"I can't believe the two of you expected me to be that stupid!"

Suzanne was pretty mad, her hands planted on either side of that artsy desk calendar she got from Karen last Christmas. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and with all the blood rushing to her face she looked like a strawberry blonde snow cone.

I tried to calm her down. "Suze, I know you're ..."

She cut me off pretty quickly. "Trina, I am not quite ready to hear from you, thank you."

Suzanne started rubbing the bridge of her nose, giving me a little time to think. I could still talk my way out of this, and given the quality of the work I'd gotten out of Teron, there was a good chance we could both still have jobs by the end of the day.

I looked over at Teron, who just kind of sat there, looking down at his knees. He had that part time thing, and "bill collectors" were just more opportunities for him to not pick up the phone, so he didn't seem so stressed. Things were very different for me.

Maybe I should back up, see where this all went wrong. I could have sworn we were being so careful ...

* * *

Teron's resume was a notch above a lot of the applicants for the position of Graphic Designer for Altadena Advertising, the little agency that could. I'd been Art Director for Print/Online/Interactive at Altadena for about three years, turning down much more lucrative dot com offers out of admiration for Suzanne Loomis, a kind of iconoclastic legend in the advertising world who walked away from a high-octane vice presidency at Chiat/Day to start her own agency, her way. She was tall, aggressive, smart and talented -- everything I considered myself to be, just a decade older. Given the disintegration of the dot-com economy back in 2001, I was considered one of the smarter players around.

Anyway, I'd been filtering through terrified UCLA grads and lower-level dot-com refugees for a while, trying to replace a very talented designer who'd been stricken by cystic fibrosis and fighting to stay alive. I missed Sarah a lot, but the business world won't give anybody time to mourn their losses before somebody's ready to size you up for a pink slip.

Teron was different -- he'd done the dot-com thing, ending up with really impressive positions with not only a now-defunct company I seriously considered, but also doing a killer stint at Disney before their global purge. His site was a masterpiece of brushed metal and spartan code, with a surprising amount of personal information squirreled away. Teron Taylor was ... interesting.

He came in for an interview wearing a Men's Wearhouse suit and a collar that looked freshly starched. I sat there, listening to him describe his "path as a digital messenger," and I'd have bet that there were sneakers and jeans in the front seat of his car. I really just scheduled the interview to get a look at him and make sure he wasn't some kind of nutjob, a test he passed with little difficulty ... but I have to admit I was attracted to him. He had a few inches on me even if I had heels on, kept his hair shaved down to the skin, and wore these delicate-looking silver-framed glasses. During the interview, he took them off when I asked him about how he managed the stress of being asked for multiple revisions from clueless clients, and when he smiled, with those glasses off ... he was really beautiful. Lucky for me, I was pretty well entrenched behind my clipboard and leaned back in my chair, so he didn't even notice the way I licked my lips as I imagined what his kiss tasted like. Not exactly appropriate subject matter for a job interview.

Cute as he was, he seemed like a real nose-to-the-grindstone kinda guy and I was in serious need for a talented pixel-for-hire in here. He got the job and started a week and a half later.

* * *

"... and I'm most disappointed in you, Trina!" Suzanne finished. While I was reminiscing, it seems she'd launched back into her tirade. Mmm, this was turning into my junior year biology class, with me only tuning in when I heard a word that grabbed my attention. Still, "disappointed" sounds like there's still some room for me to calm her down ...

* * *

Sarah had been working on a kiosk for the corporate offices of Bank of the West when she got sick, and she didn't exactly have enough time to hand the project off to anybody else before she became a grim office memory. I spent about forty minutes poking at the damned thing, installed on a crappy Pentium II box the client insisted on, and couldn't understand how it worked at all. Sarah also had been the only person in contact with the client on the project, since Todd was off honeymooning in Canada. That's where my problem came up.

