A Spark

A spark, a flame that ignited in one day- it caused a stir and there you were.

This is the story of a 30-something black female professional who finds herself physically attracted to her older white male co-worker.

*****

I am not a conventional beauty. I'd like to say that my mind is far more remarkable than my looks are. I'm a few inches above average height, with medium length dark hair, dark eyes, and mocha caramel skin. I have a curvy shape- large hips and a round behind topped off with an ample chest. I wouldn't call myself fat, but I'm not exactly an athlete.

It all started one day while I was at work. I'm a office co-ordinator in a large corporate facility that deals with human resources decisions from smaller offices across our region. We service and push out decisions regarding customer service complaints and other internal issues for our 50 locations. I report to a manager who reports to another manager, who reports to a divisional manager, and so on. It's your basic corporate entity with a thousand faces and titles no one ever needs to remember or keep track of. All anyone needs to remember is who their boss is, and to never park their car in the wrong spot.

My manager called a meeting one morning, about six months ago in the boardroom of our workspace. Patricia was a shot woman- possibly what one would aptly refer to as "stout" because she barely cleared five foot five. Her short light brown hair had the shine of a person who had weekly appointments at a salon, although the style of frames she wore on her glasses and unruly eyebrows suggested that she was not one to be preoccupied with appearance and style. I had assumed she was a person who cared what others thought, but only a bit.

"Sam, we have a bit of a snafu." Pat began as the meeting commenced. I knew something was definitely off due to the lack of other attendees at this meeting. The only other person there was Patricia's manager, a suit from the 11th floor named Brad. "We have had an..."Issue" at one of our locations that will require some intense monitoring. There is some suggestion that an employee may have been systematically misappropriating budgets, as well as practising unfair hiring practices for staff."

"Alright," I said following along perfectly. "We can just start audit reports and-"

"We can't exactly do that" Brad interrupted. "The problem is that the location is one that both Pat and I frequent regularly. As the immediate superiors who would be in charge of investigating these allegations, we already have a conflict."

"Not to mention that the person at the root of these allegations is an esteemed member of the local community, and coach of my son's football league" added Pat.

"So...you want me to lead this investigation?" I began to ask with some excitement. There was some rumour of a promotion a few months before, and even though I was only an office co-ordinator, I had the experience as well as the hunger to jump to the next level.

"Not exactly. We want you to be involved for two reasons" Brad explained. "Firstly, because you don't live nearby, so there is no real conflict. Therefore, our office can be in charge of the investigation while still keeping an arms-length approach to the situation. Secondly, and most important for you, you could really use this experience for the future. Perhaps if and when a management position becomes available."

As soon as I heard the word management my ears began to burn. In hindsight, I should have thought about this offer a bit more thoroughly.

"Yes! I will do this project for you. Who will I work with?" I asked eagerly.

"We're bringing in someone from another region to work with you on this. You two will have two weeks in one of the offices on the 11th floor to get the investigation completed." Informed Pat. "We want the report closed within a month."

Monday morning I bounced into work, in an eager, happy and excited mood. I trotted so intensely on the pavement that my calves burned by the time I passed through building security. I skipped my usual floor and headed straight to my new, although temporary digs, on the 11th floor. I had thought briefly last night about who my partner may be. As Pat's office co-ordinator for the past two years I had enjoyed some funny and polite banter with some of the other managers from other regions. I imagined a petite blonde who would be a bit older than me- someone who could perhaps be a cool acquaintance or friend after all of this was over. After my last breakup, my ex got custody of all our good friends, so I was a bit lonely away from work. As I entered the room assigned to me and my mystery new partner I saw a taller figure with their back to be.

"Knock, knock," I said as I tip toed into the room past the slightly open door. "I'm Samantha King, here for the investigation."

The figure immediately turned around as if startled at the sound of my voice. It was an older man, possibly mid-fifties- but in great physical shape. His lean figure suggested a work out of about 4 days per week. He wore glasses and his hair was more salt than pepper. "Hi Samantha, I'm John."

