The client dinner was a Friday, four weeks in. I asked Dina, she told me that Mr. Mercer had extended me and I didn't have an end date. I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't skip a beat, or that my brain was already picking out the more expensive ramen to try.
Back to the client dinner ... Graham told me that morning. He was in his doorway again, leaning against the frame with one hand up near the top, which stretched his shirt across his chest in a way I noticed and then un-noticed immediately. "I have a dinner tonight with the investors on the Morrison project. You're coming."
"Me?"
"You." He looked at me. At my Goodwill button-down, which I'd been rotating with one other shirt, a blue one from the same Goodwill trip that had a small stain near the hem I kept hoping nobody saw. His eyes went down and up. Quick. The same once-over from my first day, except now I recognized it. "Wear something decent." He stared into my eyes; I had no idea what he was doing. Then, "Here." He dug out his wallet and handed me a bill. I'd never seen Franklin on something in real life, and he didn't even wait for me to thank him, he just went back into his office.
I spent my lunch break at a Ross Dress for Less on Third Street. I had $9.99 plus tax in my budget for a tie, which at Ross gave me options ranging from ugly to uglier. I found one that was dark blue with a pattern that could have been tiny diamonds or could have been printing errors. It was silk or silk-adjacent. I bought it; I wanted to show Graham I respected the money and him. I skipped lunch, which meant I'd be running on the PB&J from that morning until whatever the restaurant served.
When I got back, he was in the elevator, too, and I handed him the change. He looked at what I bought. Didn't say anything. When we got to our floor, he put his hand on my shoulder and my heart fluttered; he led me to Dina. "Take the company card, and take Drew to get some decent clothes for the client dinner tonight, please." She looked from him to me, and there was something in the corner of her mouth that made me incredibly nervous for reasons I didn't know – well, I did, but I didn't want to think about that because when it all ended I didn't want to be broken.
So, Dina took me shopping. Several items. Stood outside the dressing room waiting, approved or disapproved when I came out. When my face was thoroughly reddened and my arms thoroughly laden, she paid with the card. It was a metal card. Something else I'd never seen in real life.
The restaurant was a place called Luciano's. Not the kind of Italian place with checkered tablecloths and a Chianti bottle with a candle in it. The kind where the menu is one page and nothing has a price because it's too damned expensive, and the bread arrives on a piece of slate with oil in a dish so small it might have been decorative. I'd walked past places like this. I'd never been inside one.
There were six people at the table and they were all at least twice my age. The men wore watches that caught the candlelight. The women had jewelry that was small and real. One guy across from me had cufflinks that were definitely gold and sparkled in a way that was definitely diamonds, because a guy who wears gold cufflinks is not going to have the fake stuff. That, and I'd worked a jewelry counter at Macy's for two weeks before they let me go, which is the kind of life experience that qualifies you to identify precious metals.
Graham introduced me. "This is Drew, my assistant. He's been working on the Belmont project with me."
That was generous. I'd been looking at spreadsheets while Graham explained them. But he said it like I was a contributor, and the investors smiled at me and nodded and a woman named Catherine said "nice to meet you, Drew" in a way that suggested she meant it. The tie Dina had picked out felt tighter, and for a second I felt like maybe I did belong at this table in this restaurant with these people.
Graham sat next to me. The seating was tight, the way restaurants like this do it, so his leg was against mine under the table. Not close. Against. The tablecloth was heavy, white, and you couldn't see underneath it.
His thigh was warm. I could feel it through both layers of fabric, his suit and my khakis, and it was solid and it didn't move. He didn't shift away. He didn't adjust. He just sat there with his leg touching mine like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I was supposed to eat bread and make conversation while my entire left side was on fire.
I didn't say much during dinner. They were talking about cap rates and construction timelines and something about permits that turned into an argument I couldn't follow. The wine was a Barolo that one of the investors had ordered for the table, and a glass of it probably cost more than my entire outfit. I understood about 30% of the conversation, and I faked the rest with nodding and trying to hush my stomach with bread.
But, Graham kept me in it. He'd glance at me every few minutes, not checking up, just including. A look that said, "you're with me." Once, during a pause, he leaned toward my ear and said quietly, "The guy across from us is full of shit about his permit timeline. Watch his hands."
I watched. The guy was fidgeting with his fork, turning it over on the tablecloth. Spinning it. I'd served drinks at a few poker games before – again – I was fired. Or, they didn't ask me back. And Graham was right.
I leaned back toward him. Close. Closer than I needed to be. "His left eye twitches too," I whispered. "When he says the numbers."
Graham looked at me. Something flashed in his expression that wasn't amusement and wasn't surprise, but it was something warmer than both. He held my gaze for a heartbeat and then turned back to the table and said, "Mark, walk me through the permit schedule again. Slowly this time."
Under the table, his hand found my knee. Not a brush. A deliberate grip. His hand on the side of my leg just above the knee, firm, proprietary. He squeezed once. Held it. Then let go. Under the tablecloth where nobody could see. It had to be an acknowledgement of the extra tell. Had to.
I did not look at him. I looked at my water glass. I looked at it very carefully, like I was studying water, because my face was doing something I couldn't control and if I turned toward him he would see it.