I was still at the office because I figured if I lingered around long enough, the huge family that lived in the apartment next to mine would have time to get everybody in, babysitting aunts out, and leave me some parking near the building. I got the email from Dolores Maxwell, the rep from Bank of the West at 7PM. As the printout started making its way past the inkjets, I was pleased to see that Teron was still on Instant Messenger from his office account, but I was sad to stick it to him, just a week after he'd started. It looked like we were the last two people in the office, so nobody else would see what a bitch I was about to be.

I walked into the part of the office we call "the pit," a large open field of cubicles separated by department. For some reason, Karen never found the time to put the POI team closer to my office. This always meant a healthy little walk for me that could be heard all the way down the hall, but since she had a lot on her plate between office managing and playing receptionist, I cut her some slack. Everybody at our agency was doing at least two jobs, which often made my little brother call me Jamaican. My sandals slapped against the lime green tile floor, echoing against the walls' beige carpeting.

Teron was bathed in the glow of his monitor as I walked up, typing furiously at some text document. As a longtime veteran of cube farms, he'd brought only what he considered absolute necessities to decorate his space. An "Imperial Conga Line" composed of three-inch-tall stormtroopers and crimson-clad guardsmen boogied just to the left of his phone, which I noticed was set to forward calls to voice mail (Teron didn't do phones very well). His Titanum Powerbook sat just beyond that, turned off but hooked up to the very expensive Netgear ethernet switch he'd also brought in from home and unceremoniously jacked into the network. When our IT contractor Denzil saw that, on his weekly visit, he just chuckled. Next to that was a mini-fridge the size of a briefcase, an office accessory so cool I ordered one for myself after seeing Teron's. Finally an 11 x 17 inch printout was thumbtacked to the wall, with just three words to share: "Fortune Passes Everywhere," Teron's pseudo-Zen motto, cribbed from Frank Herbert. I could just barely hear Jurassic 5's "Improvise" from the headphones hanging around his neck, attached through some complex magic to an iPod on his waist. I remember that he mentioned once how he hated to have wires all over the place.

As I walked up, he didn't even look my way. He rarely looked at me, or anybody else. He didn't talk much either. It's not that he was surly -- we'd had a few conversations, including staying out way too long doing Austin Powers impressions on his welcome lunch, and he was a really interesting and fun guy. He just tended to come to work, do his thing, and leave without a great deal of fanfare.

"Hey, Teron, you're still here," I opened, thinking that a conversational gambit might soften the blow.

"Hey Trina," he responded, still typing, eyes still fixed on the screen.

I was kind of hoping for more of an opening than that, but no such luck. "Uh, look, I need to ask you a favor."

For the first time all week, he turned and looked at me. His brown eyes contemplated me, investigating my own for a full four seconds before he saved his document, closed it and stood up.

"Teaches me to avoid traffic ... this sounds like I'm going to need a snack to soften the blow ..." he joked. He tapped a spot just inside his denim overshirt, keying silence to the iPod's remote hidden in the folds of his Milwaukee Bucks jersey, then opened the mini-fridge and pulled out a Snapple. Opening up the bottle, he leaned back and said, "What's on your mind, Trina?"

I sighed and passed him the email. "Sarah was working on this kiosk thing for this bank while Todd was out on his honeymoon," I started, trying to ease into it. "Well ... before she got sick, she'd agreed to a deadline that she never got to communicate to anybody else. That deadline is Friday. The kiosk has to have seventeen name updates and twelve room corrections by then."

Teron nodded, waving the Snapple around as he thought. "Where's the manual for the kiosk software?"

"That's the weird part ..." I admitted. "The software was downloaded from a company in Colorado. It didn't have a manual, and there's no online documentation. You'll kind of have to brute force a solution."

Teron nodded again, his eyes unfocused as he thought. "So I gotta learn some outlander Windows software from the ground up, eyes closed, fix a buncha stuff by Friday and you're telling me this ... Wednesday night?"