I should have been less naive.

I played his intense stare off as curiosity or just over-friendliness. When we shook hands his hand lingered on mine, and of course, I politely thought that he had a little crush. For me, I thought he was handsome, but as soon as I see a wedding band on a man I immediately write him off my list. I'm not in the business of breaking up families.

We divided our preliminary tasks and decided that the first part of our project would be to pull all of the human resources files from the hires at this location and start from there. I took one desk on the far side of the office, and he chose the desk nearer to the door. I realized months later that he did this so that I would have to walk past him at least twice per day. My desk was situated in front of a large flat screen television hung beside a white board. The door to the office was behind me, and the windows were to my right. It was a narrow but deep room, with about 20 feet from the door to the wall with the television and white board.

I didn't mind being in such close quarters with this much older man. I didn't feel any threat, or worry. I had just had my 30th birthday, and I guessed him to easily be in his mid-50s. He was married, white, and I would guess that he had a few kids my age. I was single, of African ancestry, and much younger. I guess I just didn't think we had anything more in common than the work ahead of us.

It wasn't until the third day of our project that I began to be comfortable with the investigation. It had become extremely clear that the store owner was only hiring members of his extensive family to fill positions at the store. I had pulled the human resources forms and taken a second look at the list of references provided by each applicant; most of who were the same names who re-appeared on multiple submission. I knew that the allegations had weight to them, and that very soon we could have a report put together and I would be on my way to management.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I decided to try some spicy Thai food from a place around the corner. When I came back to the building I took the stairs to help burn off my extravagant lunch. Combined with the spicy food and the exercise, a few buttons from my work shirt had been loosened for comfort. When I got back to the office, John was already there at his desk, leaned over his notes from the case.

"Hey John, how was your lunch?" I breezed past and sat at my desk dropping my bag and whole body into the office chair.

"It was alright. I just munched on a sandwich from home. Nothing special." He answered without looking up.

"That's good." I murmured and turned back to by work. I figured that he was engrossed in his notes, so I let one more button slip. I should have known better.

About 30 minutes after I got back from lunch, I noticed some window cleaners perched on a neighbouring building. I had been reading some very small printed documents, and decided to give it a rest for a moment. My eyesight was not exactly 20/20, especially to spy on some window cleaners across the street, so I slipped on my eye glasses. I gazed across for a few seconds until a glint of sunlight bouncing off metal caught my eye. My eyes were immediately drawn to the source- the white board in front of me. I realized then that the cleaning staff in the building deserved a gold star because the white board was so shiny and reflective that I could clearly see my reflection. I could see my breasts nearly popping out of my shirt- all clearly outlined to me while wearing my eye glasses.

Then I realized that I could also quite clearly see John's reflection. I also realized that the angle at which he sat at his desk enabled him to have an unobstructed view of me at all times. An unobstructed view of me and my unbuttoned blouse which he, at that very moment, was peeking at from behind his notebook.

Our eyes met in the reflection, and he knew he was caught.

The quiet, older man I politely ignored for the past three days had suddenly become interesting.

I re-buttoned my shirt and cleared my throat.

"John, how are those financial records going?" I asked to clear the air.

"Good. They are good. What about your human resource files?" He asked, possibly to appear unassuming.

From that awkward moment onward we began to make pleasant conversation. He told me about his family, and career. He had been a manager for over ten years, and was considering retirement, but nothing concrete yet. I told him about my recent breakup, and that I had been at my current position for two years, but hoped to be a manager soon.

"So why did you agree to come all the way up here for two weeks to work on this case? Don't you miss your family?" I asked.

"Yes. I miss my kids. But not my wife. Things have been...rocky lately." His face was heavy with stress lines that immediately appeared once the topic arose. He stood and walked around to the front of his desk.

"Oh." I replied, and went no further.

