Page 21 of The Boardroom: Jonathan
“Never,” she said, putting her arms around my neck.
“Good,” I said, looking down for a second and blushing. “Because I might be, just a bit.”
“That’s okay,” Samantha said, and when she smiled at me I lowered my hands to her waist, trying not to go insane with the feeling of her curves under my hands. Samantha caught her breath and stepped closer. “New things will do that to you,” she whispered.
We swayed back in forth in a slow rhythm, circling from the center of the room to the large window, where the streetlamps illuminated the snow-covered world outside. We maintained steady eye contact, but it was different from the times we had looked into each other’s eyes before…this time there was no search for weaknesses, no predatory wait for the perfect moment to strike an attack…we held each other’s gazes softly, sweetly, as if we were seeing each other for the first time.
“This feels like another world…” Samantha whispered to me as we danced next to the window, and I understood exactly what she meant. The city was completely deserted and the office was empty, as if we were the only two people left in Seattle. This place, this strange, snow-covered, lamplit paradise we had entered had different rules. I could dance with Samantha Doyle on the edge of midnight next to the copy machine and somehow it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
The spell broke when Samantha let out an awkward yawn just as the third song started to play. “You know, Johnathan,” she said, yawning again. “This is nice, but it’s been such a long day. I’m kind of exhausted.”
“Me too,” I said, and bit my lip awkwardly when I remembered we were pretty much trapped here.
“Is there anywhere here I can sleep?” Samantha asked, and I thought carefully. Despite the office being state of the art in terms of technology, the minimalist, feng shui approved design didn’t leave many options for napping. At an office like ours, there wasn’t usually time.
“Oh!” I said, walking out towards the reception area to the huge white leather couch that sat in the corner. “It has a pull-out bed, if I remember correctly.”
Samantha and I removed the cushions, and sure enough, we were able to pull out a bed with a thin, bent-up mattress. We took a couple of blankets from a storage closet and the pillows from the chairs in the reception area and arranged them neatly. It would have to do.
“Where are you going to sleep?” Samantha asked as she got under the covers. She was going to bed in her work clothes, but I guess she didn’t really have another option right now.
“There’s another couch like this in Cassidy’s office,” I lied. “I’m going to turn in myself.”
“Okay,” Samantha said, yawning. “Goodnight Johnathan. Thanks for the dance.”
“Anytime,” I said, and we smiled at each other in a way that made it hard to leave.
Shit. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. But it’s not like I could just invite myself into bed with Samantha. I wandered through the different offices until I found my best option, a couch in Kirk’s office. It was too short for me to lie down all the way, so I laid down with my feet out on a chair. I figured I was so tired that I could sleep on the floor and be out in an instant.
I was wrong.
It turned out that even after a horrific day of stress and hard work, no one is immune to the effects of really powerful energy drinks. Including me. Despite my exhaustion earlier, I kept tossing and turning on the hard, creaky springs of the couch, obsessively going over everything that had happened with Samantha. The whiskey had worn off, and now things were starting to come into perspective. We haddanced.We hadflirted.And it was good too.
I flipped the too-firm pillow from the reception area over and sighed. I wondered how long I would have to sleep on this stupid couch and live off of people’s leftovers from the break room fridge.
“Liar,” came a voice from behind me.
“Ah, hello,” I said, rolling over to see Samantha, her skirt wrinkled and her hair in slightly frizzled, tousled waves, standing over me with a grin.
“This doesn’t look like a pull-out bed in Kirk’s office to me.”
“Yeah, well,” I coughed. “He must have moved it out.”
Samantha smiled at me knowingly. “Come share with me.”
My eyes widened and my heart began to race the second the words left her mouth.
“Oh, calm down,” Samantha said. “It’s nothing scandalous. That bed is probably queen sized, and we can put some pillows between us.”
“Um,” was all I managed to get out when Samantha grabbed my arm to pull me off the couch and into the other room.
“Here,” she said, creating a border down the center of the bed with some of the smaller pillows and grabbing some extra blankets. “You’re all set.”
Samantha smiled up at me and I’m smiled back at her as innocuously as I could muster. Oh,shit,I was going to have to share a bed withSamantha,and oh god, there were about a million ways this could go terribly wrong.
“Hopefully we can both get some rest after drinking those weird energy drinks Cassidy got from Norway, or wherever,” Samantha said, as we both cautiously got under the covers on our respective sides of the bed. “I can still feel it in my system, you know?”
“Yup,” I said. “Goodnight, Samantha.”