I forgot how much he hated Windows. It was a good thing that his layout sense and design sensibilities were so solid, because Teron actually had a few troublesome idiosyncracies.

"Yeah, pretty much," I said, wincing a little. "If Ellis hadn't quit yesterday, he'd be the one doing this, but now you're the last designer in the department, so I really need you here. Of course the Bank of America style guide gets back burnered, I'll handle them, and I hope this won't eat into your production schedule on the Hyundai intranet site."

Teron shrugged, a kind of effortless gesture that flowed like a wave across him. "It does, but I got it. We're good. I'm on the case." He sat the Snapple down and leaned over, waving his Matrix screen saver away with a nudge of the mouse.

"Thank you so much, I so appreciate you doing this!" I told him, flush with gratitude and pleased I picked somebody professional. It was kind of weird being in the close confines of his cubicle like this. I could smell his cologne -- Chaps, I think. "I'll make it up to you."

He glanced at me again with those eyes, something unsaid dancing behind them, and replied, "It's all good, don't worry about it."

"Really, Teron, you're a prince, because we're really kinda screwing you on this one," I joked. "Normally we like to wait a little longer to stick it to ya."

"Actually, I went through Sarah's folder on the server the other day," he replied, standing up. He was only a few inches away from me, looking down at me with those cognac-colored eyes. "I think I know where all the source files are, so I'm probably ahead of the game."

I don't know what I was thinking, but I reached up and hugged him, saying, "You're so great!" Then, without any kind of forethought or considering the consequences, I kissed his cheek, but misjudged the distance a little and brushed the left corner of his mouth with mine.

My brain immediately started sending me frantic emergency signals. In retrospect, my attraction to him was probably at the steering wheel, down in my subconscious. A couple of seconds passed, with us virtually standing in each other's arms, eyes locked like a mall at midnight. His lips were so soft ... I tried to recover but couldn't manage anything more lucid than, "Uh ... I ..."

He worked his mouth open and closed a time or two, as though the lower half of his face had been told to expect some words but the delivery van never showed. I couldn't stop looking at him, and he was so close, and he smelled so good, and I could just feel the weight of his hands at my waist ...

I closed my eyes and kissed him again. None of that accidental brush of lips jazz this time. No, this time I took his head in my right hand and held myself to him like he was my only hope. His lips gave way to mine smoothly, so softly, as I felt his hands close in on each other behind my back, tracing their way along my waistline. I was wearing this kind of loose rayon top, a floral print thing with those open sleeves, and I could feel it sliding up my stomach as I pressed myself into him. I couldn't hear anything but the sound of our lips discovering each other ...

It had been about seven months since I'd kissed somebody. David and I broke up ugly, with me moving out after coming home early and finding him with my former best friend Kelly. I'd kind of thrown myself into work and my mentee at Dorsey High, avoiding any real opportunities I might have had to date. I now had an amazing DVD collection. I even started ordering groceries from Ralphs.com. I guess I didn't even realize how lonely I was, and I already knew I was attracted to Teron when I hired him. I wonder how much of this I premeditated, and how much was just plain life, happening to me.

It didn't feel long enough, but Teron and I musta been kissing for almost five minutes. Finally I pulled myself away from those butterscotch lips and caught my breath.

"This ... is not good," I managed.

"Not good ..." he repeated carefully.

"I'm your supervisor ..." I reasoned.

"Uh huh," he countered, still breathing heavily. I could still taste the kiwi strawberry flavor of his Snapple on my tongue.

"We work together, we have a professional relationship," I said, trying to tick items off a list of reasons why he shouldn't feel so good against me.

"Trina?" he asked, his voice so precious, like the first beam of summer sunlight after a hard winter.

"Yes?" I asked, eyes turned up to catch his again.

He dug his fingers into my braids and kissed me again, gently winding my hair through his hand and pulling me closer again. He was leaned up against the desktop surface, and our faces were level. I held his face in my hands, the curly hairs of his goatee springy under my fingers, and looked deeply at him.