"We have had some issues regarding her mental health. It's an ongoing problem," he began to explain. "When the offer to take off for two weeks came around I figured it would be a good opportunity to get some space from everything." He leaned his body on his arms and had them braced behind him on the desk like a lecturer speaking to a class. It was as though he was reiterating a speech he has explained to himself many times before.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I offered. What else could I say? "Hopefully this case will help to take your mind off of things."

His gaze trailed up from the floor to my feet, and slowly up my legs and body to my face where it rested on my eyes, holding them there. Coupled with catching him check me out in the reflection of the white board; a heat began to build where none had been before. We looked at each other motionless for what seemed like ten minutes, until he smiled and asked: "can we grab dinner tonight?".

A few hours later, after dinner, we stood in the parking lot of the restaurant we picked from a menu laying around the office.

"Can I drive you home?" he asked. He had been very attentive and gentlemanly throughout dinner. He had even grabbed the check and insisted to pay when I protested.

"Hah, John, you already paid for my dinner and drinks. Now you want to drive me home? If I didn't know better, I'd start thinking this is a date!" I chuckled despite feeling very attracted to him over the last few hours. He was well spoken, funny, and for an old guy, quite sexy.

"So what if it was?" he playfully asked while casually leaning against the trunk of his car. "Would you ever go out with a guy like me?" I figured I would play along- after all, we had just spent the evening together and he bought me dinner.

"I would, but I'm not into married guys." I coyly responded. A light breeze came around and gently blew strands of my curly dark hair cross my caramel face.

"Oh, I see." He said with a big smile stretching across his face. "You don't see me as some creepy old man then?"

I simply smiled and shook my head in the negative.

"Well that's good to know." He said as he removed his hands from his pockets. "If I can't drive you home, can I have a hug?"

At that moment, I really should have told him no and immediately called for a cab. I should have said goodnight; but I couldn't deny my attraction to him. I stepped close and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, allowing him to hold me by my waist. He pulled me into a strong hug and I could hear a slight moan escape from his throat. His upper body was nothing to scoff at. He was well formed, and I could feel that his pectoral muscles were clearly defined under his shirt.

I pulled my head back and looked into his eyes, standing face to face with John. His grip did not waver. My heart raced. My eyes fluttered closed, and I leaned my lips to his to kiss him softly. He kissed back.

John held on to my waist tighter.

I felt my knees weaken.

As our forbidden kiss deepened, John slipped his tongue past my lips and stole his way into a French kiss. I felt protected in his embrace- but it still felt very wrong.

After our quick parking lot make out session I agreed to let him drive me home. I picked a radio station that had a "talk radio" format, so that we could avoid making awkward conversation. I didn't want to betray what I had felt in the parking lot. How could I tell a married man that he make my knees weak?

Even worse: what if he felt the same?

I shyly told him directions back to the highway, and quickly escaped into my apartment lobby. I couldn't trust myself to say no if he asked me to come upstairs.

The next few days at work were a blur of update meetings to my manager, and excuses to pull off-site records for the investigation. I couldn't help but play hard to get- like I said earlier, I'm not in the business of breaking up families. Luckily the weekend was only a few hours away. I remembered that he said he would return home during the weekend, so I had nothing to worry about until Monday.

Saturday night I was home alone and half way into a bottle of a Malbec. I had treated my toes to a nice Epson salt soak and was painting my toenails a new shade of pink I picked up at the drug store while shopping earlier that day.

I flipped through my Netflix catalogue to find something to keep my mind clear. I was stressing over John. Even though I had spent the days following our kiss avoiding him like a parking ticket, I couldn't deny how much I wanted to kiss him again. As a black woman I had never felt so attracted to an older white guy like this before. In my past my ex-boyfriends were multicultural, but tended to be my age or younger- And NEVER married. No matter what the status of the relationship was with their spouse- I just always avoided crazy complicated scenarios like that.

