5 Days a Week: Tuesday (contemporary office romance) (2 page)

“I actually need to have a word with you,” she told him after he had stomped his feet like a petulant child who’d been refused a bag of sweets.

He seemed distracted by his phone. He hadn’t got what he wanted, hadn’t been able to stick his tiny dick inside her and now he had lost interest. He was probably texting a hooker, hoping to pay for his morning fuck now that Simone wasn’t giving him one for free. There was Sissy of course, but she, like Simone, clearly couldn’t stand the thought of being with the sweaty prick this morning.

He seemed alarmed by his phone and quickly hurried away as Simone called to him.

“A word? It’s important!”

She grumbled under her breath as he disappeared. She muttered a few curses in his wake.

Eventually the wry smile returned to her face. She didn’t need to rush, she’d been waiting a long time to get what she had, now that she had it she could just sit back and wait for the right moment to strike.

Ian Matthews

I can’t hold back any longer. We need to talk.

That was the message from Sissy. She was finally going to do it. She had been threatening him since the start of their relationship, since their first couple of passionate fucks had turned into something more consistent.

“I have to tell your wife.” She had first said those words just after they had finished having sex, when he was still grinning from the orgasm, still out of breath, still feeling the pain of her fingernails in the flesh on his back. He dismissed it then, and every time after that. He told her she was being stupid when she insisted that his wife needed to know, tried his best to brush her off when she said that if he wanted to be with her, he needed to break up with his wife. He thought he was keeping her at bay by lying to her about Amber, telling her that they didn’t get on and didn’t sleep together anymore, perhaps implying that he was ready to divorce her without Sissy’s say-so, but she had clearly lost patience.

They had nothing to talk about except that and, as he had already warned her that he didn’t want to discuss it again, it was obvious that she was going straight to Amber.

He stormed into his office, slammed a fist against his desk. He didn’t mind that Simone had turned him down before, he wasn’t horny anymore, he had more important issues at hand. He tried to calm himself, keen not to lose his nerve with Sissy.

He phoned her up.

He was breathing heavily into the phone, listening to it ring. Once, twice, three times, four times. She wasn’t answering.

“Come on, come on,” he mumbled to the device.

He held it out, checked he was calling the right number. He was, but she wasn’t picking up. He knew she had the phone on her, she had just used it to text him. If she wasn’t answering then that could only mean that--

He gulped, paused; the blood draining out of his head and for once not ending up in his penis.

Sissy was ignoring him because she had already made up her mind. She was going to get in touch with Amber whether Ian wanted her to or not.

Shelly

She was still in bed, still staring mournfully at the ceiling. She was beyond late. There was no way she could show up now.

She had slept in. Her alarm had failed to go off again, but this time she didn’t wake up to before hand and intercept its failings. She had surfaced an hour or so later, she remembered glancing at the time on the display and then... nothing. She must have fallen asleep again.

She decided she wasn’t going to bother going to work, there was no point with only half the day left. She didn’t mind that it was only her second day, didn’t mind what the boss would think; he had other things -- most notably women and his penis -- to think about. But she didn’t want to give a bad impression to her colleagues, especially Mark. She liked him. Then there was Sissy, and when she thought about Sissy she couldn’t stop a grimace from spreading across her face.

If she didn’t show up for work then Sissy would think she had won, that she had scared her into a retreat, forced her into a shell like a bullied child who feigned illness to her parents to avoid school. Shelly Simpson wasn’t someone who shied away, she preferred to fight for what she believed in, for what was right, and she didn’t like horrible people to get their own way.

She climbed out of bed with a newfound determination on her face. She had to go to work to show Sissy that she wasn’t going to be her lackey, that she wasn’t going to tell her boss’s wife about the affair just to please her. If anything, she should tell Matthews what Sissy had asked of her. That would annoy her, which would please Shelly.

Sissy had threatened Shelly’s job. She’d said that if she didn’t do what she wanted her to do, if she didn’t tell Ian’s wife about the affair, she would convince Ian to sack her. It sounded like an idle threat, but Sissy was young and manipulative, Shelly couldn’t be sure that Sissy wouldn’t be able to get her own way with Matthews. She was young and sexy -- albeit a bit stuck-up -- she could probably get whatever she wanted, with few questions asked. But if Shelly got to Matthews first, if she told him what had happened and what Sissy had planned for his wife, she doubted he would be too happy with her.

Shelly left the house and set out for the office just before noon, a determined grin still etched on her face.

Ian Matthews

He watched the clock like a hawk, seeing the seconds tick by and listening to the staff stream in, their greetings to one another, their peppy bullshit, ground at his nerves. He made his way through the throng at one point to get himself a coffee, nearly lost his head at one of the idiots when they tried to talk to him, offering him a piece of the banal small talk that they liked to exchange.