"Is this what you really want, Teron?" I asked breathlessly.

"Why do you think I work so hard to keep my eyes off of you?" he responded, the taste of him with me again suddenly.

"What about you?" he asked, again suddenly breaking our tactile communion. "This can't be a good career move."

I bit my lip and thought about that a second. He had one hell of a point. I didn't expect him to file a harassment suit or anything, but if word of this got out ...

"I can't lie to you," I started, "from the second you came in, with that ridiculous suit on, I thought you were so cute and so interesting. I don't know if this is a good idea."

I could feel a change in his body, as he began to accept a decision he thought I'd made.

"If this isn't a good idea," I told him, pressing him back down on to the desk's surface, "this will be my favorite mistake." Yeah, i know, too much Sheryl Crow in the 6-disc, I'm a single woman in her thirties, whadda ya want?

We stood there kissing for about ten more minutes before he stopped us again. I'd taken off his denim shirt and was working my hands under his jersey, my kisses tattooed on the tender flesh of the left side of his neck.

"We're ... we're going too far ..." he managed, his neck arched and his hands cupping my behind.

Impulsively, I jerked my head up and asked, "What kind of car do you have?"

He knitted his eyebrows in confusion and said, "Uh ... silver Chevy Impala, I told you that for the parking ..."

I grabbed his denim shirt and put it on. "Get your keys. Come on."

I was so out of control by then. I knew it. All the way down to the basement garage, holding his hand as I rushed ahead of him, I heard the voices in my head. "This is stupid, Trina. You're gonna get fired for this Trina. Think about your career, Trina."

But then I'd get a flash of us talking the day before, debating the value of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars saga while I sipped coffee and he drank another one of those ubiquitous Snapples. I remembered the way his lips curled when he laughed, when we had lunch at the mall his first day. Then I looked back at him, the shadows clinging to him like smoke does to juke joints, his head slightly bowed, those dark eyes staring into me, into me ...

We were in his car for a while ...

* * *

"... and to believe that I am so out of touch that I couldn't see what's going on right beneath my own nose, in my own agency?!??!"

Suzanne was practically yelling. I glanced over at the clock on the wall and saw that this had been going on for nearly fifteen minutes. At this volume, everybody in the office, from Karen at the front desk to Marty back in the dungeons of Environmental Design, had to have an idea what was happening. How long would it take to pack up my office?

"Do either of you have anything to say for yourselves?" Suzanne bellowed, resuming her earlier pose.

I glanced over at Teron. That beautiful, brave fool was sitting forward in his chair, actually about to try and defend me. In the six weeks since that night with the kiosk assignment, I learned a few of the tells he had when he was thinking. The slow forward motion from his seat. The way he'd spin a pen between his fingers. Tossing his head back and staring at the ceiling while organizing the sentences in his mind. He was a very deliberate man, for the most part, and that was part of why I was so dangerously falling in love with him.

"Suzanne, I ..." I started, trying to beat him to the punch. Maybe I could save his job, at least.

"No, no, Miss Robbins," Suzanne interrupted with a wag of her finger. "In our senior staff meetings, you've had ample chance to say something. On girls' night, over margaritas, I believe you had a number of opportunities to disclose. 'Oh, and by the way, that cute designer I hired? Yeah, I'm having my way with him in an ilicit affair!' You could have said that at any time!"

Teron actually got stuck on her calling him cute, as he silently mouthed the word and sat back in his chair. Sweet, deliberate, pie-eating Teron. I swear, I'd never seen a man have such an emotional reaction at a Baker's Square ...

Suzanne stood up straight and crossed her arms, her face all scrunched up with anger. In another circumstance, it'd have been a funny picture, especially with her kind of Lucille Ball-styled blazer. "I guess there's only one thing left to say, then," Suzanne said with a grim finality.

