Prequel to
Mom's New Boyfriend Came Over,
this time a workplace romance between married co workers, from the perspective of Lucie, Kitten's smitten mother.
I met Jacob soon after my husband got sick. He had been transferred from another office to consult our management. My husband's deterioration came with drastic personality change. It made him mean and paranoid. The worse he got, the more comforting Jacob's attentive ear became.
I had not felt
seen
, as a person, by the opposite sex since college, not until he came along. Men were still eager to give me attention for my looks, and to cloddishly pitch to me their philandering as a virtue, not least at work, which gets rather old rather quickly; whereas, rather than making me feel like an item for sale at my own auction, like the boys at the sales department would, Jacob treated me like I was sentient. He was one of the few who validated my experience, who listened, who did not immediately give me unwanted advice about how to live my life in some impossible manner. My beautiful daughter, Kitten, witnessing the reality of her dad, was another such person. Most would more or less pity me for having to bear it. That alone is bad enough, but having to usually feel like the villain for even hinting at life being difficult for myself, made Jacob special. Really, the entire package was special.
My first impression of him from across the office floor was
tall
and
handsome;
and at our introduction the tension was present from the start. The women were all either flirting with or making inappropriate jokes about him amongst each other. At first, I would approach him here and there for innocent conversation. He did not talk about himself much, he never does, even when asked to; instead he would listen to my attempts at small talk, and then suddenly befuddle me, usually with a personal comment or question, which, along with how comfortably he watched me, quickly had me twirling strands of my hair.
The definitive turning point of my situation came on a Friday afternoon. I was standing outside of the office building after work, under street lights and pretty snowflakes. I was theatrically fiddling with the contents of my purse, killing time, waiting, and accumulating anxiety. And there was no way I was leaving.
"Hey." I heard a familiar voice say to me from the side. I immediately turned towards it, to the tingly wave warming me up in the icy weather.
"Hey." I replied, trying to look serious, but ultimately unable to contain my smile.
Jacob looked at me, assuming his typical posture -- my favourite -- with his chin up, his lips slightly parted, and completely relaxed, like he takes you in completely. He was just so annoyingly sexy; hands in his coat pockets, tall, handsome, reserved, and entirely unwavering. "Want to take a drive?" He asked casually, glancing at my lips.
After licking them, I paused to think for a moment.
What? Take a drive? Where?
... "Yeah."
He turned to walk, and I followed. I had waited outside the office hoping to get some lone time with him after seeing he was preparing to leave work, expecting perhaps the usual short conversation. The titillating tension grew as we traversed the block towards his car, saying nothing to each other. He opened and closed the car door for me, and then drove us away.
"Where are we going?" I eventually wondered out loud, not wanting to reveal my knowing exactly what this was.
He let my question sit for a moment. "Wherever we want."
Interesting,
I thought. "Well, how about... the future?"
He again allowed the silence to build some tension. He always did. "I'll let you know when we're there." He said feigning seriousness, making me giggle.
We resumed the silence, and while his certainty made me more comfortable than anything else could have, I was nervous. I am technically a married woman. My husband and I are growing apart, but he lives in our house, and sleeps in our bed. Jacob is in a similar situation, also technically married, and he has slept with two women in the office building. This proposition had the potential to cause an extreme mess, I knew it, it was all I had been thinking about for the past few months, promising myself I would set limits to our interactions, and ending up breaking them one by one.
He parked by a hotel. My heart was racing. He looked at me with perfect calm, transmitting some of it to me before exiting the car and opening the door for me. We walked right past the reception as he led me to a room he had the key to. We had still not said a word since the short bout of banter in his car. He took my coat off me, making me smile like an idiot; he served us some wine, walked to the other end of the room, turned around, and watched me casually.
I felt the tension build in the silence. He always took his time, and I had gotten generally comfortable with it at this point. This time, however, we were not socializing at the office. I had actually followed him to a hotel. "When did you book the room?" I asked him, questioning his intentions.
He watched me from across the room, with the hint of a smirk on his handsome face, thickening the tension further, making me blush. "I'm glad you came."