Office Dynamics: M/M Workplace Straight to Gay First Time Romance (5 page)

He wanted Jonas to bring it to him, to his place, a lavish three bedroom condo with tasteful minimalist furniture and sparkling light fixtures that could blind anyone staring at them for too long.

Tris had a guy over in his kitchen when Jonas arrived to drop off the thumb drive.

“Who was that?” Jonas asked. The guy was almost as tall as Jonas, tanned and lean, wearing white workout pants and a sleeveless black shirt that instantly made him look suspicious. Tris showed him to the door, looking equally suspicious in shorts and the shirt Jonas had lent him before that he’d never returned, damp around the chest with sweat.

“He’s my yoga instructor,” Tris said, closing the door behind him.

“He makes house calls?”

Tris held out his palm for the thumb drive. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

Jonas shrugged. “Aren’t 
you
?”

“I own forty percent of the company, I think I’m allowed to keep my own hours, don’t you think?”

“Oh, definitely,” Jonas said. He handed the thumb drive over and peered over the formica counter, at the unfinished breakfast for two on the kitchen table: pulpy orange juice, half-eaten bowls of granola with fruit. The healthy stuff.

Typical, Jonas thought.

“Why are you looking at me like that? He’s my yoga instructor,” Tris repeated with a bemused look. He gave Jonas a light shove towards the door. “And even if he were more than that,” he said, pausing for effect, “I highly doubt it’s any of your business. Now, go. I’ll be in at lunch. And don’t forget to reschedule my meeting with the people from Oceanic.”

Tris shut the door in Jonas’ face before he could get a word in.

---

“She seems angry,” Terry said, one arm hanging off the side of Jonas’ cubicle.

Jonas saved his spreadsheet before peering over the partition. “Who is she?”

Terry lifted his coffee to his lips. “Emma,” he said, watching as a blonde in a strapless black dress and lethal looking high heels strode through the hall, face calm with conviction. She wore sunglasses even though she was indoors.

Jonas had opinions about people like that but he reserved judgment this time and waited until she was out of sight before swiveling around to glance at Terry, who had one hand inside his pocket as he sipped his coffee.

“What?” Terry said. “Aren’t you Mr. H’s secretary or something? You honestly don’t know what his sister looks like?”

Jonas shrugged. “I only reschedule and book his appointments,” he said, which was true enough. Sometimes, he accompanied Tris to those appointments, like the time Tris went to a masseuse and Jonas fell asleep waiting for him in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hall that seemed to be outfitted for people below four feet. They went for Korean Barbeque afterwards before heading back to the office in time for clock out.

“Well,” Terry said, sniffing. “You’re gonna learn soon enough that the drama never ends here. Especially now that Hall Senior’s about to kick the bucket? Man, it’ll only get worse.” He leaned over to one side, tipping his head into the next cubicle. “What’s up, Maurice? You got those flash games I sent you last night?”

Jonas shook his head.

---

Tris didn’t summon him to his office all day which Jonas counted as a warning sign. He didn’t like the sudden hush that fell over the entire tenth floor after Emma’s appearance. Terry wasn’t kidding about the drama part; even Giselle seemed solemn when Jonas passed Accounting, shaking her head slowly as she recounted how she’d seen Emma slap Tris in the face earlier.

Emma left shortly after she had arrived, and it wasn’t until half an hour later that the bustle resumed.

At four thirty, Jonas went over to Tris’s office on the pretense of getting him to sign one of the memo’s he’d typed. He hated having nothing to do; it made him feel inefficient and lazy. He wondered where the feeling came from when he used to hate working for Tris with a zealous passion; he wondered when it was that he started getting used to being summoned at will.

Maybe he was finally losing it, Jonas thought, and he was close to setting fire to the building.

Jonas knocked twice before entering, and Tris looked up just as Jonas raised the memo to eye-level. “Need you to sign this,” he said, not missing the elegantly shaped decanter of scotch and the near-empty glass of it on the desk.

“Are you--” Jonas said.

“I’m fine.” Tris handed him back the memo before leaning his forehead against his folded hands.

Tris brought out the scotch, so obviously he wasn’t fine. Jonas lingered for a second and sat himself down in the leather seat across from Tris.

“You want to talk about it?”

Tris shook his head brusquely. “No.”

“Do you maybe want a burger like last--”

“No.”

Tris poured himself another drink. Jonas felt helpless and because of that, slightly frustrated.

“Would you like some?” Tris asked, peering up at him above the decanter.

Jonas put the memo under a glass paperweight. “I’m not a scotch man.” Then he stared at Tris’s ears, which were pink for some reason, and looked a little wet. His hair was slightly flat on one side like he’d slept on it too.