I sank down into the burnt sienna chair and waited for the hammer to fall.

Suzanne leaned down and pulled a box from beneath her desk. "I believe this is for the two of you."

Teron had just as many expressions for his confusion as he did for his contemplation. His left eyebrow jutted upwards and he peered over at me. I shrugged, pushing my braids back and sliding forward.

"Come on, stand up," Suzanne barked testily.

We did, and saw that the plain Xerox paper crate had two flat wrapped objects with our names scrawled in pen on the surface. I picked mine up, and it was heavy. It was the wrong size to be the company manual, which admittedly I'm not the best acquainted with, but shtupping your subordinate is probably in there somewhere as a "don't."

Teron opened his and started laughing. I couldn't understand him being jovial when we're both gonna be scouring job sites in our underwear later that afternoon. I sighed, ignored the recent job on my nails and tore open the wrapper. I certainly didn't expect what I found inside.

It was a plaque -- the same shape and size as the ones we'd just done for the LA Urban League annual dinner, but with some decidely un-community related inscriptions.

Teron started reading his aloud. "Altadena Advertising commends Teron Taylor for his Worst Supporting Actor role in the cornball drama of the Office Romance," he said with a chuckle. "This is ... different."

Mine read "Worst Actress." "Why is he a supporting actor?" I asked wryly.

A voice from the doorway called, "Because we was all so sho' that this was yo' production, miss thing!" I turned to see Dave O'Leary, the world's goofiest copywriter and blackest white man, in the now-open doorway, along with Todd the client rep, Karen, Marty from Environmental ... it was most of the staff, crowded into the hallway, if not all of them.

Snickering heavily, Karen managed to say, "Yes, love, since you're the boss at the office, why shouldn't you be the boss for your bloody playacting?"

"You all knew ..." I realized, smiling suddenly, feeling a thousand pounds lighter.

"We've known probably as long as you have," Suzanne smirked, letting her thin blonde hair fall. "Karen actually scans through the security tapes from the garage."

I gasped and almost dropped my plaque, which sent her into a fresh round of amusement, but she got out, "I watch them on fast forward, and the second I saw you two get in the car and not get out for a few, I decided to erase the whole bloody tape."

I glared at Teron, who smiled and came over to hold me. "I'm just as surprised as you are."

"I actually am that disconnected," Suzanne joked, "you two could have been humping in the lobby for all I know. I overheard Karen and Dave joking about it on my way to lunch one day, and a plan was born."

Teron looked at me and we said it at the same time. "An ... evil plan?" That always cracks us up, and this time was no different.

"Made for each other," Dave joked, throwing up his hands in mock disgust.

"Well, uh ... thanks!" Teron said goofily, holding his plaque over his head like he'd just won a Grammy. A polite body of applause returned, and people started to make their way back to their jobs.

"So, this is okay with you?" I asked Suzanne, turning to face her.

Suzanne smiled and nodded. "You know I loved Sarah, and I am still swinging by every other weekend to drop off care packages, but Teron is easily twice as fast and four times more anal about details. You're lucky he spends all his free time writing short stories, or he'd be gunning for your job."

"Nah, I'm good," he replied amiably, giving me an affectionate squeeze. "I suspect y'all are this crazy most of the time, I don't want any more job than I have right now."

"Must have seen our DVD, _Execs Gone Wild!_" Suzanne joked. "No, seriously, as long as you do your job and you maintain the levels of professionalism that keep me paying you all this money, I'll be fine with you two being together. Just nothing actually _at_ work, okay?"

My mind flashed to Teron under my desk, the day I wore that new mini, and I nodded fast. "No funny business at work, gotcha."

"Then get outta here, get back to work!" Suzanne laughed, flopping down in her chair. "Billable hours!"

"You should be the actress," Teron offered as we were leaving. "I totally thought we were gonna get fired."

Suzanne just laughed and threw a pencil at us, which I let bounce off the door as we left.