Matt laughed and took a step closer before spoilsport Krysta said, “Lydia needs some air. We're going...somewhere. Can you give us some space?”
“Space. The final frontier,” Lydia mocked.
Those fucking green eyes tore into her soul as he looked at her, then Krysta, and took a step back. Damn it – he was a good guy, too! The one night she needed an alpha male to take her home and drain every drop of frustration and need from her body, climax by climax, and she gets Mr. Decent.
As the doors closed she turned to Krysta and said, “I'm not even wearing any panties, so don't think you're going home with any elevator trophies.”
Mike already knew how the night was going to go and it wasn’t going to go his way. Lydia was the kind of drunk he felt protective about, not attracted to. It’s not that she wasn’t sensual, and lovely, and delicious, and certainly wanting right now – which made his own willingness difficult to tamp down – but he wasn’t that guy. He didn’t take advantage of drunk women, no matter how incredibly luscious they were.
While he understood her friend’s protectiveness (which he shared), he wished he could reassure her that he wasn’t going to take her home and fuck her when she could barely stand without help. He was long past any of that and, frankly, he had never been into any of that. The walk back to the booth gave him a chance to breathe and relax.
Barely.
“Next round's on me,” he said to the booth, and all eyes fixed on him, peering at him in confusion. This wasn’t the reception he’d expected.
Finally, someone said, “They must be paying you a hell of a lot more than they’re paying the rest of us if you can afford that!” A few derisive laughs, a few genuine laughs, and a couple of shouts of “Thank you!” and “Awesome!” and a few of women talking about the overpriced fruity drinks that they would get.
Joe, one of the mail clerks said, “So, Matt, you putting this on the company tab? Bournham is gonna love that!”
The tone of the laughter that came from the crowd told him that Mike Bournham was not a well-loved figure. Ouch. He took this as a chance to find out just how not-well-loved Mike Bournham was. “We’ll see. I mean, you think I can get away with it?”
More full-throated laughter, the women whispering to each other and glancing at him. “No way, man. Do you know what Bournham did to me – to our whole department?” asked Joe. He looked like he was about nineteen with an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball. Blonde hair, bright blue eyes that seemed a little too small for his face. He had that thick Southie accent that still made Mike want to grin with how stereotypical that was – and yet everyone he knew from Southie had it. Stereotypes are true sometimes, right?
“Yup. Bournham. I was told that this is a ‘culture where bonuses go out for merit.’ Know what my bonus was, Matt? 0.17% of my pay.”
“Did it fill your gas tank?” said some guy.
“I think I was able to buy a couple cups of coffee. So, that’s my ‘merit bonus.’”
Matt frowned. “I don’t know, Joe...”
“Those stupid rankings HR does, where they evaluate you and tell you which quartile you fit into? Exceeds expectations, meets expectations, that shit?” Joe shook his head ruefully and opened his mouth to say more.
“Where were you, Joe?” A slow simmer started in Mike as he looked at each person, really looked at their faces, their features, engaged in the conversation.
“Yeah, I fell into the top quartile in the company – and that’s how my work's rewarded?” More laughter, but this time not as infused with energy, more of a cynical, sickly sound from the group.
Someone else said, “I heard Bournham made $42 million last year. And then another $17 million in bonuses.”
“I get 0.17% and he gets – what’s that? Thirty-eight percent? Something like that. I don’t know, I’m too drunk to do math,” Joe said. “But that’s some fucked up math, Matt. Anything you can do to screw that guy and screw the corporation, I’m there. I’m there, man.”
Mike nodded, not so much in agreement but in acknowledgment. Boy, was he glad that Jonah’s cameras weren’t rolling right now. ‘Mike cam’ would have been a disaster. But even without ‘Mike cam,' this was a bloodbath. When he’d told HR to set up that bonus structure it had never occurred to him that managers would do that. “Joe, who is your boss?”
“Dave.”
“Dave? Dave, as in communications director Dave Crawford?”
“Yup.”
The gears started turning in Mike’s head. “And when he told you you were in the top quartile – ”
“Oh, no, man, Dave didn’t decide that.” The music picked up, a new song beating a thrumming that made it very hard to talk and listen. Slowly, the rest of the group stopped paying attention to them, a few women straggling out onto the dance floor, most guys ordering another drink.
“No, HR decides which quartile you fall into. It’s your boss who decides how much the bonus is worth.”
The final tooth in the final gear wheel clicked into place. “Gotcha. Drinks are on me this round, no matter what. I’m the new guy and I’m trying to suck up to all of you, so have fun and don’t be too mean to me.”
“Just don’t go into the supply closet with him.” Lydia’s voice cut through the crowd, but Mike could tell the rest of them couldn’t hear her. Joe was already walking away, so it was just him. Her sloppy voice in his ear made him rock hard instantly as she leaned against his shoulder. “Because he might kiss you,” she whispered, her voice low and quiet now, her hands reaching down to his hips, one sliding into his pocket, searching for – she found it, the play of her fingertips on his cock making him groan. “And you might like it,” she hissed.