Tris winced as he sampled a swallow. “Suit yourself,” he said. “This is very good scotch.”

“I’m more of a mojito kind of guy,” Jonas told him.

That actually earned him a small smile. Tris put down his glass and leaned against his seat, stretching his arms and sighing luxuriously. He crossed his legs, blinking introspectively at Jonas. “I never gave you the shirt back, did I?”

Jonas wondered where this was all coming from but decided to go along with it anyway. Tris was drunk and he probably wouldn’t remember half of it the next day. “You can keep it. I don’t really want it back, or need it back. Doesn’t fit me anymore, anyway, 
so
.”

“I’ll have it washed along with the pants and you’ll have it back by the end of the week.” Tris poured more scotch into his glass. “It has a picture of a shrimp on it,” he said as an afterthought.

Jonas laughed softly. “I know,” he said. “It’s why I have it in the first place. It’s cool.”

“You like shrimp?”

“They’re not bad.” Jonas shrugged noncommittally. He didn’t really have a formed opinion.

“Yeah.” Tris nodded. “I like them deep fried and dipped in Thai sauce. Let’s go to 
Yoko’s
.”

“What?” Jonas said.

Yoko’s turned out to be an Asian restaurant thirty minutes away from the office, where it was tough to make reservations if the queue of irate people milled outside were any indication.

Its menu comprised entirely of shrimp: bacon-wrapped shrimp, shrimp and sweet corn curry, smoky shrimp and grits, black pepper shrimp, even shrimp salad, which was this five-inch-high monstrosity of shrimp topped with peas and spinach, covered in chile dressing.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Tris said once they were seated.

Jonas looked down from staring at the aquarium -- 
on the ceiling
 – where Koi exhausted themselves swimming around in dizzying circles. “Yeah, sure.”

Their food arrived: shrimp steamed in pepper with white wine and orange for Tris, and chilled shrimp fettuccine for Jonas who poked at his food with the tines of his fork. Despite his misgivings, the food was great, and Jonas was doubly relieved when their drinks didn’t come with an array of shrimp hanging off the side of the glass.

Tris ordered red wine for himself which he appeared to be consuming alarmingly like water in between bites of food.

“Should you be drinking?”

Jonas remembered the last time Tris had drunk like this, and how it took a cup of corn starch and a warm bucket of water to clean Tris’s vomit completely off Jonas’ bedroom floor. The smell didn’t leave the room, not until Jonas vacuumed the spot and sprayed half a can of air freshener.

Tris raised his glass in salute. “This is good wine,” he said, thumbing the label which read 
Silex
 in gold lettering, and underneath: Dagueneau Blanc Fume de Pouilly. “I’d hate for it to go to waste,” he continued in a slurring drawl. “Did you know, 
Jonas
 that this bottle of wine was barrel fermented and aged in the famous Dagueneau cigar barrels? Do you know what a cigar barrel is? No, of course you don’t, but that doesn’t make you less of a person, does it? You should drink. We should 
both
 drink. It’d be a crime not to. Cheers!”

It was that rationale that kept Tris going, and before long he was drunk, cheek pressed to the starchy table cloth, eyes drifting shut. His blood had probably reached flammable levels because when Jonas leaned over and sniffed, Tris reeked of alcohol.

He hauled Tris back to the Bentley, arms slid under Tris’s armpits, and Dan -- the new driver, tall, middle-ageish, wiry brown mustache and a perpetually dubious scowl -- helped Jonas drag Tris into the elevator afterwards, up to his room where the two of them swung Tris unceremoniously into the king-sized bed on the count of three.

Tris slept right through it, snoring, rolling onto his side and rubbing his face into the pillows.

Dan planted his hands on his hips. “He’s all yours, boy.”

Jonas nodded. “Thanks, mate. I really appreciate the help.”

Dan left, presumably to do Dan things, though not before stealing an apple from the breakfast bowl on his way out.

Jonas wondered if he were getting paid enough for this, slipping Tris’s shoes off, then unwinding his tie with great care. He unhooked Tris’s belt, and was about to shrug Tris’s arm off the sleeve of his jacket when he felt Tris’s other arm curl around his back.

Jonas stiffened. “Hey.” He didn’t want to jostle Tris so he let his tie drop in a pile on the floor and was careful when he shifted him around on the bed. “I’m not trying 
anything
, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m just--” He stopped as soon as he felt Tris squeeze his waist.

“I know,” Tris whispered breathily, eyes still shut. Then he cracked an eye open and smiled. “You smell really good. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Not really, Jonas thought. No one had ever come up to him to compliment him on his scent.

