After the unexpected but completely satisfying evening, night and following morning with my ex-husband Peter, I had four options. As my first choice, I would have been very happy to remain in his condo with him, preferably with him in his bed. My second choice was to rush to South Carolina, share the good news with Betty, and maybe share something else too. Third, and in some ways the option I desired the most, was to sleep for about a week.
Well, none of those were possible. Peter was headed off on a book tour and the arrangements precluded me from accompanying him. Betty was at her corporate headquarters for two weeks. And Sleep, while wonderful, assumes that the bills have already been paid to date. They weren't.
That left my fourth, and by far my least favorite, option. I went back to work.
In one way it was good that we were busier than usual for this time of year. It kept me hopping from one job to another, usually assisting Tommy or one of the other managers. However we had a rash of first line supervisors deciding they had found better jobs. The result of that bit of trivia was that I was asked to fill in "temporarily" as a store runner. Since management met my requests for a pay raise and a perk or two, I decided to do it.
I wanted to stay busy because I wasn't sure what to think about Peter and I. The sex in the shower had been great fun. The love making in the bedroom had been wonderful. To quote a popular commercial, waking up in his arms: "priceless".
I wasn't sure what it all meant, and neither was he. I certainly didn't want to ruin the friendship that had sprung up between us. For two people who had formed the habit of discussing most things at length, including our failed marriage, the subject of "us" seemed to bring on awkwardness and hemming and hawing. I thought both of us wanted something more, but weren't sure how to exactly bring the idea into the open. Perhaps the break would allow us to consider what was going to come next.
So here it was, a Saturday night and I was working. An upscale woman's boutique in an upscale mall in an upscale area of the city. Not an enormous amount of stock. What there was had to be carefully inventoried as there was not an inexpensive item in the house. I was fortunate to have only experienced auditors working for me that night, so after a brief discussion with the store manager and my crew, we went to work.
Following the awakening of the previously unknown part of me that found other women attractive, I kept my eyes on one of the clerks assisting in running down the stock numbers of the items that had lost their tags. She was about 25, blonde, with a short red dress that accentuated her nice figure and showed off her legs. I certainly had no intention of making a pass at her but she gave me something to rest my eyes on when they began to turn red from reading the long lines on the printouts that my laptop was spewing. No wonder everyone who did this a lot wore glasses.
I smiled to myself as I saw that I wasn't the only person girl watching. Two of my young male auditors were all but drooling whenever the blonde passed by. I didn't think they were actually discarding merchandise tags so as to have an excuse to have her come over to them but they were very pleased when the opportunity arose.
I passed them once on the way to the manager's office and overheard them quietly discussing how much they would each like to get her alone, in bed or almost anywhere else. I burst out laughing when I had heard one of them say that to the other. Generally they kept an eye out for me while discussing girls, both because the company discourages idle chit chat at work and to avoid embarrassing me. Apparently they imagined I was too old to realize people talked about sex. As cute as it was, I was willing to bet I could shock them, not the other way around. Especially with the way my life had been running lately.
I couldn't resist it though. I paused by them and they both immediately shut up and looked guilty. "Think of how she would look on the big wooden desk in the manager's office while you're at it why don't you?" I actually giggled when both of them stood there with their mouths open and nothing coming out. I don't often get to make a guys speechless, much less two.
I was still chuckling to myself when I reached the office in the back room.
"What's so funny Sherry?" asked Angela, the store manager.
"Two of my guys, Chris and Adam, are enthralled with one of your salespersons. I just couldn't resist a remark to them."
She grinned back. "I noticed. Well, boys will be boys. Dianna is very attractive. Too bad she has a husband who's about the size of both of them put together."
Further discussion was interrupted momentarily as I was startled by the driving beat of nearby music.
"What in the world?"
Angela laughed. "There's a club just around the corner. Of course normally by the time they get started rocking we're all gone."
"Well, maybe we can go there after we get done." I replied in jest.
