Overtime 29

Adrian was far from the worst boss Aisha had experienced since getting her paralegal license. There were the lecherous lawyers, the charlatan lawyers, the sneaky ones who delegated and left for Cancun for two months. The worst were the angry lawyers. The fastest way to calm them was to eat shit, and nothing irked Aisha more than taking the blame when she had done nothing wrong. She had been humiliated many times over someone else's mistake, just never by Adrian, so she was surprised to open her mailbox on a quiet Thursday morning to an email marked with a red exclamation point:

Aisha,

Please serve the above-mentioned statement of claim IMMEDIATELY. This is an entire month late. As senior tort clerk you should be on top of all service deadlines so that basic filings like these do not fall through the cracks.

Adrian

Heart racing, Aisha skimmed the forwarded email chain in which defense counsel was threatening to dismiss the claim, then flicked through her meticulously organized notebook to find her file summary for the client named in the email subject line. The name wasn't ringing any bells. Then she remembered - wasn't this one of the files she had received only yesterday from Tanya, the latest paralegal to quit? Aisha's notes confirmed that she had only just inherited the file. Whew. As her breathing slowed and her heart rate calmed, she reread Adrian's email with indignation.

She hadn't noticed at first, but eight people were cc'd - Adrian's entire team, Victoria the office manager, Sal the other office manager, even Alex's articling student, Faisal. Aisha felt blood rush to her face as she remembered staying late with Adrian earlier in the week to help him prepare for a mediation he had underestimated. It wasn't the first time either. Adrian was a talented lawyer, but he had a tendency to take on too many files in his efforts to maintain his spot as top earner among the associates. Aisha was both overqualified and damn good at her job, and when his ambition left him overextended, she cleaned up the messes.

Still running on adrenaline, Aisha hit reply (suppressing the urge to hit reply all) and wrote:

Dear Adrian,

I inherited this file from Tanya yesterday and have not yet had time to review it. Given that two nights ago I was here until midnight compensating for your incompetence, as I have done countless times over the past months, kindly speak to me with more respect.

Aisha

Aisha reread her email in satisfaction a few times before deleting it. Part of her really wanted to send it. She knew she could get away with it--she was one of the best paralegals they had, and with the high turnover lately, she knew the firm could not afford to lose another. Adrian might even apologize. But it just wasn't worth the awkwardness. Besides, she liked to keep the high ground.

Dear Adrian,

I received this file from Tanya only yesterday, and as such have not yet reviewed it. I will correct this error ASAP.

Aisha

There, better. This time she made sure to reply all. Let everyone see that Adrian had gotten worked up without knowing what was going on. Typical asshole lawyer.

Even though the filing would only take her a few minutes, Aisha opted to make herself another coffee before starting. She knew she wouldn't be able to focus until she had calmed down.

Standing and waiting for the Keurig in the storage room down the hall from her office -- she had it practically all to herself because few people still worked in person since the pandemic -- Aisha stewed in anger. She was used to lawyers, their arrogance and entitlement, but Adrian? She felt silly for it now, but she had kind of liked him. He was a young father of three and always talked about his kids. Between the dad thing and wide-set brown eyes, which made him look vulnerable when he took off his glasses, she had felt something warm and real about him, at least by contrast with the others. Despite being the top earning associate, his ambition rarely came through in how he treated people. He carried himself confidently and could be demanding, sure, but he always thanked Aisha profusely for working late and kept in mind that they were nearly the same age. He liked to joke that Aisha was the one in charge because she controlled his schedule. Once when she poked her head in his office to remind him of a meeting, he said: 'You know you could make up anything, I'd believe it? You could send me to court on a motion for a file that doesn't exist, and I'd go, no questions asked."

Adrian had even let his guard down a few times when they were working late together and shared real thoughts: how he sometimes wondered if he would be happier if he had become a gym teacher like he originally planned, how the long hours were straining his marriage, even his complaints about Ryan, the openly narcissistic manchild who owned the firm.

So now... where did he get off pulling rank like that?

As she stood wondering and waiting for her coffee to drip, Adrian came through the door of the tiny storage room turned coffee room. He looked like shit. The bags under his eyes were deeper and darker than usual, and he needed a shave.