“Probably this new cologne that I’m wearing,” Jonas said, shrugging, feeling oddly embarrassed. “It’s my brother’s anyway and I don’t usually wear col--”

“Mm, I always thought you smelled good,” said Tris.

There wasn’t any real response to that, so Jonas edged away from him, teetering on the edge of the bed, leaning his weight on his palm. It was one thing to see Tris drunk, bent over his own vomit, but it was quite another to see him so uninhibited, batting his eyes at Jonas like he was openly flirting. His dress shirt was open at the collar, baring the smooth line of his throat.

Jonas looked away the moment he realized he was staring, but he looked again and touched the edge of Tris’s sleeve. Tris was pretty, Jonas thought, half-dazed, surprising himself. It wasn't the sort of thing he usually thought about another guy: but then, Tris wasn't the sort of
other guy
Jonas had ever really had much association with. Jonas wondered, not for the first time, if he was gay. He wondered why he was wondering.

“Jonas,” Tris said, “Jonas.”

And there must’ve been something in the way he said it, in the inflection, or the tone, the way his eyes closed at the end of it or the way his mouth moved to form the name because Jonas found himself inclining his head, tipping his face forward to receive Tris’s warm booze-scented kiss.

It wasn’t the best kiss in the world, with Tris heavily liquored up and squirming a little underneath him, but it wasn’t terrible, either, Tris’s mouth lifting gently to Jonas’s own, opening to extend his tongue.

His hand came up and cupped the back of Jonas’ head, his fingers twisting cautiously into Jonas’ hair, and then as suddenly as it gripped the side of Jonas’ neck, Tris’s hand drifted limply back to his side and he was asleep. Snoring.

Jonas sighed. He should’ve known something was bound to fuck up. He felt a strange wave of tenderness come over him, watching Tris sleep, and then shook himself out his funk and got up to close the blinds.

Tris had a great view of the city fifty stories below. Jonas wondered how a person Tris’s age could have this much money and still seem unhappy.

Money never seemed to solve anything when you had it; the only thing it did was complicate your life.

Jonas went to the kitchen and looked for something to drink.

He fell asleep on the couch, a generic guys’ magazine spread open over of his face, his shoe missing after having rolled off under the coffee table.

When he jerked awake a few hours later, it was still dark out, the room unchanged, asleep, just like Tris was when Jonas went to check up on him.

Jonas knew he should probably leave, considering what just happened -- he kissed a guy, his boss, for fuck’s sake, breaking Luke’s number one stipulation -- but he couldn’t bear the thought of Tris staggering around in the dark, throwing up all over himself. Or something equally pitiful.

It was kind of pathetic, Jonas knew, this whole state of affairs; torn between his sense of self-preservation and loyalty to his boss, and he couldn’t even decide which was the lesser of two evils. He decided to sleep it off after locating his left shoe, figuring everything would make sense in the morning as it often did.

When he woke again, some bleary hour later, a woman wearing yellow rubber gloves and clutching a mop was staring down at him. “Are you Mr. Hall’s hooker?”

“What?” Jonas scrambled off the couch, scrubbing sleep from his eyes. “His hooker? 
What?
”

She gave him a baleful sniff. “I’m his 
secretary,
” Jonas said, aghast. She was about five feet in height, plump, in her late forties, grayish hair pulled in a tight bun from her wrinkled prune-like face. She left Jonas after announcing breakfast would be ready in half an hour.

Jonas checked his phone. 6:45. Good, he thought. He looked up when heard someone coming in: it was Tris, freshly showered, in a black silk bathrobe, hair artfully combed back. His face looked flushed. In his left hand was a rolled up copy of the New York Times.

“You’re still here?”

Jonas shrugged. He felt and probably looked like shit. His hair was starting to smell and his clothes felt tight.

“Did I make a fool of myself last night?” Tris asked, stopping about ten feet away from Jonas, grip tight around the newspaper like he planned to use it as a weapon. Jonas felt like they were outlaws in a western movie, appraising each other from a distance, waiting for the perfect moment to draw their guns.

He shrugged and tried not to remember the slick wetness of Tris’s mouth. “Not more so than usual,” he said, sitting himself down on the arm of the couch. “You passed out before Dan and I could bring you here.”

“That’s all?”

Jonas wondered if Tris remembered they’d kissed. He hoped not. He really truly hoped not. “Yeah,” he said. “You slept like a baby. With a nasal problem.”

Tris didn’t laugh. Something inscrutable flashed across his face but disappeared too quickly for Jonas to put a name to.

