goes on for another seven minutes. If I head to the elevator now, I can get up to the glass office with only a couple minutes to go, and then—
I am so nervous. I have to admit that.
I put his lunch on a tray—nothing fancy, it’s not like a silver tray or anything, just a plastic one from the kitchen—and as I’m headed to the elevator, I can’t help notice that people are looking at me. Do they know? To them, to the long-established employees of the company, I must be an interloper, a man with almost no experience who had one of the most prized jobs available.
Again that sense of different worlds. I don’t belong here.
It’s true.
For all that I hate Jimi and the club, for all that I felt like I deserved better, I guess I didn’t deserve better. People get what they get, you know? Serving drinks to rich guys who would totally ignore me and my scars, while they gushed over the beauty of prettier men…that’s my world. That’s where I belong. The kind of place that grinds you down.
Oh, wait, here I am, serving lunch to a rich guy who might end up actually ignoring me if someone better and more interesting and wealthier comes along…
I’m sighing as I enter the elevator. Apparently I’ll be having anxiety for lunch.
The doors slide open, and I have to blink—there’s not a cloud in the sky, it’s just after noon, and the glass room is practically glowing. There’s a tint to the walls at least that keeps you from being blinded, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling dazzled.
The men Colby has been meeting with are feeling it too. They’re all shaking hands and laughing, but I have to note that they all look down at their feet, making sure they’re not about to plummet to the courtyard eight hundred feet below.
“Have a good day, gentlemen,” says Colby, walking them to the elevator. He gives me a curt nod…then, once he is behind the rest of the group and cannot be seen, a wink.
I blush and look away, setting the tray on the conference table.
When he returns, he studies the tray. “Just me? You didn’t get anything for yourself?”
“I’m…working? Remember how I have a job?”
A chuckle. “Yes, but I’m your boss, and I say you should eat. We had to rush back to town without breakfast this morning.”
I just shake my head. “I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll grab a muffin downstairs.”
There must be something in my tone I don’t realize is there, because he looks at me.
“Finn.”
I look away, but the problem with the glass room is, there’s nowhere to look, everything is either open sky or the earth far below you, it’s like you’re hanging in midair…and for all my bravado when I first entered the room for my job interview, today I find it disconcerting and scary.
“Finn.”
“I’m right here.”
His fingers curl beneath my chin, and tilt my head up. His dark eyes, usually so good at hiding any trace of emotion, seem deep with feeling right now. “You want to talk to me? Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I tell him. “What are we doing? Last night, what was that?”
“Are you… Are you upset about last night? We don’t have to do that anymore, look, if it makes you uncomfortable—”
I shake my head, suddenly feeling adrift, lost at sea, at the notion that our affair would come to such an abrupt end. “No, that’s really not what I mean.”
“Is it the Jimi thing? Help me understand. I’m no good at stuff like this, Finn, you know that about me. I’m great at bossing people around and telling them what to do, but all the mushy stuff? I never know how the mushy stuff works.”
My grin is supposed to be kind of wry and clever, but it must be sad from the way he looks at me. “I wish you could boss me around on this. Tell me what to do, Colby. Tell me what you want. What you actually, really want, deep down. Not just on the surface, not just whatever you have a taste for at this minute. What do you want?”
It’s as close as I can get to asking him where we stand, and I know it’s an unfair question, because it’s one I haven’t answered in my own heart yet.
It’s so confusing, to want something, yet not to know if you’re allowed to want that thing,