I wrinkled my nose at Steven, “What do you mean? He doesn’t glare at me.”
Steven gave me a sympathetic look, “Only you would be so gracious, Janie.”
I put my fork down and stared at Steven, my tone incredulous, “What are you talking about? I’ve learned a lot from him. I’ve found the time to be beneficial.” I felt the need to defend Quinn; I didn’t want Steven thinking Quinn had been rude or done a poor job training me and, therefore, get Quinn in trouble.
“Oh really?” Steven lifted his eyebrows.
“Yes, really.”
Steven pursed his lips and gave me a pointedly disbelieving stare, “I once spent twenty minutes alone with him during a car ride from the airport to the site. During that time he said a total of three words and his face didn’t change expression once- no, wait, that’s wrong-” he held his hands up as though to stop me from interrupting, “he had two expressions: at first he was stoic but then, toward the end of the twenty minutes, his expression changed to apathetic. This is all despite the fact that my conversation was obviously thrilling.”
“Stoic and apathetic are synonymous.” I tried not to laugh, imagining Steven and Quinn alone in a car together for twenty minutes; Quinn glaring at Steven while Steven regaled the silent car with tales of his weekend clubbing exploits and latest furniture purchase.
“Sure, he’s very pretty, I’ll give you that but, you can’t tell me that you don’t think there is something off about him.” Steven looked over both his shoulders in an exaggerated manner then offered in a faux whisper, “Did you know he sometimes joins the security guards downstairs and acts like he is one of them?”
I twisted my lips to the side, debating whether or not to tell Steven that I originally met Quinn when he escorted me out after being laid off from my last position. Instead I said, “Well, isn’t he? Isn’t he one of them?”
Steven studied me for a moment before replying in a very dry tone, “In a small way, yes he is. In a much larger and more correct way, no. No, he is most definitely not.”
“Hm.” I picked up my fork again and poked at my salad, feeling pensive, “Why do you only see him during the client meetings?”
“He doesn’t go to all the client meetings; really, only if there is a problem or if he is vetting new client. Usually he sends Carlos.”
My fork stopped mid-air between my plastic container and my mouth, “Wait-” I could almost hear the clicking and squeaking of the gears in my head, “What do you mean ‘sends Carlos’? Wouldn’t the Boss decide who goes to what meeting?”
Steven blinked at me three times, his eyebrows pulling up so they looked like little umbrellas over his grey eyes, “What nonsense are you speaking? Mr. Sullivan is the Boss.”
Time stopped.
Everything seemed suspended as my brain struggled to accept reality. It was one of those moments you reflect on, later in life, and wonder how your brain could have thought so many thoughts; your heart could have felt so many feelings in the small span of a single second. The only explanation was that time must have stopped.
Quinn is my Boss.
I attempted to think back over the times I’d been with him and looked for clues. I found several. Actually, I found more than several. I wanted to hide my face in my hands and cry but resisted the urge by biting fiercely on my bottom lip.
How could I miss something so obvious?
Quinn’s words from the previous week came back to me: “…you are completely blind to the obvious.”
Really, he was more than just my boss; he was The Boss. He owned the company. He owned a really impressive, profitable company. Any previous balloons of hope I had been floating in my pretend-alternate-reality-carnival-of-dreams were immediately deflated if not brutally burst. This guy who I’d been fantasizing about for going on two months and with whom I thought I was kinda-sorta-maybe dating was not just out of my physical-attractiveness league, he was out of all my leagues.
I was in awkwardly shaped head Neanderthal league and he was in the hot ninja millionaire league.
As a co-worker, Quinn and I were on somewhat equal footing. Even if nothing romantic materialized in the long term, at a minimum I thought we were building a friendship. I hoped we were building a friendship because, blast it all, I really liked him. I thought about him with alarming frequency. He was interesting and good to talked to and I wanted to have a lasting connection.
At least, until this moment, that’s what I thought. The past weekend, the ‘training’ session, the text message jokes, our long conversations- I was becoming more and more comfortable. I thought our time together was leading towards something abiding, more than co-workers.