I usually had the habit of blowing things way out of proportion; I read between the lines, I interpreted a gesture more than I should have. But not this. Here I knew I was way out of my league. So I just enjoyed my massive crush in a harmless way. Passing by her cubicle ever so often, having lunch at the same time she did and popping by periodically to ask for work. I was pretty sure she thought I was stalking her, but at that point I couldn’t have cared less.
Since she had proclaimed me her favourite, we’d been working together quite a bit the past couple of weeks. One Tuesday night we’d been working quite late and were on a break. We went up to the terrace overlooking the city, millions and millions of white lights, cars darting up and down, the odd passerby under the streetlight.
She was smoking, extending her fingers every time she flicked the ashes, and her mouth doing its thing. I’d have given anything to be that cigarette.
“Don’t you have some sort of curfew?” she asked.
“Why would I? I’m working. Do you?”
“When I first got married my husband wanted me to quit. There was a lot of fighting. Slowly he realised, this was how he it was going to be. Shit happens every now and then, but he’s more okay with it.”
So she had a husband. Not for a moment had I imagined I had a chance with her. I wasn’t even sure I did. She was a woman, and that was somewhere I didn’t want to go. But hearing her say it crushed me. In a way I had never imagined it would. Or should.
“Anyway,” she continued. “Why am I telling you this?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
And in a nanosecond she was pushing me up against the wall, her mouth on mine, her tongue searching, probing.
“Maybe the same reason I’m doing this.” she whispered against my mouth.
“Fuck!, fuck!, fuck!”, was all that was I was thinking. “She’s married for fuck’s sake.”
And then she was kissing me again, her hands in my hair, all over me, silencing any further thoughts.