Rose didn't know she was going to slap Monica until it happened. She was just standing there in the locker room, peeling off her soaking wet jumpsuit and feeling the harsh industrial soap against her raw, reddened skin and listening with impotent fury as the bleach-blonde bitch who never seemed to have to get her hands dirty said, "Oh, Mister Fudderman says he needs someone to cover Saturday night--you're not doing anything, are you?" And suddenly she was watching herself leave a full-on handprint against Monica's ivory cheek, Will Smith-style. It was the closest she'd ever come to having an out-of-body experience. The room filled with silence for a long moment as she struggled to figure out if it really happened, or if it was just another one of her recurring daydreams.
But the stony look on Monica's face told her it was real. Which meant Rose had probably just lost her job--she already knew management played favorites around here, that was the whole reason why Monica got to flounce up to the boss's office and make sad little puppy-dog eyes and get someone else to take her Saturday night shift in the first place. If Monica decided to tell Mister Fudderman that Rose had physically assaulted another employee, especially if that employee was Monica herself, Rose would be escorted off the premises before she could even finish cleaning out her locker. And the vindictive little shit would probably make sure she couldn't even list the car wash on her next job application to boot.
All of which caught up with Rose's stunned brain while her mouth was still feebly flapping away with a mumbled, "I--I'm sorry, I don't know what--I've never done anything like--I don't know what I was thinking, I just, just, just...." She finally trailed into uncomfortable silence before collecting her thoughts into a single apology. "I'm sorry," she murmured contritely, looking down at Monica's shoes. "That was completely uncalled for." Even as she said it, she knew that wasn't going to be the end of it.
And sure enough, Monica fixed her with a smug, triumphant little smirk that told Rose she knew she had the chubby brunette exactly where she wanted her. "Do you have a problem with me?" she asked, sounding for all the world like a high-priced lawyer closing in for the kill during cross-examination. "Go on, say whatever you need to. Get it out of your system. I think we'll both feel better once we've cleared the air." The low, sensual menace in her voice told Rose that it wasn't a request.
Rose swallowed hard. "It's just, well... it's, um, frustrating sometimes. I, I mean you, I mean...." She wished this hadn't happened right as she was letting her sodden jumpsuit fall to the floor--Monica's contemptuous gaze made her feel incredibly vulnerable in just her bra and panties, but at the same time she couldn't imagine reaching into her locker and pulling on her clothes while she talked. Her feet seemed to be rooted to the spot by Monica's stare, and all she could do was fumble her way through the conversation despite the cold conviction that she was only digging herself deeper in with every word.
"It feels like Mister Fudderman--I mean, not that he's not a great boss," Rose interrupted herself to add, knowing there was at least an eighty percent chance that anything she said to Monica would go straight back to the petty tyrant who watched them all from the window of his second-floor office and made their lives a living hell eight hours at a time. "But sometimes it feels like he has kind of a, um, a preference for you. When making schedules. And setting duties. And, um, and enforcing some of the rules, and, and, and... and you always get your fucking way about fucking everything, goddammit!" Shit. There she went again. There was no way she was going to get out of this with a job--at this rate, she'd be lucky if Monica didn't pop her one and call it self-defense. Rose was easily a head shorter and had no muscle tone, she knew she'd get her ass kicked if this actually came to a fight.
But although Monica stepped in uncomfortably close to Rose's nearly naked body, it didn't feel threatening. Not exactly. It fell into that subtle gray area between overwhelming and intimidating, an assertion of her presence and her dominance that made Rose want to back up and at the same time left her more rooted in place than ever. "Is that what's wrong?" the taller woman asked, angling her stare so that Rose had to look almost directly up to meet her cloud-colored eyes. "You wish you had the boss wrapped around your little finger the same way I do? I could give you some pointers if you'd like. He's a real pushover once you know what motivates him."
Rose suspected she already knew what motivated him--this place practically ran on gossip and innuendo, and she'd heard more rumors about what Monica did to keep her position at the top of the pecking order than she could count. But she needed to get back into the blonde's goodwill, and suggesting that she sucked off the boss on her lunch breaks every day didn't seem like a good way to go about it. "Um, uh, sure, that sounds... yeah!" she mumbled, embarrassed by the wheedling sycophancy in her voice but not so embarrassed that she was about to stop.
Monica chuckled. "The thing you need to understand," she said, putting her hand on the lockers and leaning in so close Rose could feel the warmth of her breath against her damp, chilly skin, "is that everyone has certain basic, primal drives that they need to satisfy. Some people might think they're too good for that, too prim and proper and dignified, but when you scratch the surface I guarantee you there's a needy little bitch underneath. All you have to do is make them admit it, and they'll be yours forever."
Rose blushed. This was the part of the social game she was always bad at, even with the women she otherwise got along with pretty well. Every time the conversation got a little bit bawdy, she always flushed deep red and retreated into herself and hoped they didn't think she was being judgy when she really just didn't know how to cope with sex talk given her... her lack of experience. An entire childhood of being made fun of for her weight had left her uncomfortably certain that any guy who expressed interest in her was just setting her up for a later humiliation, and she'd never been able to get past it well enough to engage with that kind of playfully adult banter.
But there was nowhere to hide right now, literally or figuratively. "Now I know what you're thinking," Monica continued, her body obliterating Rose's concept of personal space. "But it's not just about having sex. You have sex right away with someone who wants you, they start thinking of you as a commodity they can tap whenever they're in the mood. You have to convince them that you're their everything--not just unattainable, that's easy, but the ultimate expression of everything they desire."
