Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (8 page)

“She can divorce me,” he said.  “I could lose her.  I could lose everything.”

Jaime
pr
esses herself closer to him,
hold
s
his head in her hands and turn
s
it toward her face.  “Dodge, listen,” she says, ordering him to focus on her.  “She’s guilty too
.  You don’t have to lose out in a divorce.”

He barely hears her, thinking instead over everything Siobhan’s said or done recently.  Anything that suggests she knows.

She twists herself even more
on his lap, facing him so he can’t see anything but her.

“I can help you,” Jaime
promises.  “I know everything she does.”

He’s just quiet, trying to breathe
.  He can’t concentrate. 

Especially with Jaime crawling all over him like this. 

He’s only a man.

There are people around.

He doesn’t want to lose his wife. 

She can help him.

She
stares into his eyes
,
whispers
.  “Let me help you.”

“OK,” he mutters, agreeing finally, not knowing what else to do, his eyes looking at anything but her.
  “What am I supposed to do?”

Sh
e lifts his head to look up at her
, offers him her best smile.
  “Don’t worry.  I’ll figure it out,” she assures him.  “You know you can trust me.”

This is all wrong. 

But this is not his fault. 

He does
n’t want any of this
. 

“First, don’t go to the office today,” she tells him.  “You’re upset.  She’ll figure out you’re onto her, and we need her to continue
whatever she’s doing
.  So we can get proof.”

“OK,” he says.  “But that’
s going to cause its own set of problems.
”

“
It buys us time, though, to figure something out,” she says.

He nods.

“
Look,
I’ve got to get back
now.  But I’ve got you covered,
”
she promises.

“I know,” he says
, but he can’t keep the fear
out o
f his voice.

She kisses him, quickly, lightly, on the lips.

He doesn’t stop her.

She holds him as they walk away, the caution tape on the broken merry-go-round flapping in the wind.

It’s not his fault people don’t stay on the paths.

*****

Chuck
pauses the mail cart, pretending to sort through a pile of envelopes.  He’s watching the secretary
Jaime
from the
lobby
as she enters the building.
  The blonde who works in the public relations
company.  He do
esn’t care if she notices him;
he
just
wants to watch her.

He knows her name, of course. 
That’s not weird.
  He delivers her mail.  He knows everybody’s names.  He knows all kinds o
f weird details about people.  Magazine subscriptions.  Shopping habits.  There’s a guy who collects vinyl records on the second floor.  Sometimes guitars.  A woman who watches a movie from NetFlix
almost
every single day.  In one day, out the next.

Chuck
knows that is the woman he should pursue
.  She’s lonely.  She lacks social s
kills.  She likes movies.  She seems a lot
like him.

Chuck
lik
es Jaime’s boss, too.  She’s
hot. 
Hotter than Jaime, technically.  Maybe,
depending
on
what you like.  And she’s totally
in charge.  Like any good submissive,
Chuck
longs to be told what to do by Siobhan. 
Sometimes he messes up her mail.  He waits to be hollered at.  He cannot mess her mail up enough.

But Jaime has those curves - t
hose gorgeous curves.
  The way
her shirts - her dresses - drape around her, reveal her shape around her.

Chuck loses himself imagining t
he distance between the fabric
of her clothes
and the valleys of her flesh.

He
foll
ows her i
nto the elevator.

H
e follows her
a lot.

Not just around the office.

Someone’s mail only reveals so much.

He wants so much more revealed.

Jaime smiles at him as he
enters behind her
. 

“Hi
Chuck
,” she says.

She’s friendly with him.  She calls him
Chuck
.  Not Mr.
Chuck
,
no
t
Mail Room
Chuck
.
  Well, she does, but not to his face.  Others do.
They forget it’s not his name -
that it’s what they call him so they don’t have to take him seriously.

Jaime can
call him Mr.
Chuck
.  He does
n’t care.

He just smiles at her, keeps quiet.  There’s no witty line for him to deliver, no catchphrase, no magic saying that will
suddenly make him not Mr.
Chuck
.  He’s a dead end street.  Jaime can do better than hi
m.  Hell, she can have even Siobhan’s
husband.  She doesn’t need him when she has Dodge wrapped around her finger.

“Special delivery for me today?” she asks him.

She’s always friendly.  He knows he should be normal.  J
ust talk to her. 

To talk
,
or to stalk? 

That is the question. 
Chuck
is
no Shakespeare. Hell, he’s
crazier than Hamlet.
 
He’s only making this awkward now.  He shouldn’t have chased her into the elevator.

Finally, they hit the third floor, and the door
s open.  Jaime steps out.  It’s his
floor, too.  The elevator is only going back down.  But he can’t follow her out, he just stands there.

The doors start to close.

“Ms. Tu,” he finally says, in the last second.

But she just looks back at him and flashes hi
m the huge curve of her smile, a
nd winks.

She knows.

He lo
ves her.  He loves her.  He loves her.

*****

Siobhan
is really starting to wonder where Jaime is wh
en she finally walks into the
office suite.

It is very unusual for her to be absent.

It worries Siobhan.

Jaime is reliable.  But she’s not trustworthy.  It has taken Siobhan a long time to recognize this distinction.

It means that if Jaime is not doin
g what you want her to
, she might be doing what you fear she is doing.

What Siobhan fears Jaime is doing is Siobhan’s husband.

Literally or figuratively.

She trusts Dodge.  H
e has, really
, everything to lose.  Men would kill to get Siobhan in the sack.  She knows that for sure.  He has a fortune at his fingertips, and zero re
sponsibility. 

She knows he’s a
loose cannon.  He’s like a little kid.  He’s
too wound up.  He’s reckless.

That’s Dodge. 

But she could never love another man at this point.  She’s never met another man with his inspiration, or his passion. 
Simply put, she needs him in her
life.  Otherwise, it’s all work for her. 

Dodge is everything she wants to be.  And since she can’t let herself be like him, she’s determined to make sure
he’s always with her.

But Dodge is insecure.  And that’s Siobhan’s fault - she provides everything for him to make sure he can’t leave her, and then he feels like a failure because it’s not him providing for her.

People are crazy.

He should feel like a god.

So she wants to put him to work.