn't seem the least bit drunk. I wondered why she was so together when it felt like my head was full of cotton.
Aspen lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the steering wheel as she continued her rant. I no longer cared about her words. I was instead fascinated by the sight of her lips wrapped around that narrow tube, her cheeks sucked in as the pulled in the smoke, and the wispy cloud that escaped that beautiful mouth. Oh to be that cigarette just for one drag. Suddenly there was silence in the car as Aspen seemed to have reached the end of her tirade. We sat and listened to the rain on the windshield and I stared at the almost empty bottle, lost in my daydream.
