By Anonymous
The problem is it’s 11:00 p.m., and we are still talking. Or maybe it’s that I’m willing to blow off others just to get coffee with him. Or is it rooted in the hiding we still do? We meet in our building’s lobby. We aren’t dating, but it doesn’t feel like friendship.
When friends ask, I just say that he needs me. I don’t know how to explain why I need him.
“Trouble,” my gut said. “This boy is trouble.”
For a long time, he just wasn’t on my radar. There were guys I eyed at the office. The tall pretty boys—lanky, the way I like them. New to a city and to a job, my body was trying to feel some kind of connection, even just skin on skin. But I knew better. “Six months,” I told myself. “And no one from the office.”
He was about my height with long hair. He was a coworker I never worked with — a combo that kept him out of sight and out of mind.
Then we were both going to the same free music show. We grabbed dinner and chatted. He asked about me without letting his eyes fall away as he waited for a reply. Instead of being conventionally polite, he just looked at me, waiting for my answer.
“Trouble,” my gut said. “This boy is trouble.”
From there, it was a slow boil, as he melted my resistance away. He bought me ice cream at Union Square because I’d had a shitty day. He asked me to coffee just to get out of the office. Slack messages ran from moments to day-long text conversations.
The heat rose higher and higher until I was in his room, wondering if he’d ever kiss me. Then we were, only our skin between us. All my arguments against our romance evaporated.
I don’t want to think about that night or the next morning. I can still feel myself giggling against his beard. He was dedicated, almost worried, about my pleasure. I can still feel my own surprise when he wanted me to stay the night, and the sweetness on Sunday as he watched me shower, making me feel beautiful. Sometimes a workout reminds me of that ache in my thighs and chest.
I don’t regret my choices that night, but it hurts to remember. I hate that it hurts.
There were those first moments of falling. It felt like an addiction. I didn’t care that he was shorter than me and had a man bun. I didn’t even care about our being coworkers. I just wanted to stay between those brown eyes — seen, wanted, known.
For a moment, I was. Once he called me and because, as he said, “We’ve fucked more than we’ve talked on the phone.” And I felt joy curl into my toes.
We opened up to each other. His family, my family, the way our neurons were warped by nature and nurture. We talked office politics and national politics. It was one of the best things about whatever we were: he understood my need for levity and seriousness, and we danced along a range of ideas.
It was more than one night of sex. We used an afternoon of bad internet at the office to go to his place. We walked, without touching, to his place. The door clicked, and our bodies became like magnets.
“Professional,” he joked to me between kisses. “I’m trying to be professional here.”
To continue our collaboration, I took off my dress.
Afterward, we sat quietly, each actually doing work. I remember the snap of computers and his hands on me again. Our clothes stayed on, but we stayed together. “How crazy,” I thought. “The only thing my body needed was to be touching his.”
For a moment it was something beautiful. A playful dance of two people twining together. But it was only a moment.
What happened? It would be easy if I could pin it down, but I’m only half of the story. I had to visit my family for a weekend. When I returned, our schedules didn’t work. When they did, he was distant.
“What are we doing?” he asked me. I told him I just wanted to see where it could go—would go. I didn’t want forever or fidelity. I just wanted to see him outside our office. I just wanted time in his apartment, to relive maybe not the first night but the morning after.
In the end, we hit an impasse. I needed to know I’d see him outside the office. He told me he “couldn’t date right now.”
He liked spending time with me. Fucking me was great. He just couldn’t give me what I wanted. The eyes that once never left mine turned away.
I was relieved we were only on the phone. I didn’t have to hide my tears.
Looking back, we kept having and avoiding the same conversation. Between every line about us he kept asking, “Why me?” None of my answers resolved his doubt.
Should I have asked, “Why not you?”
Should I have asked, “Why not me?”
I couldn’t lose my shit. We worked in the same office. If I’d fuck one coworker, why not others?
My emotions were a clusterfuck cocktail. I was one part sad, one part angry and one part afraid. It didn’t blend well.
I couldn’t lose my shit. We worked in the same office. I would no longer be a woman in the office, but a woman who was sexualized. If I’d fuck one coworker, why not others? Who would take me seriously if they could imagine me in someone’s bed?
I did what I always do: I smiled and pretended to be fine. I kept busy. I’d respond if he reached out. But I wouldn’t sleep with him or try to make plans. I wouldn’t wait for a text. I wouldn’t give the same emotional support.
Friends told me I should’ve been harsher, cutting him out of my life. But they didn’t sit with the fear of dozens of eyes imagining me naked on another’s bed. Worse, I couldn’t explain the thrill of every time he reached out, still needing me. I couldn’t admit he was my weakness.
I am listening to a piece on the Donner party. Suddenly, the body is altered. Rabid, feral, unable to survive any other way. It becomes helpless against its own need. I should’ve known better than to fuck a coworker.
But I can’t take back my steps—time has already begun to bury them.
Two months later, and we have something that looks like friendship. The most touching we do is high-five. Sometimes we get coffee. We bitch about work. We are close because we can’t forget our intimacies.
Sometimes I’m glad that we have something. I get to keep the banter, the levity. He at least knows my history. It takes less work to explain my breaking points. But sometimes all I see is my own sacrifice. When I show him a poem about my mother, he sees only the out-of-date bio beneath. I get tired of the nights I respond quickly and the days he never responds back.
In those moments, I can’t stop asking myself, “Where is the man who was able to hold me with his eyes?”
We are friends. But I don’t feel this about friends—the ache, the longing. It’s the mess between my ribs.
What do I do with this space he’s carved for himself but refuses to fill?
I’m tired for so many women and the spaces we carve for those that hold such power over us.
I knew he was trouble. I didn’t know he’d be trouble like this.
