Normally, I might have been persuaded to spend the rest of the night with someone like Taylor, a bottle blonde who was pretty enough, though her attraction was strictly skin-deep. This time, however, after some sweaty rumblings on the dance floor, and numerous additional beverages, I was close to collapse. I didn't normally drink this much, but even so, as I brushed up against Taylor, I still had this burning feeling deep down that I should not be doing this. With the room spinning around my head, however, I couldn't entirely remember why.
When Taylor finally led me away from the dance floor towards the exit, jabbering at me about hunting down a taxi, going back to her place or my place or wherever the heck I wanted so long as there was a mattress, I probably could have been led anywhere and would have happily gone along with it. Only, I just happened to put my hands in my pockets, and in one of them I found a little scrap of cloth that brought back my memory in sharp relief.
Zoey Schoenberg's underwear, no less.
Realizing in a flash what it was, an implosion of intense heat sparked inside my chest. Here was physical confirmation that what had happened earlier that evening had been no figment of my imagination. It was real.
In the relative safety of a darkened hallway, I balled up the panties and pressed them to my nose, inhaling the wicked scent of my vice president's pussy.
It was as real as real could be.
Taylor looked back to check I was following her, and I managed to make the underwear appear to be nothing more than some kind of handkerchief to dab at the perspiration on my forehead. But I was rapidly sobering up now.
Zoey's words whirled around my thoughts: "...I think it's only right you should compensate me…"
"…You're mine now, Jones… Better get used to it…"
As my erstwhile dance partner clambered into the taxi for the drive back to her grubby little place in Harlem Park, I was nowhere to be found. I did hear her shriek of fury at my disappearing act, though, before her transport whisked her away, no doubt soon to make a full U-turn to return to the club and a search for either me or a replacement sleeping companion.
I spent the rest of the night alone, heading back to our apartment up in the suburbs to the north, and was asleep even before Robin returned.
*
Saturday, I woke up with a slight hangover that a glass of juice and plate of eggs dealt with quite nicely, thank you very much. Yet I also felt an underlying sense of unease that wasn't going to let up for all the eggs in IHOP.
I was nervous - really nervous. What was that about?
Trembling a little as I sat at the table eating breakfast, my breathing was rapid and shallow, my heart beating a ragged pace inside my chest. After such an intense few hours the previous day, I knew what terrified me - but it just seemed bizarre to me. Most of all, I was afraid that when I got back to the office on Monday, everything would be back to normal, with my run-in with the boss forgotten.
Somehow, even worse than the paranoid fear I would be a laughing stock in the office was the gut-wrenching terror that I'd never again taste that intense bliss of connection with my beautiful boss.
Over my solitary breakfast, I found myself quivering like a teenage boy after his first kiss. Questions flew around my head that belonged in teenage glossy magazines - was I supposed to call Zoey this weekend? What did it all mean? Were we now dating? Did she even like me? What if she rejected me from now on? What if she told my co-workers what a pathetic sap I was, folding at the first threat to my job.
Bottom line, I suddenly felt so incredibly vulnerable. Zoey was now in the position to inflict serious pain on me - and do so with minimal effort. She could simply close up shop, refuse to see me again. And I'd deserve any pain she cared to dish out.
Jesus, was this how girls felt after I ditched them after a one night stand?
After seeming so into my dates during the course of an evening, I'd normally be out the door before the sun so much as showed its face. Did they feel this awful after I was gone? I hoped not, but felt curiously, horribly enlightened.
Zoey was my ghost of Christmas past, present and future all rolled into one.
"You just back now?" Robin asked as he stumbled out about 8am.
"No - I was home. Got back last night," I said. "And how did you get on?"
Robin cocked his head, ignored my question. "But you did go off with Taylor?"
"Gave her the slip on the way out," I shrugged.
"Thought she was one of your go-tos."
A sigh. "Used to be."
"And now you're giving her the slip?" Robin chuckled, shook his head.
"When we're together... she just lies there…" I found myself blushing, something I don't think I'd ever done in front of another guy.