Jazzy and Ray

"Not by me," he grins. I laugh in spite of myself.

"Alright, lay one on me."

He tosses his doughnut without looking into the fruit bowl on the counter beside him and turns back to lean over me, pressing his lips to mine. Arms lock around my waist and I sigh into him, opening my mouth when he presses his tongue between my lips. It's comforting and safe here. I don't want to rip his shirt off his chest and drag him backwards into his apartment; I'm not going to lay awake pining over him. His lips soothe almost every riled nerve.

He drags his face away and huffs, smiling, his thumbs stroking at the blurry line between my hips and the very tops of my thighs. "How was that?"

I laugh again, pecking his cheek. "Phenomenal, Bisaam. Now go to bed, you have work in the morning and your first conference next week, so you need to stay rested up."

"Aye aye, captain." He releases me. "But one more thing... We don't need to go out. But if you ever need anything... I'm right here. No strings."

One more kiss to the cheek, lingering a little, and I go back to my place.

...

"So I don't think you ever mentioned you left because of Ray," Leilah accuses the following Saturday. I open my mouth to deny it, and close my mouth because I can't. Israel sleeps on in my lap, his mother and father out for possibly the first time since he'd been born, at some museum Body Exhibit they had been dreaming of going to.

"I mean, it doesn't really matter why I left. It's a good thing I did, I've been approved for tuition reimbursement already, I can start in the fall."

"One, congratulations, and two, what the hell, Jazzy, of course it matters." She leans forward, taking the baby from my arms and her voice trailing as she places him in the nursery, knowing I can hear her over the monitor. "You were great at your job, as stressful as it was. I don't think you really hated chatting up those people. But whatever you had going on with the boss ruined it for you."

"Ah, no, really. It wasn't like that at all," I call, throwing myself back into the cushions.

"Then what was it like? Explain it to me." Leilah reappears and curls up in Lamar's favorite chair.

"Okay. Um. Okay," I decide. She raises an eyebrow, waiting. "We've always been attracted to each other, I think from the first week I started working at the company. I guess, you know, if he were anybody else, it would've been a no-brainer to start seeing each other. And nothing happened," I clarify. "Not until after I left."

"The fuck? What? And when?"

"I just kissed him," I say defensively. "In the parking lot, the day I brought snacks in."

"Did he kiss you back?" she says, overly-invested.

"Yeah, it was a nice little moment," I reason. I was going to offer him a spot in the backseat of my car. "But you know, Vasquez... I don't think he wants me like, uh..." I think about the solid sure desire in his eyes as he pulled me back to him that night. "...I was just getting caught up, you know? That relationship, where my job was literally waiting on him hand and foot, that's a horrible way to start something legitimate."

"What do you mean, you don't know if he wants you? Of course he does!"

"As an easy-access little fling, maybe. A Secretary Plus. And I think the impression I left was that he could have anything he wanted," I grumble. He could.

"Vasquez isn't like that, Jazzy, I know you know."

"Well... no, he's not. But listen, all I know is how reckless it could get. Especially with him so stressed out all the time. The man barely eats a full meal, I don't know how he stays so large."

"Oh wow. You're like, head over heels," Leilah says, with her mouth half full of kettle corn from the market we went to last week.

"Leilah, don't make me disown you," I vow, pressing play on our fifth romantic comedy this evening.

"You would never. Anyway, let me know if I could do anything to help you get the guy."

"I don't need- okay. Whatever," I laugh helplessly.

...

The next time I visit Daft Studios, I wave at everybody and make my way to Vasquez' office. Bisaam looks up as I stop in front of the desk, and I blank a little bit. Two.... not love interests, but two of my "interests" are working together. I'd turn back around, but Vasquez would throw a hissy fit bigger than Ysolde's if I didn't come see him.

"Jazzy, you came to see me?" Bisaam smiles, and I can't help but smile back.

"You and the big, mean man behind the door," I chuckle, hearing faint sounds from the office. "How you doing here?"

"It's... you know, it was an adjustment. But I like the rush of everything, especially the conferences."

I drop my jaw dramatically. "We did it, we finally found someone who likes going to those things," I murmur. While he laughs, I hear the door swish open next to us.

"And she's back."

I nod. "As promised, sir, I didn't even stop to pay my respects to Wasan and Ruby, who I love like a mother and father." I hold up the tray in my hand. "And look, coffee. With extra coffee."

