Punishing a Cheater

Friday was always my favorite day at the office, for many reasons. Obviously, the end of a long work week, the anticipation of a pair of days off, the reduced workload… all were very good reasons to like Friday. My favorite, however, was that for us it was ‘Casual Friday’. We could wear jeans and T-Shirts, rather than the standard company logo polo shirt and slacks. Or dresses past the knees for the ladies. Now, I didn’t really care what I wore. It was a call center, we had zero customer facing interactions, so management was pretty lenient with enforcement of the dress code as it was. No, the reason I liked Casual Friday was not for my comfort, it was because my teammate Kathy would wear jeans.

Kathy was much younger than I. We’d celebrated her 27th Birthday as a team just a few months prior, while I had just told the ‘official’ Party Planning Committee of the office what kind of cake I wanted when they had my 46th Birthday gathering next month. She was also easily the most attractive woman in the whole office. Long raven hair, straight as an arrow framed a perfectly formed face with impossibly high cheekbones. Bright, piercing blue eyes shone like lighthouses on a beach of golden tan. She was a tiny woman, but not unhealthily so. Every curve that a woman should have was still as soft and round as any I’d seen. Her lean, long legs looked like they went on for miles, even though logically, I knew she was only around 5″1′, but looking at her legs you’d think she was 7 feet tall. Though I had never seen them bare, she had come to a company outing in a very tight tank top and no bra, so I had a good impression of what her small, but nicely shaped and perky breasts would look like. However, of all the various parts of Kathy that I admired, the piece that made me weak every time was her ass. Especially when she wore jeans.

Add to this that she had a habit of not sitting properly in her chair to take calls, but rather she would turn it around, and kneel on the chair, bending over the back of it to type call notes when necessary. This meant that I spent a good half my shifts on Fridays taking calls completely on auto pilot, with my eyes glued to the show being performed a few desks over.

As if being drop dead gorgeous wasn’t enough. She also had the absolute gall to be smart, funny, kind, and just generally a goddamn delight to be around. Even the women who would normally be jealous of her couldn’t bring themselves to not like her. Then there were the guys like myself, who normally would be so intimidated by her looks that they would rather shove a hand in the paper shredder than dare talk to her. She went out of her way to include everyone in conversations, and be friendly – but not flirty – with everyone. She was literally the life of the party at all work meetings.

This Friday morning was different for some reason. My shift started an hour before Kathy’s, so I always had the pleasure of seeing her come in, and walk past me to her desk. If I was on a call, she’d smile and give a wave as she passed, if I wasn’t she’d stop briefly to say ‘good morning’ and even occasionally chat for a minute. Today though, she’d come through the door with a dark cloud following her every move. Despite half her face being hidden behind large dark sunglasses, I could tell she wasn’t wearing makeup. Not that she needed it, but she usually wore some to work. Her hair was neatly brushed, but lacked the normal slick shine and straightness it usually held. Wearing an oversized T-Shirt that went down almost to her knees before the soft blue of the denim I’d been looking forward to all week was visible. She rushed past me and the rest of the team to her desk, sat down in her chair and turned on her computer. Sitting perfectly still, and having not removed the sunglasses yet she sat and waited for her shift start time to hit before she moved again. Finally taking off her sunglasses and donning her headset.

That’s when I was able to see the reason for the glasses. Her normally bright eyes had no shine, no sparkle, and were very red and puffy. It was quite obvious that she’d spent a long time crying before coming in today. I didn’t see any bruises, or signs of a physical reason for the tears, so I assumed something must have happened. Perhaps a death in the family, or some other tragedy had befallen. With this thought in mind, at my first break, I went over to her desk.

“Hey, Kathy… are you alright?” I asked while keeping a respectful distance just out of my arm’s reach.

Without turning her head to look in my direction, eyes locked on her screen even though no account information was pulled up, she replied quickly, but quietly. “I’m fine.”

Knowing it’s usually best not to push too hard in these situations, I didn’t press the matter, instead simply saying “Okay, but just so you know, if you need to talk, I’ll be here.”

Silence for just a few beats, then still without turning from the screen, “Thanks, I appreciate it.” sincere sounding, although without much depth.

