Work had been a nightmare. A she sat on the train heading into Brooklyn, Claire took the time to check in with her aching body, excited for her upcoming massage therapy session. On paper, Sales Specialist at a boutique furniture store didn't seem like it would be a physically demanding job, but six months in Claire found herself stuck with carrying and lifting the furniture to and from their respective displays and storage units. Quietly, she suspected her peers volunteered her for the job because they enjoyed watching her sweat a little, but for the most part they kept their appreciation of her physique to themselves. For the most part. And then there was Alex. He was the worst, and he'd made her day especially awful.
Alex was a senior sales member and, to put it bluntly, he was awful. Claire had long ago gotten used to her body attracting men's attention, no matter what she wore. At work she was stuck with black slacks that clung to the shape of her round behind perfectly, and the standard-issue polo that strained to contain her large chest. Customers and coworkers alike would steal glances at her body when they hoped she wasn't looking, and Claire suspected the outfit helped with her high customer satisfaction rating. Alex was much less subtle.
Her first day on the floor, Alex had asked her out, very much ignoring the wedding ring she tried to casually wave in his face. Undeterred, he insisted she join him for a drink, very obviously looking over her body with a hunger that made her skin crawl. She turned him down, but in the following weeks it became clear he had interpreted the rejection as more of a challenge. Beyond the constant leers, and a few times she could have sworn he'd taken a photo of her as she was bending down, he'd recently started a campaign of casually brushing against her. Alex never crossed into overt sexual harassment, there was always plausible deniability, but he clearly getting a kick out of how much it bothered her. If the company HAD had a half-decent HR department, Claire fantasized that Alex would have been fired long before her arrival.
Today he'd crossed the line, and Claire's blood still boiled thinking about it. First, when she entered the employee locker room, he was in the middle of changing and turned to watch her enter. His undershirt left little to the imagination, his physique clearly something he was proud of. Before Claire could process what he was doing, he "accidentally" let his slacks fall to the floor, revealing an obscene bulge in his boxers. Claire had quickly turned away, but not before registering the monstrous size of his package. He laughed it off, of course, saying "you're welcome" through a shit-eating grin. Not two hours later, in a lull between customers, he pulled her into his lap "as a joke" on one of the showroom chairs. She yelped, drawing a laugh from her other colleagues, and struggled back to her feet, peeling away from him. She could still feel his fingers where they had rested on her sides, and where he'd brushed against the underside of one of her heavy breasts. She had also felt the bulge nestle briefly between her ass cheeks. With her other coworkers nearby and customers coming in, she held off on saying anything and smiled coldly, stepping off the floor to collect herself.
At the end of the day before clocking out, Claire found herself again alone with Alex in the employee locker room. She did her best to imagine he wasn't there, but soon he was towering over her, leaning against the locker next to hers.
"You go to the gym, right? You ever need someone to spot you?" He asked, staring obviously at her ass, "I'm sure we could work up a sweat together."
"I'm not interested, Alex, and when I DO need company my husband is more than enough."
Claire glanced up at him to see how her words had landed. He was smiling.
"Yeah somehow I doubt that. I'd love to give that mouth and throat a workout."
The vulgarity of the comment caught her utterly off guard- he'd always been a creep but this was a new level altogether!
"You fucking jackass! I wouldn't do anything with you in a thousand years and I should get you fired for being so-"
Before she could finish he'd already turned and sauntered off, still smiling. Fuming, Claire grabbed her things and stormed out. What a prick.
On the way to the train station, she considered for the thousandth time telling her husband about Alex's behavior. Her husband was a deeply kind and loving man, but naïve to how so many men saw his voluptuous wife. They had a healthy sex life but the depravity of the world was beyond him- he thought in terms of "making love" where men like Alex "fucked". He was also the sort to resolve issues through well-meaning discourse and she doubted that tactic would work on Alex. Ultimately, even today's outrageous behavior didn't quite justify getting her husband involved, and Claire hoped she could resolve this on her own, once she'd had some time to calm down and make a plan.
The train came to her stop so Claire gathered her things, stood up and got off. The heavy lifting during the day and the encounter with Alex had left iron knots of tension in her neck and shoulders and she was excited for her weekly massage. The physical therapy clinic she went to wasn't ideal- the employees were mostly men, her age or younger, and the establishment had a toxic bro culture she considered utterly juvenile- but it was included in her benefits package, and although the masseuses clearly enjoyed working on her body a bit more than was professionally appropriate, she couldn't deny how skilled they were and how much of a difference the sessions made. Entering through the sliding doors, she was delighted to see Benny at the front desk.
Besides her husband, of course, Benny was the only man in her life she fully trusted. She'd never caught him ogling her, and when she needed someone to quickly vent to he was always willing to listen. He was also the only nice guy at the clinic, and she made an effort to ask him about his life whenever possible.
