Blackout

Gen felt sexy now every time she put on high heels. After the night she had spent with Trace, and how he had worshipped her feet made her think differently about them when she touched them.

Her phone vibrated, and she picked it up to see who was texting her.

Kevin.

She dropped the phone. Seeing his name made her arm go numb. She could not feel anything, but she saw nonstop dialogue boxes on the lock screen of her phone. The tears fell down her face and splashed on her feet with the frequency of the texts. Gen knew she could not pick up the phone and text him. It had taken her this long not to text him, not to give in when he offered an olive branch because, with him, it was manipulative.

He was not safe for her.

It was not until much later, when she was at work, that she opened her text messages app and deleted his messages without even seeing what he had written to her because it didn’t matter.

She could not go down that road again with him.

Kent walked by her desk with a new MacBook.

Her eyes widened as she looked up at him.

“This is your new MacBook Gen,” he said, looking at her with a bright smile.

“Nothing is wrong with mine?” she questioned, shaking her head as he reached for her old one to hand her the new one.

“I was instructed to give you a brand new MacBook by Stu,” he said, and Gen shrugged.

She was not going to complain about a brand new MacBook.

Kent helped her to transfer information to the new laptop. Sitting close beside her at her desk, their thighs touched. With the new awareness she had of him after the last time they hung out outside of work, Gen pressed her leg close to his before moving away. He did not even seem to notice. He was in his element when he was able to geek out with a Mac, which was his preferred operating system, as was hers.

“Thank you,” she said to him, as he took the old laptop and she started to work on the new one which felt different and better.

“Of course,” he said. “I told Stu that you were a power user and that if new laptops were being distributed, you needed one.”

“Pays to have friends in high places!” she beamed.

“I just know how hard you work,” Kent said, looking down at her and did his eyes linger a bit? or was she imagining this? Didn’t she have enough men jugging at the moment? She did not need to imagine her work husband wanted anything more with her.

She smiled at him, and he nodded, walking out of her office.

Gen carried her new MacBook home like a brand new baby on her shoulder when she went home that night.

Walking past the cafe on the corner where she had hung out with Kent, she could have sworn she saw Kevin.

She did see Kevin, and the second he realized she saw him, he got up and took her arm.

“Gen — ”

And then she blacked out…

This is the sixteenth story in a series. You can read the first one here and the last one here.