The Apple of My Eye

Here I Go Again

Michelle was looking for trouble. And if she was looking for trouble, she'd come to the right place—and all that jazz. She had to find a way to let it be known to me that she had a boyfriend now. So she did. She made sure I overheard her conversation with some of the other girls as they giggled and yakked just outside the open door to my office. It all happened right after I had finished one of our meetings.

"Really, Michelle?"

"What's he like, Michelle?"

"Oh, that's so cool, Michelle!"

"You go, girl!"

Michelle didn't say much. She had attempted to call my attention a few times before by doing much the same thing: pretending to want to keep it down and yet choosing to have her "private" conversations right within earshot of me. The way I see it, if you have a conversation in the workplace, within earshot of your boss, then he is by default a part of that conversation, is he not?

Well, only half her plan worked, however. That is, if indeed she had a plan, and if indeed she intended it to work that way. The half that worked was that I had heard what she wanted me to hear. I knew now. I was aware. The part that had not worked was her scheme to make me jealous. I could not have cared less. In fact, I was relieved to learn that she was moving on. It was about time, too. Maybe now I'd change my mind and not even wish she'd quit the job anymore, provided she'd start behaving like a grownup for a change.

She entered my office only seconds after the little get-together had disbanded. She needed to grab her folder or something. Because she did that every day—everyone on the team had to do that every day as it was in my office that their folders and files were kept—we didn't even need to exchange more than a courteous nod.

Only this time she looked self-conscious. She looked like she was sorry she had gotten herself a boyfriend. Either that or she was sorry I'd heard it. Her eyes were kind of saying to me she wouldn't have done that had I treated her right. I looked at her in a way that my eyes meant to say everything was all right, that I wished her all the best, and that we could go back to being good friends again, no hard feelings. That's what I wanted her to know. I am not sure I managed to convey that message, though, for what transpired the following day was out of this world, absolutely shrivel-me-testes extraordinary.

She arrived early, much earlier than she usually did. It must have been around four or five in the afternoon when she sauntered into my office. In a place that was at its busiest in the evening, this meant things were really slow at this hour. The floor looked practically deserted. I was alone in there, reading emails and shit, when she came in wearing this crazy smile, chewing her indefectible gum, like your archetypal teenage brat. You had to see it: a stunning knockout of a girl, who could stop you from breathing, with a crazy sexy smile on her face.

I sat there staring at her for what felt like ages until I realized she had closed and locked the door behind her. Uh-oh.

Michelle was wearing her gym outfit. She had on a pink tank top, which made her look like a ballerina, and was wearing skin tights. She let her long hair down and flung it from side to side. She had this insane look about her, but I tell you, she'd never looked so damn hot. She looked miraculously hot. And she was able to get more responses from my anatomy than she could calculate from where she was standing.

I barely managed to mumble something along the lines of, "What are you doing?"

But she didn't care to answer. Instead, she asked me, "How do you think I look in this?"

"You look great," I sputtered.

"Well, I can't go talk to clients in these clothes, right?"

She was carrying a plastic shopping bag whose contents she began to produce just as the last words were still sliding out of her very pink lips. She then proceeded to place a pair of black slacks and a silk quilted blouse on my desk.