Page 52 of Hot in the City
Megan stared at her own hands, black nail polish and silver rings gripping that watering can as if it was a life preserver. If only some genie would grant her three wishes. First on the list would be a decent place to live. Second would be a new job – an interesting job that actually paid good money. Number one and two were inextricably linked, bugger it. A hot date would come third. Or maybe not.
The vision of loveliness in the apartment across the street had her heart palpitating and her knees dissolving. God, how she needed some action. Hot date moving up the charts with a bullet to number one... Sloshing water across her desk, she fell back into her chair.
“Hello, Man Friday.” Megan leaned forward, resting her elbows on the edge of the desk, head in her hands. She was like a literal heart-eyes emoji.
God, those muscles entered the room, and it was like she’d stuffed cotton wool balls in her ears. The buzz of office conversation, the burr of photocopiers and click-clack of speedy typing fingers all muffled into white noise. Useless background details.
His was a repeat performance, same bat-time, same bat-channel, every Friday at 10 am, the hunk of burning love unlocked his door, strode across the room and stripped down to his black nylon gym shorts in front of his apartment’s floor to ceiling windows. Said apartment just happened to be right opposite her desk, give or take four metres across the laneway and a pane of glass or two. It was a spacious loft full of leather sofas, funky looking lamps, an enormous flatscreen TV and computers. A man cave. Not a feminine knick knack in sight. But that was beside the point.
Right now, the show he put on just for her (so she pretended), that was the point. He peeled off his form fitting white t-shirt, lifting it up, up, and over his head, revealing a ladder of well-defined abs she’d sure like to climb. Tanned skin rolled on for miles, like sand dunes in the desert, making her thirsty.
Was it suddenly hot in here? She licked her parched lips. Her matte lipstick wasn't doing her any favours.
When he pulled the shirt up and over his head, he’d pushed back his damp hair from his glorious face in the process. He rearranged it now, shaking his head. Seriously, it was like rainbows bounced off his cut-crystal cheek bones. His black eyes flashed with lethal intent, or so she imagined. He was probably just hungry.
Jean’s wireless keyboard clattered against her desk. “Aww, you could have told me the floorshow already started.”
Megan sensed Jean’s chair rolling towards hers and scooted to the left a fraction, not letting her eyes leave hottie central. He’d ducked his head below the line of the window ledge, bending to grab his towel from his gym bag. She knew the drill. He’d pop up wrapped in his towel then disappear into his bathroom, stage right.
He popped up alright. Nekkid.
No towel, no shorts, no nothing. Well, that was a massive understatement. There was a mighty big something right in her line of sight. A sight to behold.
“Hot dog!” Jean shouted, rather louder than was seemly for a woman her age. Not that she cared about stuff like that.
Megan whispered, “Jean, keep it down! I’m busy being inappropriate over here.”
The noise ripped out of Jean’s throat was full of pent-up longing. “It’s okay for you, Megs, all young and nubile. It's been a long time since I’ve had a package like that marked special delivery to Jean. Or inside my jeans, if you get my meaning.”
Megan scrubbed her hands over her now-closed eyes, hoping to dislodge that mental image from her retinas. She opened her eyes again. “Yes, thank you. Now you made me miss... Woah, come to mama.”
He’d turned and the view was spectacular. Her Man Friday was as beautiful from behind as he was in full frontal.
Megan grabbed her glass of water and took a sip, just as part one of the show finished. Her Man Friday disappeared into his bathroom. She sighed, turned to her iPad and the graphics she had been working on earlier.
When he emerged twenty minutes later, he wore low-slung black track pants that made him look particularly edible.
He stopped in the middle of the room and stretched, arms to the ceiling, muscles rippling. Then the strangest thing happened. He turned full circle, stopping to look out his apartment window. Directly at her. He raised one eyebrow, then shook his head.
Woah.
It was almost like...he knew she was watching.
Freaky Friday
Two weeks later, it was Friday morning again. Megan was not on her game. This was despite looking freaking hot. She’d dressed for the sweltering weather in a strapless white mini dress decorated with silver stars, and towering but awesome silver platform sandals.
Three minutes to go. 9.57 a.m. Normally her pre-hottie spying euphoria would’ve kicked in, but not today. She had a ten o’clock meeting with the auditor, Mr Cruz Ono, or so her online calendar told her. Interesting name, but the meeting was sure to be dull as dishwater seeing as how it had been set up by management.
Dammit! It was sure to go longer than fifteen minutes. She’d miss the whole show.
She downed the last of her latte and slammed down her mug. Time to get moving. She gathered a stack of papers, web analytics reports and the like.
All week there had been coding and widgets a plenty. Nothing she couldn’t handle while part of her brain hit the snooze button and rolled over for a nap. Except yesterday, the heads-up came from HR. A corporate re-shuffle was in progress and they were all expected to do the Hokey Pokey. Put their right foot in and shake it all about when the external auditor came to visit. Ho hum. He would probably be some nerd come to tell them all about how to increase productivity.
The subversive side of her said she should blab about all the issues. They were expected to run a modern website for a top retail store, an Aussie icon, with last century tools. A content management system that was little better than a cobbled together graphics program mashed up with a word processor. No proper database, no proper training. Here she was with a master’s degree in website design and animation like a overqualified monkey with a wrench, tinkering under the hood of a classic car, while she was apparently required to launch a space shuttle into orbit.
She tapped at her keyboard, checking her emails quickly before the meeting. A couple of new messages marked ‘Urgent website issue’ made her groan. “Oh, no.”