“No worries.” I said, sounding awkward to myself. I added hurriedly “Oh, hey, some of us were thinking about ordering lunch from that new place down the street, you want in?” I regretted the words the second they left my lips. Why would someone who clearly wanted to be left alone want to order food with a group? Why did I say ‘some of us’ when I hadn’t talked to anyone else about lunch plans yet?

Kathy surprised me however by finally turning from her screen to look at me. Her eyes glazed with tears barely held in check. “You know what? Yeah. I didn’t get dinner or breakfast, I’m going to be starving by lunchtime. Shoot me the menu, would you?” She smiled, and though it didn’t quite reach her red swollen eyes, I still took it as genuine.

Returning to my desk, I pulled up the menu, and emailed it to Kathy. I also sent a separate email to the rest of our teammates who took lunch around the same time and asked if anyone would like to get in on a group order. Thankfully, I received orders, and Venmo payments from several of the team, including Kathy.

Working from break time to lunch seemed to take forever. I didn’t realize how much the missing of the simple entertainment of lusting after a coworkers denim clad ass really drags the day to a crawl. However eventually the time did pass and as I prepared to leave my desk, Kathy stepped over to me quickly from hers.

“Mind if I walk with you?” Sounding more like a plea than a question, adding “You might need help carrying it all back.”

“Of course! I welcome the company.” I said honestly and with a smile I had hoped was welcoming without being creepy.

She jogged back to her desk, grabbed her purse and those sunglasses and caught back up to me. The walk to the restaurant was less than 10 minutes, and we spent the first half of it not talking. Only the sound of our footsteps and the rare car passing by on our seldom used road broke the silence. I wanted to ask again what was wrong, but I still knew better than to pry, so I kept my mouth shut and just kept walking. Kathy finally broke the wordlessness with “Paul had an affair, and I caught him last night.” Her face was still pointed straight ahead and she didn’t break stride.

I on the other hand stopped dead in my tracks. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed “What the absolute fuck?”

She stopped walking and turned back toward me, as I shook off the shock and hurried to catch up to her. Paul was her husband, I’d met him twice. Both times at company parties outside work hours when we were allowed to bring our spouses or significant others. The first time, I’d been with my wife. The second happened about a month after our divorce had been finalized. He’d seemed like a nice enough guy. Nothing special in the looks or body department, but not ugly or out of shape either. It’s hard to judge a person’s actual personality from just a couple brief encounters, but he hadn’t set off any red flags either. Really the only impression I had gotten was that he was a lucky son of a bitch to have snagged a woman like Kathy, and I was a bit jealous of him on that front.

“Listen,” She started “If you’re uncomfortable talking about this, because of what happened to you… I’ll understand.”

Now I understood why out of all the people in the group she’d singled me out to drop this revelation on. She’d remembered the reason for my divorce, my wife had been unfaithful. Despite trying to forgive and forget, the anger and resentment just never did actually go away. Always rearing its ugly head during arguments about other things. Finally, after way too long, we’d realized that I was never going to let it go completely, and with our only child grown and out of the house, we had no other reason to maintain the charade any longer. What I didn’t know was when I’d told anyone at work enough about that situation for her to know.

“It’s not a problem for me to talk about, I just didn’t know that you knew about that.”

“Ah, yeah you might not remember much about that night.” She laughed and I could tell that it was the first time she had in a while. It was a beautiful sound. “Do you remember the New Year’s Eve party last year?”

My head spun, “I… uh… bits and pieces. What I really remember was the next day. I will NEVER mix booze and weed again, this old man can NOT handle a crossfade.”

“You were pretty out of it.” She said, chuckling again. “We talked for like an hour about your ex, then…” She paused to look at me again. “You tried to kiss me.”

My stomach sunk to the concrete and I felt all the blood leaving my head in an instant. “I did not. Please say you’re joking, I did not do that.”

“Don’t worry.” She laughed again. “You were very gentlemanly about the whole thing. We’d been talking about complex emotions for a long time. We were close, you leaned in, I stopped you, you apologized for reading the signals wrong and it was done.”

“Jesus.” I muttered.

“I figured you didn’t remember. To be honest, I was flattered far more than I was bothered.” She kicked a stray pebble off the sidewalk. “In fact, my biggest regret right now is that I didn’t let you.”