He smirks over and grabs the venti, and I let my breath out as I hand the grande to Bisaam. Then I decide to escape, turning on my heel to nonchalantly stride back to safety.

"Bisaam, I'll be in the lunchroom when the general releases you from duty!"

A muffled series of snorts behind me, from Bisaam. I imagine the stony glare of Vasquez as he stands, straw in his mouth, drinking his mocha cappuccino with oat milk and extra syrup.

"No doughnuts this time?" is the first thing I hear when I get to the breakroom.

"Sorry Lei, they were closed. But I'll bring some to the Christmas party, if I'm still invited?"

"I think we'll be more upset if you don't come," she says, sitting down next to me and offering me her Capri Sun. "One person in particular," she mutters.

"Leilah I hope you're not telling everybody in the office, please say you're not."

"I would never! And apparently, Ruby already knew when I mentioned it to her."

I groan."Where are those two anyway?"

"Wasan had a doctor's appointment, and you know they like to drive together, so they both just took today off." I feel myself deflate a little. "Awww, but your husband's still here," she consoles, patting my arm.

"Good Lord, I'm leaving," I announce, beginning to rise. I see Bisaam and pause amid Leilah's half tease, half apology. "Hey!"

He smiles, trotting over with an array of vending machine snacks in his arms. "I was starting to think he wouldn't let me go. Want some Cheetos?"

Leilah accepts a bag, and I study his layout. "Bisaam... I'm starting to think I need to send you off in the morning with a lunchbox."

"I make sure I eat good when I get up early enough!"

I suck my teeth. "So you eat good once a week?"

We fuss and joke for a good fifteen minutes, and I decide to head out before Vasquez makes an appearance. Not that I think he will. And not because I'm running. Although I most certainly have performed actions that could be called running, from him, in the very recent past.

I lean back against the railing of the elevator, among people who are not tall, brooding, or stressing me the fuck out, and I think about how I'm only really running from myself. Vasquez has not made one move toward me, no real indication, except for that automatic response to me almost jumping on him in the parking lot. And nothing romantic since he asked me out on the day I left.

I mean, yes, he did ask me out to dinner. But it could have been a farewell dinner? Maybe I read too much into it, and me saying we were attracted to each other came out of nowhere? He was probably more amused than anything. And besides, any relationship that has me ready to strip in the parking deck in 40 degree weather is better off left unexplored.

I end up overthinking all the way to the car, down the boulevard and into my home. I resolve that it really might just have been something convenient and easy for him. I can go about my life and calm down, maybe take Bisaam up on his offer one of these days. That'll ease the nerves, almost certainly.

...

Christmas Eve, taking place on a Thursday this year. I decide to attend both the staff party the media department is throwing at the school, and the Christmas party at Daft Studios. I think I have the energy for both. Sabrina comes to work decked in full lolita, the dress poofing out around her legs and christmas lights twined through her hair. We take pictures for almost an hour, and even some of the bored federal work study students help us stage the background, stealing props from other departments for Sabrina to hold. It's the most fun I've had since.... Ah. Since the other job.

She puts a few of her decorations on me, wrapping tinsel around my wrists and stringing a few bows in my hair. I wore a comfy red pullover and the only pair of green jeans I own, so we look positively cheery at the party. I also realize then that after almost a decade, Sabrina is the only coworker I consider more than somebody from my job, unlike the cutthroat production studio where I stayed for eight months and left with a close circle of friends and family. Wild.

I show up to the second party with the promised desserts and immediately exchange the box for baby Israel, sending Lamar off to do with the box what he will. Israel's round head and chubby cheeks swivel as I carry him around, quite stubbornly because good God, this boy is chunky, and my arms are tired. We make rounds and eventually find our crew: Ruby and Wasan; Leilah and Oliver, who explained his way out of Farrow's staff party; Ysolde and her partner Dawson, and Warren and his standard poodle Ellis. I wish I had brought June, but on second thought, she's a little too old to enjoy something like this. I hand Izzy back to Lamar, snapping one of my tinsel decorations in the process, and concentrating on retying it as we stand in a little group next to the egg nog.

"Lemme see." Bisaam sidles up next to me and takes my wrist, and I let him tie it back in a neat little bow.

"Hello and thank you," I say, seeing a familiar pair of dark eyes flashing in the corner of my vision. "I thought you weren't coming?"