“Do you want to stay for breakfast?”

Jonas really had to go. When he said this, Tris nodded in understanding, unfurling his newspaper and marching towards the general direction of the kitchen. He had papery bedroom slippers on. Jonas thought that was sweet for some reason.

“Sorry,” Jonas said.

Tris had his housekeeper show him to the door. “I’ll see you at work.”

“All right,” Jonas said. “See you.”

He took a cab home.

---

The problem was Tris was all Jonas could think about.

It felt like a switch had been turned on in Jonas’ head, and suddenly, Tris was all he saw: the way his fingers coiled around a cup of coffee, the stubborn tuft of hair at the back of his head that Jonas used to think was hilarious but now just seemed ridiculously endearing, the way he laughed over the simplest things, crinkling his entire his face.

And they had that kiss, and Jonas had to remember every single vivid second of it, from the way Tris’s breath felt across his face to the scrape of his fingernails down Jonas’ neck.

Embellished with an eye for detail, the memory took shape, became powerful; it haunted Jonas’ days and nights and consequently, he lost sleep over it. Jonas intended to kill it. With his bare hands if he could help it.

“Man,” Terry said one day. “You look like you haven’t gotten laid in six months. We should go out. Meet some hotties. What d’you say, bro?”

“I’m not your bro,” Jonas said, but he went anyway, thinking it’d be good for him.

Turned out, it was just what he needed.

---

He didn’t meet some 
hotties
 but he did get properly drunk for the first time in months, which was, in its own way, kind of enjoyable.

Jonas dropped his phone under the table, trying to pick up a call before closing time. It was Tris. Of course it was Tris. Who else would be calling him at midnight when he was off work? Jonas hit 
cancel
 every time his phone started vibrating. It was a Friday night and if Tris expected him to answer to his every beck and call like a trained dog, he was going to have to pay Jonas a little extra.

“Who was that?” Terry asked.

“No one,” Jonas said; he felt like an asshole.

He got home around two in the morning, dragging himself by trial and error and stumbling into bed, crawling under the covers. Half an hour later, his phone went off again and it was still Tris so Jonas figured it must be something important. He tapped 
answer
 on the fifth ring.

“Why haven’t you been picking up my calls? I need you here at the office. 
Now
.”

Jonas rolled his eyes. “Do you even know what time it is?” Neither did Jonas obviously but that wasn’t the point.

“That wasn’t a request, Jonas. That was an order. Fifteen minutes.” Tris hung up.

Perfect, Jonas thought. He washed his face in the kitchen sink, threw some fresh clothes on -- jeans and a button-down t-shirt -- then took a cab to the office because it was faster and he didn’t really feel like commuting. He fell asleep on the drive, and half an hour later found himself in the lobby, shaking his phone back to life because its battery kept petering out.

Tris stared at his shirt. “What are you wearing?”

“It’s 
Saturday
. I’m supposed to be on my day off.”

Tris couldn’t quite argue with that.

“My father doesn’t have very long,” he explained on the drive to the hospital. He was in a cobalt blue suit, but he’d tugged his tie free sometime before Jonas arrived. “He wants all three of us there. My brother and sister and myself. I assume it’s so he could announce something terribly dramatic. He does that a lot.”

“You mean feign death?” Jonas asked.

Tris smiled at the cruel joke. They were escorted to a private room by a nurse in green scrubs, but she held up her hand at Jonas to stop him from following Tris inside. “Family only sir,” she said. “You’ll have to wait outside.”

So Jonas did, and in the meantime, got two coffees from the vending machine at the end of the hall.

Tris reappeared about twenty minutes later, face dour, fists clenched at his sides and he marched, unseeing, to the men’s room where the sinks, Jonas learned later, and even the walls sparkled like hotel floors.

Jonas shut the door behind him. He put the cups in the sink and waited until Tris was done pacing.

“He’s dead,” Tris said, but he didn’t stop moving. He kept touching his neck. Jonas wondered if the allergies had come back. “The bastard is dead.”

“He’s your dad, but you act like you hate him,” Jonas said.

“I do. I do hate him.” Tris looked up. His eyes looked a little red though Jonas thought that could’ve just been the ambient lighting. Then it hit him: Tris was crying. It was easy to miss because he didn’t sniff or catch his breath or contort his face; the tears wouldn’t fall, but they were there, gathering momentum in his eyes, waiting for the right moment.

Tris pawed at his face, looking horrified when his fingers came away damp.

“Do you know what I find ironic?” he said, scrubbing his hair with his fingernails.

“What?” said Jonas. He stepped closer and touched Tris’s arm, squeezed.