Back in his office he tried to phone Sissy but she had her phone turned off. He didn’t have a landline for her, didn’t know any of her friends. There was little he did know about her, but he knew where she lived. He hadn’t been there, it was in a poor part of town, a hovel for students and benefit scroungers that he preferred not to visit. She had told him about it a number of times, perhaps hinting that he should buy her somewhere nicer, a hint he had never took. Maybe that was why she was now planning to tell Amber about the affair, maybe she had designs on his house and his life, hoping she could move in and take Amber’s place.

He hated that thought, grimaced until it left his head. He waited for another hour, steaming in his own anger as he paced back and forth in the office, then he left. There was no other choice, he had to go to her house, to stop her before she did something incredibly stupid.

She really did live in decrepitude. He couldn’t help but sneer at the building as he climbed out of his car and prayed that it would still be there when he returned. He thought he paid her enough, but property prices were high and he didn’t really know how much it cost to live in this part of the city anymore. It had been a long time since he’d had to worry about money, even longer since he’d been forced to live in the sort of digs that Sissy found herself in.

A hippy looking girl answered the door in her pajamas. She had pale legs, unkempt skin and wild hair. She had either just gotten out of bed or was stoned. Ian studied her bleary eyes and guessed it was probably both.

“I’m looking for Sissy,” he told the girl, holding her stare in an intimidating manner, letting her know that he was better than her and he wouldn’t appreciate any lies.

She eyed him up curiously and didn’t seem very impressed. “She’s not in,” she said casually.

“Where is she?”

She shrugged.

He glared at her, seeing if he could break her; she stared back, her eyes half closed.

“When did she leave?”

She shrugged again. “Are you her dad or something?” she enquired.

He sneered, shook his head. “I’m her boss.” He let that sink in, then, when it didn’t have the desired effect -- any effect -- he said, “If she comes back, get her to ring me.”

“Will do,” she said pleasantly.

Ian turned, headed back to his car, cursing at the hippy slut as he left. He doubted she would tell Sissy anything, doubted she would even remember their encounter.

Part 2: Afternoon

Mark

Mark was disappointed, dejected. He had hoped that Shelly was just late, that she had slept in, unaccustomed to the new job, but it was after twelve and she still hadn’t appeared.

He worried that she had seen all she wanted to see of the office and its workers, that she had already quit, possibly the reason for Matthews’s annoyance. When he thought about that he was even more annoyed at Sissy. The prissy little tart had caused the love of his life to leave, because of her he might never see Shelly again.

He knew it was absurd to think of her as the love of his life, but he had stopped refusing himself those thoughts. He didn’t know why he had fallen for her like he had all those months ago; he had never felt that way -- so quickly -- for any other girl. But as crazy as it was, as crazy as it sounded even in his own head, he couldn’t help the way he felt and trying to hide from his own feelings was even crazier than having them in the first place.

He balled his fists, felt his fingernails digging into his palm as he thought of what Sissy had done.

He should blow the cover on her and Matthews’ relationship, fuck up their love just like she had destroyed his. That would show her.

He nodded slowly to himself, feeling a creeping, evil smile spread across his face but doing nothing to hide it.

Ian Matthews

Sissy was very late. It had been too long since the phone call, she’d had more than enough time to tell Amber. He sat in his office and stewed, silently steaming away to himself before that silence tuned into mumbled curses and uncontrolled bursts of rage during which he managed to bruise his fist against the desk.

He imagined them both at his house. Sissy sitting there with a cup of coffee and a smug smirk as she relayed the story of their affair to his wife. He imagined the look of horror on Amber’s face, the look that came from the depths of her heart -- she loved him after all, he was her life and he doubted she could survive without him. Then he imagined that look turning into something else as she wondered just how heavily she could screw him, just how much of his money and his assets she could strip away from him. He had given her enough for her to employ an expensive solicitor and she would do just that, using some of his money to screw him out of the rest.

His phone buzzed again, he reached down to answer it. He had tried phoning Sissy a number of times but her phone had been switched off, now she had sent him a text. He read with a heavy dread in his heart:

I’m on my way now.

His heart sank even further. She was on her way to tell Amber, that meant that he still had time to stop her. He tried phoning her again bur she didn’t answer. He looked at the clock, gripped his phone tightly in his hand and then decided that he had no other choice. He had to get to Amber before Sissy did, he had to open his heart to her before Sissy destroyed him in front of her.

Sissy

She plucked up the courage to go to work. She stopped being sick, stopped
feeling
sick, but that came back as soon as she thought about what she was going to tell Ian. She had to do it though; it was
his
baby, his life would change as much as hers, he had to know. He tried phoning her but she ignored it, she wanted to tell him face to face, she needed to see his reaction, needed to know that she could hold him, plead to him if need be.

Julie had turned him away from the door, thinking she was doing the right thing. Sissy had no idea why he showed up but guessed that he was taking his morning horniness to new extremes. This was the second morning she had failed to arrive early, his balls were probably turning blue.