He shrugs, the... reindeer, I think... on his sweater warping with the movement. "I didn't have much else to do, my family doesn't celebrate, so."

We spend the evening getting rowdier and rowdier, until eventually one of the reindeer is ripped off of Bisaam's sweater, the majority of my decorations are gone, and Wasan drives a tipsy Ruby home to sleep the punch off. Lamar and Hadir take a worn out and fussy Israel home, looking just as worn out and fussy as him, and Leilah and Oliver head off somewhere. Most of the party disperses, slowly but surely. On my way out, I pause.

"Hey Warren?" He looks up from buckling Ellis' doggy seat belt to his halter.

"Yep."

"Did Vasquez come tonight? Thought I saw him earlier, but I wasn't too sure."

Warren sits up, and Ellis' poof of hair blows in the drafty parking deck. "Yeah, you know him though, he probably dipped out to get some work done." He walks around to his side of the car. "You should tell him to go the hell home, he never listens to anybody else."

"I doubt that, but yeah, lemme go yell at him. I'll see you."

In the elevator. And it strikes me that this is not a good idea. I ride all the way up to the ninth floor anyway, past the few couples and groups talking quietly in the lounge, and down the hallway to the office. A horrible idea.

"No rest for the wicked?" I rest against the open door, watching Raymond Vasquez sit staunchly behind his desktop, tapping away.

"Only between the hours of 11pm to 6am."

"Mmm. Did you eat something yet?"

"Doughnut."

I nod, seeing the empty plate beside him. "And coffee."

"Jazzy."

"Why are you angry today?" The question stops whatever he was about to say, and he looks up over the screen at me.

"For fun," he decides. "And who says I'm angry?"

I suck my teeth. "Playing games again, sir?"

"I'M not the one playing games, Jazz, that's what YOU do." Said with such snideness and such a lapse of his carefully practiced East Coast accent that my feelings are shot through, even though I have no idea what he's talking about.

"What-"

"Sending your little boy, manchild, THING to mess with me less than a month after you leave. And of course, he's perfect at the job, because you sent him, he has to be. It all goes so great, except for when he opens his MOUTH, and I want to kill him for talking about you. Affff, and you, you go from almost devouring me in the basement and then today I see you cuddling up again, messing around. Tch," he rants, rising from the table. "Who says I'm angry? Just over here, dawdling after you like a goddamned fool, no big thing. At all."

That explosion was incredibly arousing. And I have nothing to say.

He strolls over to me, casually, and fans his hands across my neck. His thumbs stroke the curve of my jaw, setting a fire hotter than Bisaam's hands ever could, than anyone's ever could. I'm stuck, waiting for what he'll say next.

"No rest for the wicked at all, Jazzy girl," he whispers, peering into my eyes. I'm almost straining towards him, his eyes dropping down towards my lips, when his hands fall to his sides and he turns to walk back to his desk. I'd stumble if I weren't still leaning against the doorframe.

Is that what it looks like? Vasquez doesn't look back up at me, but sits back down, about to resume working late into the night. I need to say something, anything.

"No..."

"No?"

"No. I'm not losing to miscommunication," I resolve out loud. "Here. I sent Bisaam here because he's my next door neighbor, who I've turned down twice and kissed once. I didn't want him to get stuck working back at his family's shop after he graduated." I breathe out. "I almost devoured you in the parking deck, because that's what I want to do to you when I'm not worrying over you having high blood pressure and not eating enough, or not being embarrassed over how..." I jerk my hands in front of my face- "fucking subMISSIVE and desperate I get when you do the littlest, most INANE thing, like when I'm watching you carry that stupid duffel bag that's too little to fit the month's worth of clothes you bring for three-day conferences, and you offer to carry mine too."

"I see."

I don't even look at him. "No. And if having fun in a whole group of people is cuddling up, in your eyes, good God, you do not want to see me outside of work! It's gotta be practically scandalous."

"Jazz-"

"Jazzy, okay Jazzy, I get it," I drawl in a bad imitation of him. "No, I'm sorry I strung you along for so long, because I did say no, and then I was saying yes, and then I brought the hot neighbor here, but please hear me out when I say, it wasn't my intention, and I thought you just wanted to fuck the secretary. No," I interject, seeing the beginning of fury on his face. "I know you've never done this kind of thing before, you're not like that. You're too damn good at what you do to mess up like that. But believe me when I say, I was afraid that's what it would've become, between you and me, because you really could've just had it, Vasquez," I confess. "Anything you wanted, if you just said it, you would've had it. But you never did, and I thought I was going crazy, just... wanting it to happen."