"Hi," Aisha said, feeling caught in the act because she had just been thinking of him.

"Don't you work from home Thursdays anymore?"

"Not anymore. I'll be in every day."

"Oh, since when?"

"Since today."

Aisha recalled a conversation from a couple of weeks ago about how Adrian was trying to work less and spend more time with his family, and wondered what was up. Had he fought with his wife again?

"Okay, good to know. I'll update your calendar and booking preferences as soon as I'm done sending that statement of claim."

"About that -- I know I fucked up. I should have taken a breather before sending that. I don't like to make excuses, but it's been a rough week."

Caught off guard, Aisha defaulted to embarrassment.

"Don't mention it," she said, adjusting the settings on the Keurig to avoid meeting his eyes. "You had no way of knowing that it wasn't my file."

"It doesn't matter whose it was. You deserve more respect than that. You're the hardest working and most competent paralegal on my team, if not at this firm. I mean, case in point, I wanted to talk to you and here you are. I haven't seen a single other person on your floor since the work-from-home option started."

"I'm not, but thank you," said Aisha, still avoiding his eyes to hide her discomfort. Why was it that she craved recognition, worked hard for it, but then when the praise finally came, she never knew what to do with it? "Do you want a coffee? I have the Keurig heating up anyway."

"I should be making your coffee."

Aisha met his eyes then and smiled. She could feel Adrian's relief as he smiled back. He really does have puppy dog eyes, she thought. For a moment he wasn't her boss, he was just a man who was sorry for hurting her. It was cute.

"If it makes you feel better, bring me a coffee tomorrow. These pods are shit.

Anyway, talk later, I have to go file that claim."

Taking her coffee and sending a borderline flirtatious smile over her shoulder as she brushed past him, Aisha went back to her desk. She could feel his eyes still on her until she rounded the bend in the hall.

As she filed the claim on autopilot, Aisha wondered what the hell had just happened. It wasn't so much what was said, though an apology from a lawyer is rarer than a double eclipse, but the intensity behind it. Adrian's office was on the eighth floor, which meant he had ridden the elevator just to speak to her... wasn't that what any decent person would do? Maybe, but it sure wasn't what she'd expected.

Did he want to fuck her?

Did she want to fuck him?

Admittedly, today was not the first time she had found him cute. It wasn't the sort of thing she felt good about or would admit to anyone -- not because he was her boss, but because she thought of all lawyers as a necessary evil. The longer she worked for them, the more they blurred together. In the beginning, she had hoped that someone would be different, a kind person at heart, maybe even a mentor. Seven years later, she saw only a revolving door of expensive haircuts, over-the-top watches, perfect teeth, and shitty attitudes which she no longer bothered to differentiate. Except Adrian from time to time.

Her teenaged habit of choosing a boy to crush on in every class had never quite died, and now her job was a hundred times duller than school had been. Whenever Adrian was kind to her, a part of her perked up in spite of herself. Aisha knew that he probably only praised her because he had read in some management book that you catch more flies with honey. Or maybe he had picked up on the way Justin, one of the junior lawyers, flirted with all of the clerks and managed to delegate half his work away.

Adrian wasn't beautiful like Justin, who had the body of a former college athlete and the uncannily perfect features of a Calvin Klein model. He was average, or even slightly above average, but below average for a downtown Toronto lawyer. Medium height and stocky, starting to bald prematurely, he was the sort of man whose money did most of the impressing, but for Aisha it was all in the details: those eyes, his big hands, his left-sided dimple without a partner. She was a sucker for asymmetrical dimples.

Most of all, she was a sucker for anything forbidden. She always fantasized about fucking her boyfriend's friends no matter how much she liked her boyfriends. The idea that her married boss wanted her was so much her type of thing that she couldn't help being vigilant for hints that it could be true. When her repetitive work was only engaging enough to occupy half her mind, which was pretty much always, she drifted through various scenarios and occasionally landed on him. Wasn't the favoritism he showed her just a little inappropriate? Didn't he look at her too long or too often sometimes?