“The first time in my life I feel remotely affectionate about my father is when he’s dead.” Tris laughed at himself and shook his head.

Jonas, who was never truly great at consoling people when they needed it, enveloped him in a loose hug. He felt Tris’s breath against his neck and folded his arm around Tris’s waist tighter, closing his eyes.

They were nearly the same height but Tris slid against him perfectly, slumping against his chest, shoulders collapsing.

Jonas was used to hugging people, mostly girls, shorter than he was, shifting them around to find that perfect groove, feeling always like an inelegant giant, always too big, always unsure where to put his hands, worried he was gripping them too hard or not enough, but Tris. Tris was able to fit against him without maneuvering. It felt strange, and then strange that it
wasn't
strange, somehow. It was as if Tris, of all the puzzle pieces in the world, was the one that had been made to go here, right against Jonas' side.

“I didn’t know you had tear ducts,” Jonas whispered against Tris’s temple.

Tris let out a sniffling laugh. “You aren’t the only one,” he said, and when Jonas’ neck felt wet afterwards, he didn’t complain. He rubbed Tris’s back, sliding his hand under Tris’s jacket to feel the indentations of his spine through his dress shirt.

They stood hugging for about a minute until Tris pulled away, widening his eyes, face mottled red as he attempted to compose himself. He looked like he needed a drink, and fifteen hours of sleep. His hands were still folded over Jonas’ biceps, though, which meant their faces were only inches apart.

Tris pressed his nose to Jonas’ collar. “You smell like alcohol.”

“Kind of went out with the guys,” Jonas explained, “
Friday night
.” He shrugged, helpless of the fact. But Tris kissed him anyway, turning in Jonas’ embrace, walking him backwards against the wall, one hand curled into his shirt.

The kiss was better than the last one, hands down; longer, more urgent, Tris’s tongue swiping Jonas’ own as he pressed himself bodily against Jonas.

Jonas dragged Tris forward by the hips as Tris deepened the kiss with intermittent strokes of his tongue, his hands twined in Jonas’ hair to tip his head forward.

Jonas felt Tris blink against him and then clench his eyes shut.

Tris felt good between Jonas’ knees, his body warm and solid and real, and he kept making these appreciative noises that made Jonas wish they were somewhere else. Tris shivered in his arms, leaning back every now and then to rub Jonas’ jaw with his thumbs before swooping down again. Jonas liked that, how Tris kissed like he was enjoying himself, like he really wanted nothing else but to be kissing Jonas. He kissed with a self-centered greed Jonas had never experienced when kissing a girl. He found that he enjoyed it. He didn't want to dwell on what that meant, beyond that he enjoyed Tris, for better or for worse.

Christ, he knew it was
for worse.
This was a bad idea from all angles, but somehow the knowledge wasn't enough to make Jonas step back.

Jonas kept one hand in Tris’s hair, twirling the soft peaky tufts between his fingers, brushing his fingers over Tris’s ear and smiling drunkenly as Tris shivered, angling his head away.

And then Tris’s phone started vibrating in his jacket pocket and he had to break off for air. Tris frowned at the screen, but kept his other hand draped over Jonas’ shoulder, Jonas’ knees keeping him trapped in place as Tris stood between them.

Tris gave Jonas a nervous glance. “I have to pick this up,” he said.

Jonas licked his lips before thumping his head against the wall gently. “Yeah,” he breathed, flushing, wondering how long before Tris’s taste disappeared completely from his tongue. “I know.”

Tris excused himself and left.

---

The funeral was that weekend.

Jonas wasn’t there because it was a private affair, apparently, though a hushed silence swept the office come Monday morning.

Everyone was in shock, said Giselle. Hall Senior was kind of a prick, and a lot of people hated him because he liked to fire people for no good reason, but no one was expecting the old coot to kick the bucket so soon.

“Cancer always has a way of sneaking up on you,” Terry said, smoothing out the purple cancer ribbon on his lapel. The rest of the day went somewhat like that, people talking below breath about Tris’s dad and how, even though he was a bit of a hard-ass, he was a real terrific boss.

Jonas went to check up on Tris because he wanted to offer him his condolences, but mostly because they hadn’t exchanged a word since that kiss in the men’s room.

Jonas knocked on the door, pushed it open. “Hey,” he said.

Tris was standing by the window, hands pocketed, and turned after a second, staring at Jonas like he didn’t recognize him.

“Jonas,” he said, “
Jonas
.” He pointed to a heap of folders next to his cooling coffee. “I need you to photocopy these. I want them on my desk before lunch.”

“Sure,” Jonas said. “Anything else?”