"...So you did leave because of me." Stone faced, lit up by the glow of his screen, and tired.

"Damn Leilah."

"Ruby told me."

"The both of them, then. Look," I clap my hands together, wearily, unsurprised at the outcome of my bad idea. "I didn't come up here to harass you. I came up here to wish you a happy holiday, and to tell you to go the hell home."

He raises an eyebrow. "Is that was this was supposed to be?"

"Honestly this is one of the best outcomes of any mediatory talk I've ever had, you're lucky I resigned when I did." I push off of the doorframe and plant my feet. "But yes, please go home, I'd hate to hear a news story someday that you died of an aneurysm, alone and cold in your office, and weren't discovered until Monday morning, or something like that. Just go the fuck home, sir."

He chuckles. "So I can die of an aneurysm, at home, cold and alone, and only be discovered by the cleaning crew two Fridays after my death?"

"Yeah."

I leave, and resolve not to visit anybody at work ever again.

...

Leilah gives me a look on the Saturday after Martin Luther King Day as I unwrap my straw and drop it into my root beer.

"Yes?"

"What did you do?"

"Can I have a little more context?"

She slides my glass out from under my hands and my straw dangles from my mouth, dripping cold brown liquid sugar into my hands. I reach and drop it back into the glass she's seized. "You know exactly what I'm talking about," she accuses, narrowing her eyes. "He's different now."

"Who, Oliver?"

"Jazzy."

"Bisaam?"

"Jazzy."

"...Wasan?"

Leilah just looks at me, unsmiling. I look down at my hands. "Different how?"

"He asked me how you were doing the other day."

"Spooky," I comment, reaching for my glass of soda. She slides it away.

"He doesn't stay late as much, he eats lunch with us some days. Like, sits down and chews. And makes jokes."

"Yeah?"

"Like, funny ones, consistently. It's extraordinary. So what'd you say? You know, Warren in the lobby said you went back up to talk to him after the party." She pauses, eyes widening. "Or, or, what did you DO-"

"Leilah, my god! We just talked!" I interrupt, loud enough to have the people in the booth behind me stop talking to start eavesdropping on our conversation. She lifts an eyebrow, but passes me back my drink.

"Can I get a synopsis of what was said?" She sits at attention and carefully selects a ring of overfried calamari from the appetizer plate in front of her, dipping it into marinara.

"Fine. Just, please don't tell Ruby again," I beg. "Matter of fact, go ahead. I've already told him pretty much everything myself, it doesn't really matter at this point-"

"Everything, Jazzy? You did?"

I nod, wondering if I'm speaking clearly enough for the people behind me to hear. I understand the allure of overheard tea. "He left the party almost as soon as it started, I think, to sit in his office. I went to ask why he was angry, and he started going off about Bisaam being a little manchild I brought in to irritate him. And, uh... well when it was my turn to talk, I just told him why I act the way I act. Around him. And then I wished him Merry Christmas. Or happy holidays, I think that's what I said."

"You told him you wanted to jump his bones?" The booth behind us is as quiet as ever.

"Not in those words, but I guess, yeah."

"From the first day you started?"

"Leilah, no... not exactly. Just, shh. But that's basically-" I notice our server with the stand and tray of food, waiting politely- or maybe, eagerly, for me to finish my sentence. "Hi."

He blinks, and launches into his dialogue, and I chuckle to myself, hearing the booth behind us resume their low chatter.

We're left with our food, and I dig in, but Leilah is still watching me. "Girl, I got nothing else, that's it."

"No, I know. I just, he's been looking kinda happy."

I shrug, swirling ketchup into a neat little mound on my plate for my french fries. "Wouldn't you be, if someone said that to you? Oliver?"

"Me and Oliver are just a little, you know, tryst. At least for now. That's not a fling, that's..." she searches for the right words and gives up. Denial. "So, the Josberg negotiations with Wynans, right? She's been dogging him about it since before you started."

"Yeah."

"He handled it."

"Completely?"

"Shut her down, set a boundary, I don't know what the fuck happened, but that whole thing has been running smoothly since Christmas."

"Well, that's awesome. Leilah, go ahead and eat your food, I wanna get out of here so the people behind us don't get up first and see what I look like."