Thinking back, it may have been how "into me" he seemed to be. His gaze at my reflection- how tightly he held on to me when we kissed... all pointed to a level of desire that I had never really encountered before. He didn't seem so intense about his work, or about much else. Either he was an excellent actor, or something about me set him off.

I flipped on a romantic comedy and was about to stretch out on the couch for a little early evening nap when my telephone rang. I ignored it, thinking it was my mother calling back after we spoke earlier in the day. She was notorious for that; we would talk for 45 minutes in the morning, then she would remember a story she forgot to mention and call back a few hours later to start part two.

The phone kept ringing.

I reluctantly took a peek at the ID screen. The screen read: LOBBY.

"Hello?"

"Samantha, it's John. Can I come up?"

My body froze. I don't even remember buzzing him in; but somehow I must have because within three minutes there was a knock at the door of my suite. It was as if my brain lost cognitive functioning for a minute or two, because instead of getting acceptable clothing on over top my long t-shirt and panties, I just sat there staring at the phone. Either way, he was at the door, and it was much too late to pretend as if I wasn't home. I threw on a robe and opened the door.

He stood a foot from my doorway with a smile on his face and his eyes beaming sunshine, looking very happy to see me.

"Hi!" I greeted in a tone that sounded way too eager for my usual persona. "I thought you were home for the weekend?"

"I was. I just came back into town to pick up some parts of the file I forgot at the office. Can I come in?" He responded in an equally eager tone.

"Sorry how rude of me, yes- come in. Have a seat; I just need to throw on some clothes. I was watching a movie." I let him in the doorway and closed the door behind him. I didn't bother to lock it since I live in a pretty safe building. I walked to my bedroom at the back of the apartment and closed the door behind me. In a frenzy I put on a pair of jeans, the sexiest bra I could find, and a t-shirt. I left my hair out since it still had a freshly washed and curly look from the morning. My dark curly hair is a showstopper when it behaves; lucky for me, today was a day when it chose to obey.

When I emerged from my bedroom I found John sitting on my sofa with one leg planted on the floor, and the other draped across the seats. He was browsing through my Netflix favourites as I approached.

"So..." I began by sitting on the far end of the sofa while he sat up and planted his second leg on the floor. "You were at the office?"

"Yes, I got home Friday night and I was doing a lot of thinking."

"Thinking about what?" I responded carefully, not wanting him to be aware of any of my deeper feelings.

He took his time to respond by stealing a sip of my half consumed glass of wine that sat on my coffee table. His beard hid how handsome he was; something I had noticed the night we went out for dinner. His grey patches made him look much older than his personality led on.

"I was thinking about this tough case we're working on." He looked directly at me and smiled warmly, as if that was not the answer he was initially going to provide.

"Oh," I said. "Something tells me that you were thinking about something else. Let me get you a glass." I rose from my seat and walked past him towards the kitchen. As I approached my cabinets I noticed that the front door I had initially left unlocked, was now locked and my rarely used extra security bolt was also engaged.

As the gears turned in my head I returned to the sofa with a glass for John. "So you went home Friday night," I began as I poured him a glass of wine. "Then you started thinking, and returned back to the office today- which by the way is on the other side of town from my place- but you happened to find yourself here. Is that about right?"

John's smile broadened. The secret he held now had value. He knew that I wanted to know exactly what he had been thinking about. I did know- but I wanted to hear him say it aloud. He took the glass and allowed his hand to brush mine. "That sounds about right."

We sipped wine after that and made conversation about work until the conversation returned to the reason he was across town at my apartment sitting on my sofa when he should have been home with his family.

"So things are bad at home with you and your wife? Is that why you're here?" I finally asked, not being able to hold it in any longer, and feeling some liquid courage from the wine.

John exhaled deeply. "She is not well. Mentally- not physically; she has had some problems over the years, but since our kids went off to school they have been getting worse. Last year she tried to commit suicide. I don't think we've even had sex in the last several months, but the last time we did it was just a confirmation that she isn't the same person I married."