“There you are!” Krysta shouted, ruddy-faced and out of breath. “She slipped away from me when we were trying to find the bowling alley.”
“Mike Bournham can suck my left tit,” she added. Oh, if only she knew how much he wanted that right now. Lydia had sobered up on her little walk, but not nearly enough, and apparently could finally stand on her own two feet, no longer in need of leaning on Mike or Kristin...Krysta...Kristie.
“What is your name, by the way?” he said to Lydia’s friend.
“Krysta.”
“Krysta, thank you.”
“I already said that,” said Lydia.
“Sure you did, hon,” Krysta said, patting her shoulder, looking at Mike and rolling her eyes. “We need to get her some water.”
“No problem,” he said, grateful for the break from all the eyes on him from the office. Weaving his way through the pounding throng of dancers, he was surprised to get groped twice on the hundred-foot walk to the bar. It was three people deep at every inch of the surface and twenty minutes later he was able to weave his way back, head throbbing, the techno beat permeating every cell in his mind, heart, soul, and unfortunately, cock.
“Here,” he said, shoving a glass of sparkling water at Lydia. She gulped it down gratefully and then screamed, “I want to dance!”
And so she did. He decided to sit as the booth emptied out, four people remaining, all of them paired off into couples, their mouths so intertwined and hands so deeply into each other that they might as well have been conducting a medical exam.
Mike ignored them and searched the crowd for Lydia. Her body stretched out to the beat with complete abandon, her ass rubbing against the front of some male dancer who had cozied up to her and Krysta. A small smile spread across his face as Krysta intervened, shoving the guy away. He liked Krysta already.
The scent of rancid beer and old, sticky drinks, of sweat, of nineteen kinds of cologne and forty-seven perfumes all swirling together with contraband cigarette and pot smoke made him nostalgic and a little sick. The bar reminded him of college, of his first year out, of time spent in groups having fun, of social activity that involved nothing more than investing time and a little bit of one’s paycheck, and spending that time with other people. Of laughter, jokes, talks, sharing hopes and dreams and plans. Of having few responsibilities other than showing up – and just paying attention.
As he let his mind drift he could think of fifty-three things that needed to be done: of phone calls that he needed to make to his assistant, to members of the board. If he let his mind drift even further, he could think of more than a hundred things in his personal life – from needing to get the trash compactor fixed, to the tremendous guilt that came from not talking to his mother for six weeks for no other reason than just not thinking about it. Drifting just a tad further, there was a part of Mike that wanted to join Jeremy, that wanted to do nothing more than sit on a beach for three weeks, who would love to experience the challenge of being a nobody again so that he could find his somebody.
Of complete abandon with Jeremy and Dana.
His eyes drifted back into the crowd to catch Lydia’s fevered exuberance, how her hips swayed, how her legs powered her body up and to the side and down, how her bosom heaved, how her lips spread into a grin. How she could be wild and free. He stood, needing to touch that. Needing to connect with that somebody.
The music faded just as he made his way through three or four layers of people in the crowd, and most of the dancers peeled off one by one to go and sit, grab a drink, run to the restroom, or – who knew? Pair off and go home and do what people did after they found inspiration in a bottle at a bar.
Mike wasn’t sure what he was doing at this point. He was in full Matt Jones mode and, although he knew he had seven hours of work sitting at home for him, and probably ten times that in messages, emails, texts, and whatever from Joanie, with major decisions that needed to be made now, all he knew was that he had one decision that needed to be made and that was in his face.
She was cheerful, glowing, and out of breath. Lydia's hands were on him – and it was time to make a completely different call.
“Come here,” she whispered in his ear, her fingers floating along his neckline and touching his collar. “I have a question to ask you,” she said, grabbing his hand, tugging him away from the handful of work people who were staggering back to the semi-circular booth. Krysta shot him a look of warning and he reached up with his hand, a gesture of don’t worry. She arched one eyebrow and mouthed the words, “Don’t even think about it.”
Too late, he thought. He signed okay with his thumb and his index finger, three fingers shooting up to the sky, the best signal he could think of. Lydia yanked hard, practically pulling his shoulder out, surprising him with her strength, and with her energy – and with her insistence.
He took charge as she pulled him back into a small hallway where, to his surprise, a payphone sat. A relic that really took him back fifteen years ago to his college days. All they needed now was a cigarette machine and he would feel like he’d been transported back in time.
Her hand in his felt like an electric wire. As she pulled him closer to whisper something in his ear, he lost all restraint and pushed her against the wall, leaning down, hands hot, her face tipped up to receive him. The kiss in the supply closet, their moment in the elevator, all of it flooded his head, his nerve endings, his overpowering sense of need.
