Just You. Jane Lark

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       Chapter Two

       Justin

      When I walked into the office my gaze honed in on Portia. She was sitting at her desk, with earphones in, typing up some dictation. Or maybe listening to her latest favorite song and pretending to type up dictation––I knew she did that. I walked past her. She didn’t acknowledge me, but I caught the color of her skin shifting up several levels of pink.

      I smiled. Maybe if I’d been looking in a mirror it would have come out looking leery, but she didn’t look up at me, just stared at her screen, like two days ago her tongue hadn’t been in my mouth, and my fingers…

      I walked over to the rack to strip off my jacket. Was she embarrassed about hooking up with me?

      I turned and looked at her again. She was still staring at her screen with her fingers flying over the keyboard, but her face was nearly as red as the takeaway Starbucks cup sitting by her elbow. I wanted to laugh.

      It looked like she was feeling awkward.

      I wasn’t suffering. I had no complaints. I was super happy with the opportunity she’d given me… The girl was awesome, if a bit arrogant. But, shit, I’d never really had any expectation I could hook up with a pretty, money loaded, white girl like Portia.

      On my way back, I swiped the usual no-nonsense ponytail she had her blonde hair confined in. One of her hands lifted off the keyboard. But then it fell and she didn’t look around.

      Whenever I saw her outside work, her hair was always down. It had been down New Year’s Eve.

      Her pretty red lip-gloss painted mouth, that had a natural perfect pout, stayed closed. Her lips were held tightly together as she focused on her screen, like her screen was the savior of the world.

      She was hiding from me, without actually hiding. She didn’t want to face up to what had happened at the party. Clearly she did regret our little interlude.

      Well, whatever. Who gave a shit?

      I sat down––ignoring her too.

      If that’s the way she wanted to play it––that’s the way we’d play it.

      I had two pages of the magazine to pull together today. Vacations always had to be paid for, I’d be short of time today.

      My mate Jason rocked up twenty minutes after me, just before nine, drawing a fine line between being on time and getting caught up in a pile of shit; especially as he’d had a bunch of time off with short notice before Christmas.

      He threw his stuff down under the desk and glared at his computer, starting it up. He seemed in just as bad a mood as Portia.

      “Where’d you go to New Year’s Eve, you just disappeared?”

      “I had to go.” He looked up at me. “Rach texted.” That didn’t have a ring of truth, it stunk of an excuse.

      “Wife-y got you on a ball and chain already?” The guy had got married about a week ago. I mean he was twenty-two and the girl was already knocked up, and he’d only met her two months ago. Fool. But then I’d never seen the girl, maybe she was that hot.

      My screen pinged to say I’d got an email.

      ‘Can we get a coffee at lunchtime?’ It was from Portia.

      I glanced over at her desk, but I couldn’t see anything other than her arm.

      ‘Okay. What time?’

      ‘12.30. Meet me in Starbucks.’

      ‘Ashamed of me, baby?’

      There was no reply. I had a feeling the conversation was gonna go something like––don’t tell anyone I hooked up with you.

      Well we were from different leagues. The girl was arrogant and preppy and she liked to stick her pretty little nose up in the air.

      Her tastes had turned to Jason, she’d had her eye on him for weeks. Me… I was just the one who’d been there when she’d got drunk… When she was sober––I was way below her standards.

      I said something about the party to Jason. He ignored me and glanced at Mr. Rees’s office. The boss wasn’t in yet.

      Jason looked over to the door into the office.

      I gave up trying to talk and focused on getting my pages done. The whole place was in a bad mood today.

      At eleven-thirty, not that I was clock checking, Portia got up and headed for the restrooms. She was slender, but she was slender with hips. The girl had some junk in her trunk for sure, Beyoncé style, and she had a pencil skirt on today that exaggerated the movement of her hips as she walked across the open plan room weaving between desks. The movement thrust the image of her ass in an emerald bikini into my head. My temperature soared.

      I got up, without even thinking about it––and followed.

      When I got in there, I found myself hovering outside the women’s like a pervert.

      I leaned against the wall, slipping my hands into the back pockets of my pants.

      She took a couple of minutes to come out, but when she did her pretty pouted lips parted in an ‘o’ and she turned pink… tipping up her chin, and her pretty little nose, with a look that implied disgust, like I smelled bad.