The waiter came around with the wine and looked at me. Before I could speak Graham said, "He's fine with water," easy, smooth, already past it, didn't need to say anything about my age, and the waiter moved on. Graham ordered a glass of the Barolo for himself. Nobody questioned it. Nobody questioned anything Graham said at this table. These were rich, powerful people and they deferred to him. Not obviously. Just in the way they listened when he talked and waited when he paused and laughed slightly too hard at his jokes.
I watched him operate and I thought: this is what it looks like when someone is completely in their element. This is a man who built a thing and sits at the center of it and the world rotates around him because he made it that way. And he brought me here. He sat me next to him. He put his hand on my leg.
In the car afterward, driving back toward the office garage where my Civic was waiting, the jazz station on and the city sliding past, Graham loosened his tie with one hand on the wheel. Pulled it down, unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. The collar opened and I could see his throat and the silver beginning at his chest and I watched him do it and I didn't pretend I wasn't watching.
He caught me.
Not directly. He didn't turn his head. But his mouth shifted. That corner. That one corner of his mouth that I was starting to know better than my own face.
"You did well tonight," he said.
"I didn't do anything."
"You watched. You listened. You didn't try to prove you belonged. That's harder than it sounds. Half the people at that table can't stop talking because they're terrified someone will realize they don't have anything to say. You just sat there and took it in." He glanced over. "And that thing about the eye twitch. You see people, Drew. Not everyone does."
The praise landed in my stomach, warm, and it spread outward. Like how I imagined the scotch he wouldn't let me drink. Or like sitting near a fire. I wanted more of it. I wanted him to tell me I did well again, in that exact tone, with that specific weight, and I wanted to feel this exact feeling and I didn't want it to stop.
"Thanks," I said. Because I didn't have bigger words.
He pulled up to the garage entrance. Put the car in park. Turned to face me. In the low light from the dashboard his face was all planes and shadows, the silver catching the glow from the parking structure.
"I like having you around." He said it simply. Like it was easy. Like it wasn't a grenade.
"I like being around," I said, and then immediately wished I could pull the words back into my mouth because they were too honest and too much and they meant exactly what they sounded like.
He smiled. The real one. The uncontrolled one from the warehouse. "Good. Stay."
There it was again. "Stay." He said it at the end of every night like a period at the end of a sentence. Stay past the week. Stay past six. Stay at the dinner. Stay. Like he kept asking and I kept answering yes and neither of us was talking about the job.
I got out. Walked to my car. Sat in the Civic with the check engine light and the cracked windshield and didn't start it for a while, long after Graham Mercer had driven off.
I got home. I took a shower. The water heater in the basement took about three minutes to get above lukewarm, and I stood under it while it climbed from cool to tolerable and thought about the dinner. Graham's thigh against mine for the entire meal. The grip on my knee. His hand on me like something he wanted. The tie loosening, the collar opening. His throat. The chest hair. "I like having you around."
I tried to do what I usually did. What I'd always done. I thought about Sarah, from high school, the things we'd done in her parents' basement when they were out. I thought about the video I had bookmarked on my phone, the generic one, the one that worked because it was reliable and I didn't have to think. I tried to go there. The familiar route. The safe one.
My brain slid off it like water off glass.
I closed my eyes, and I thought about Graham. Not accidentally. Not a stray thought that wandered in while I was thinking about something else. I thought about him deliberately. His hand on my knee. His voice at my ear. The scotch on his breath. The way he smelled in the car, leather and cedar and him. What his hands would feel like somewhere else. What his mouth would feel like. What it would have been like if he'd leaned across the center console and kissed me in the parking garage with the dashboard light on his face and my Civic watching us.
I came faster than I had in months. Hard. My back arched and I gripped the mattress and I made a sound into the dark of my basement room that I'd never made before and I just lay there afterward. Breathing. Heart going. Staring at the water-stain mitten on the ceiling.
Okay.
That word again. "Okay." Like a door that keeps opening a crack wider every time I say it. The first okay was after the look on my first day. The second was after the warehouse, his hand on my chest. The third was after his thumb on the back of my neck. This one was different. This one was after I'd come with his name in my head, his scent in my nose, and his form in my closed eyes. It wasn't spoken, but it was there, filling the whole space, and the okay wasn't surprise anymore. It was something closer to admission.
Okay. I'm attracted to my boss. Okay. He's a man. Okay. He's more than one and a half times my age. Okay. I just got off thinking about his hands. I looked down at mine. Okay.
Sarah never made me feel like this. No one had ever made me feel like this. I had gone the better part of a decade thinking the machinery worked a certian way, but it turns out the machinery had just never been turned on. Graham turned it on. By existing. By smelling the way he did and saying my name the way he did and putting his hand on my knee like he had every right to it. By telling me to "Stay."
I wasn't ready to build a sentence around it yet. I wasn't ready for labels or categories or the conversation I'd have to have with myself eventually about what this meant for who I was. But the okay was getting bigger each time. Taking up more room. And I was running out of space to pretend it wasn't.
I fell asleep with the shower dripping through the wall.
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