What would happen if she kissed him? She could easily imagine how it would happen: one night after working late together, he would offer her a ride home as usual, and she would flirt with him in the car instead of making small talk like she normally did, and then they would sit in the car in front of her house, still flirting, and then she would kiss him. In her fantasies she was brave, so she imagined how delicious it would be to lean in slowly, milking the tension of the moment until his wide eyes registered surprise and then anticipation.

She couldn't picture fucking him, though. He was too inscrutable. Even at his least professional, when everyone was gone and his jacket was off and he risked a sarcastic comment here and there, normally about Ryan, still she could sense that he was restraining himself. The mask might slip an inch, but it was never off. Aisha could not even imagine him relaxing, let alone cumming.

These were the thoughts that distracted Aisha for the rest of the day as she worked. Then, at 6:00 PM, just as she was about to close her laptop, an email from Ryan seeing if anyone was still in the office and able to hunt through an old paper file, and Adrian replying to say he could. She waited for the email asking for her help, but it never came. That was a first. Another first.

Aisha pictured Adrian in his corner office on the eighth floor, his jacket slung over the back of his chair, his shirt partly undone, slumped over his desk typing with a cold coffee beside him. He always made a point of standing or sitting straight when other lawyers were around, but in the evenings he worked like a college student.

Aisha's phone buzzed with a message from a man she was supposed to meet in a couple of hours, a 6'2 -- or so he claimed -- elementary school teacher and single dad. Aisha had felt a twinge of enthusiasm while flicking through pictures of him making silly faces at kids.

Still on for tonight?

Actually I can't anymore, sorry. I just found out I have to work late. Raincheck?

--

As Aisha rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, she wondered for a moment if she had been manipulated. Fucking men, fucking apologies, she thought. They shouldn't be getting extra credit just for admitting to screwing up. And yet, undeniably, she was looking forward to the relief on Adrian's face when she showed up to help. She gave herself a once-over in the elevator mirrors: her blonde hair swooped into a low bun, her eye makeup still mostly in place, her blouse and pencil skirt subtly drawing attention to her full breasts and thighs. Aisha would never be satisfied with her appearance, but nothing was jumping out at her as a problem, and for the moment that was good enough.

When she knocked on Adrian's half-open door, he wasn't hunched over his computer typing up a storm like she'd pictured him. She didn't see him at all at first, then realized he was sitting on the floor behind his desk.

"Adrian?"

No answer, so she walked around the desk.

Adrian was in a state. A sheen of sweat covered his face, his shirt and hair were sticking to him, and he was hyperventilating out of control. It took Aisha several long and awkward moments to decide what to say.

"Do you want me to go?" she finally asked.

"I'm sorry you're seeing this," he answered in a strained voice. He wouldn't look at her.

Aisha felt a swell of affection for him. This was familiar territory for her. She sat down next to him and put her hand on his shoulder, not speaking until his breathing had calmed somewhat.

"Did you know I nearly got fired my first year here?" she said, tentatively stroking his shoulder through his sweat-stained shirt. "I couldn't keep my files straight. I'd miss deadlines. I can't tell you how many times I hid in the supply closet and cried -- that was before we got the Keurig. It used to be my favorite place in the office."

As she spoke, Aisha could feel Adrian's breathing slow, so she kept going.

"One time, I was a mess, just openly crying, and who do you think came in? Fucking Seamus."

"I thought you were going to say Anita."

Anita was Ryan's overworked right-hand woman. She had the worst job at the firm, and it showed.

"God no. Thankfully she didn't work here yet. Anyway, he didn't say anything. He raised his eyebrows in that sarcastic way he does, that was it. He left without saying a word to me. I was scared he'd tell somebody, but he never brought it up until his retirement party. When I went up to say goodbye, he said, 'You know, when I saw you crying in that closet, I didn't think you'd last four months. You surprised me.' Best compliment I've ever had from a lawyer."

"Bit backhanded, no?"

"Sure, but that's the only kind lawyers have it in them to give."

Adrian laughed at that, and Aisha relaxed, knowing the hard part was over.

"I've never given you a sarcastic compliment."

"That's why you make me suspicious."

Adrian laughed again, shaking his head.

"So," said Aisha, "Do you want to tell me why we're sitting on the floor? Is something wrong with Ryan's file?"

