Drowning Erin by Elizabeth O'Roark

Author:Elizabeth O'Roark [O'Roark, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780989813563
Published: 2017-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

41

Erin

Present

Sleeping with someone you’re not supposed to sleep with is an awful lot like breaking a diet. Once it’s happened, it’s pretty easy to justify breaking it again. It’s tempting, in fact, to scrap any attempt at discipline at all.

I woke up later Sunday morning to catch the airport shuttle. Brendan was sprawled out on his bed, asleep, with his door wide open. That was the first moment I thought one more time wouldn’t hurt. I’ve thought it about a thousand times since.

I can’t act on it, of course, because Rob trusts us. We need to stop while it remains an accident—granted, an accident that occurred seven times. Except even now that I’m home, Brendan looms so large in my head it’s as if there’s no room to want other things. Sleeping with Brendan was supposed to cure me of the desire to sleep with Brendan. Instead it has opened up some bottomless well inside me, one bubbling over with dangerous urges and possibilities.

Timothy drones on endlessly about the importance of branding during the Monday meeting, and I only hear the way Brendan’s voice grows raspy just before he comes.

I spend lunch thinking about the cocky way he sits, leaning back in his chair with legs spread wide—as if he’s just about to demand you get on your knees and finish him off. I’ve fantasized about doing it more times than I can count. Now it’s just another missed opportunity, one more thing I should have done Saturday when I had the chance.

I’m still thinking about Brendan when Timothy stops by my cubicle. It’s hard not to scowl openly at him. Going from fantasies about Brendan to the reality of Timothy is a difficult transition indeed.

In his hand is the only completed piece for the new branding campaign, a postcard featuring the cringe-worthy tagline Timothy insisted upon: ECU: A Place to Know, A Place to Grow, which sounds like the title of a Dr. Seuss book. He throws it on my desk like it’s an accusation in and of itself.

“I was surprised you weren’t here on Friday, Erin,” he says, lips pursed.

I sigh heavily. I knew this was coming. “I told you I was going to Tahoe. You signed my leave slip.”

“I thought you’d just be gone Thursday.”

Who takes a long weekend by going away Thursday and coming back Friday? I pull the document out of my drawer. “The form clearly stated I’d be gone both days.”

He doesn’t take it from me. “Well, this project is important, and you deciding to take off and miss a meeting does not signal commitment to your job.”

You have got to be shitting me. I know people who didn’t finish high school, yet make more than I do, and I routinely work 50- to 60-hour weeks. I don’t know if my Brendan-focused lust has left me unable to give a fuck about anything else in my life, or if it’s just four years of outrage welling up inside me, but I’ve officially had it with Timothy’s shit.

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