Submitting to Her(11)

"You all right, Aide?" Robin seemed to take a second look at me, noticing something about me. "You're shaking like a dope fiend in a police cell."

I stared down at my empty plate, mumbled: "Drank more than I thought last night, huh."

Robin just stood there, looking at me. Then finally he said: "You're an enigma, Aide."

"Thanks."

"A riddle wrapped in a mystery - "

"You calling me a Twinkie?"

The rest of the weekend I was feeling progressively worse and worse. Time dragged - insanely - and yet with every snail-pace second, I somehow felt I was getting further and further away from any chance of being with Zoey again, in any other capacity than work.

I kept myself to myself as much as possible - I couldn't talk to anyone about any of this, even Robin, and I could talk to Robin about most things. If there was a lump on my balls, I could probably talk to Robin about it. After that Saturday morning, the cover story about a continuing hangover was not going to cut the mustard. I just kept to myself.

Sunday morning, I was still shaking. What if she'd done all that just to hurt me back? Sure, she'd succeeded, and sure, I deserved it. Had she even enjoyed our time together that afternoon? Had she now lost all respect for me as a human being? Was she going to use what happened to undermine my relationship with the rest of the team, to bond with them herself?

I went to the gym, kept my focus on the exercise for once, didn't even look at any of the girls on the running machines or the ellipticals or the yoga mats, let alone hit on them.

"Hey, Aide, you trying to get into the military or something?"

It was Kimberli-with-two-'i's, a curly-haired blonde I usually felt safe checking out whenever she was here. She'd been engaged to some rich dentist down in Guilford for a year or so, and that had always been solid enough that our shameless flirting always came across as vaguely platonic.

"Hey, Kim. How's it going?"

"Why the long face, Daddy-o?"

She was wearing the usual teeny little skin-tight top that showed off her cleavage to masterful effect, and the kind of painted-on lycra boy shorts that could provide a full commentary on the state of her pubic grooming. For my benefit, she was doing a post-exercise stretch that just happened to arch her back and jut out her breasts as she stood there.

"Oh, you know. Heavy night last night," I said, the hangover story still carrying weight with her, since she hadn't been around the day before.

She nodded, the glint in her eye seemingly glad I hadn't lost my party-hound reputation.

"So, Jerry and I… well, we called time on it all," she said, all a little casual for a life-changing decision like ending marriage plans.

"That so? Sorry to hear it," I said, trying to sound concerned but not interested, and judging by the response from Kim, failing with the latter. "How you bearing up?"

"Oh, you know," she said, a note of faux-melancholy turning to instant cheer as she added: "So you want to grab a coffee some time? Maybe a drink?"

I smiled, thinking that after all this time of her teasing me, showing me the goods with the firm knowledge that only Jerry-the-dentist could ever have them, now they were available, I wasn't.

"Sounds good," I said, not wanting to completely shoot her down, considering her sad, sad situation. "Why don't I give you a call sometime?"

"Great, you do that!"

She slipped me a little piece of paper, which presumably had her phone number on it, though I didn't bother to open it up. Where had she been keeping that while she'd been working out?

A final little: "See ya," and she was wiggling her hips as she returned to the locker room, giving me one last shop-window on what my promised phone call could get me.

Oh, I knew that phone call was not going to happen, but it felt funny I couldn't just come out and say I was with someone. Was I with someone? I wasn't sure how true that was, what I actually had with Zoey. And was I stupid to have this little pang inside me that thought somehow if I told anyone I was in a relationship right then, I'd jinx it?

Kim was sweet enough. Perhaps I would have given her a call in normal circumstances, though that might have risked subsequent awkward moments in the gym after I skipped out after our date.

The rest of the Sunday, my thoughts kept turning back to my afternoon run-in with Ms Zoey Schoenberg. I kept battling with my thoughts, wavering between the doubt that any of it had happened at all to the horror that Zoey now thought me a fool, someone to scorn and deride and, worst of all, ignore.

I had her stolen underwear as proof that it had happened - but every time I came back to them, pulling them out from under my mattress, it just made me throb between the thighs, and made it difficult to keep my promise about avoiding any fooling around down there.