"No, nothing to do with that." Adrian took a long pause as though confessing a shameful secret. "I lost the discovery transcripts for the Lang mediation.'

"That's all? We ordered them once. We can order them again."

"It's tomorrow. And we already rescheduled once."

"Okay. Did you delete the file? Should be backed up on the m/Drive, no?"

"I don't think I remembered to scan it into the system. I'm a fucking idiot."

"Can we get them from defense?"

"We can ask, but they'll pretend they never got the email."

"Can we come up with an excuse to delay again?"

"Yeah, maybe. If absolutely necessary."

"Do you remember where you last saw them?"

"On my desk, right here." He gestured to the black file organizer on the upper-right corner of his desk.

"Then I know exactly where they are! Upper-left means 'leave', upper-right is 'file'. It's been like that for a month. Don't you read Ryan's emails?"

Without waiting for a response, Aisha jumped to her feet. It was rare that she got to be the hero. She practically ran down the hall to the filing room and found the missing transcripts in the stacks waiting to be filed. They were near the top.

As she was flipping through the pages, making sure there weren't any missing, she heard Adrian come in behind her.

"I think I got it - Lang v Wilkinson, right?" She waved the papers in his face triumphantly, unable to restrain her excitement.

Adrian shook his head in disbelief.

"Now we just need to sort out Ryan's file," said Aisha. "It's probably right here." She was buzzing as she started searching for the other file, certain she would find it just as easily.

"We don't need to do anything. You need to go home."

"It'll only take me a minute," said Aisha, not looking up from the stacks.

"Aisha, stop."

Something in his tone made her turn and look at him. It was then that she noticed he was standing too close to her.

"After how I treated you this morning, and after all you've done, I can't let you stay any later. Go. I'll find the other file."

"Look, about earlier, it's really not a big deal." Just like in the coffee room, she found herself avoiding his eyes.

"Aisha, go. I'm serious."

"Fine."

When Aisha went to hand him the file, Adrian grabbed her wrist and pulled her into him. Before she could react, he was kissing her, his other arm around her waist, his big hand pressing into the small of her back. She stiffened at first, but without consciously making a decision, she ended up kissing back.

He knew what he was doing. It was one of the nicer first kisses of Aisha's life, tender and firm, with Adrian leading so that she was along for the ride, free to enjoy it.

After a few long moments, he pulled away and took the file folder out of her hand. She stared at him, expecting an explanation, but he only stared back. The tension was too much for Aisha. She turned away and wordlessly left the room.

As soon as she was out of sight, she practically ran down the hall to the elevator. For an agonizing minute, she waited for it to get to her floor, wondering if he would come after her.

He didn't.

--

A week later, Aisha was at work late again finishing a mediation memo, and she was blocked. She was trying to reconcile diagnoses from three separate doctors, but they just weren't saying the same thing. She found memo writing procrastination-inducing at the best of times, but ever since her strange encounter with Adrian, her focus was at an all-time low. The kiss had seemed so out of nowhere that she was still at a loss to interpret it.

I must have invited it somehow, she thought for the hundredth time. But how? What the hell did I do?

Once again Aisha fell headlong into her thoughts, forever the schoolgirl staring at the back of a boy's head instead of listening to her teacher. For what must have been the tenth time that day, she ran through the entire scenario like she would with a client, scanning for incriminating details while she did her best not to revel in that storybook perfect kiss.

She had wanted him secretly for a while -- did he somehow figure it out, even though she had never dropped hints? Did he read between the lines when she came to help without being asked, when she sat on the floor with him, when she slipped into people-pleasing mode and solved his problem, again without being asked?

All this could be explained away as the diligence of a good employee. If she had paused to ask herself what was motivating her to stay late when she didn't have to, she would have told herself it was because she was up for a promotion. An excuse plausible enough to fool herself should be more than enough to fool a man.

Her only real mistake was kissing back. Aisha wasn't sure how it had happened, but the minute Adrian began touching her, her normally constant mental chatter had slowed to nothing. Her memory had already reduced it to a fever dream, fuzzy around the edges, details which she secretly would have liked to savor blurring into a general melting feeling.