After Hours (InterMix)(22)
“Starts at seven thirty,” Jenny said. “Bring your staff ID—they’ll be rigid, what with alcohol being served.”
“Okay. Sure.” Why the hell not? It was my birthday. There’d be drinks, maybe a cake, and even if they weren’t in my honor, it’d be nice to do something special. Restraint training had been the highlight of my day, and that wouldn’t do. Exhausted or not, I deserved a bit more. I could top getting tossed around and banged up by Kelly Robak. Then I pictured his body, and wondered if maybe I couldn’t.
With twenty minutes to kill, I strolled through campus and crossed the road, headed up to my little apartment and changed into the only dress I owned. Nothing glamorous, but it gave me a bit of a figure, and that was a luxury after two days in nothing but yellow pajamas. As I clasped a pair of earrings, I hoped there’d be wine. Against my better judgment, I hoped there’d be Kelly as well. But he didn’t seem the type to carouse while still basically on the institute’s grounds, nor one to cut loose in front of colleagues and ruin his stoical façade. Though he’d allowed me a glimpse of his after-hours self, at the bar. And surely I wasn’t so special that it’d been some one-time peek.
On the first floor, a series of construction-paper signs pointed the way to the party, in the large basement rec room—the unglamorous venue surely picked for its proximity to work, and because alcohol wasn’t allowed anywhere inside Larkhaven’s gates. I didn’t recognize anyone when I arrived, but I was pleased to spot a motley selection of beer and wine lined up on a ping-pong table; crackers, cheese, veggies and dip, and an uncut cake on the other side of the net.
What I wasn’t so pleased to see was a room full of scrubs. I wasn’t the only one who’d changed, but the majority of the partygoers seemed to have come straight from a shift. Instantly I felt dumb and overdressed, some newbie weirdo in a wrap dress and heels—no matter how short they were—surrounded by sneakers and clogs. The folks who weren’t dressed for work wore jeans.
“You came!”
I turned to find Jenny behind me, holding a gift bag bursting with pink tissue paper.
“Oh, hey.”
“You look great. Trying to put the rest of us to shame?”
I tailed her across the room to a table laden with flowers and presents. I eyed them with envy. It was my birthday, after all. Standing there with no one to realize that fact, I felt lonely, deep down to my bones.
But it wasn’t as though I were used to my birthday being special. My grandma hadn’t been in a state to remember it in recent years, and I considered it a banner year if my mom thought to call. Amber had offered to have me over for pizza and cupcakes, but since I got off work so late and my nephew would already be asleep, I’d asked for a rain check.
I followed Jenny’s lead and poured myself a cup of wine. She introduced me around, largely to staffers my own age. I smiled a lot and forgot everyone’s names, wondering if they’d remember mine or just think of me as That New Girl Who Didn’t Get the Dress Code Memo.
Shyness had me drifting out of conversational orbits twenty minutes into the party, and I was about to up my wine dosage when someone set an empty cup beside mine. I knew it was Kelly from his oversized hand and its misleading wedding band, and my heart thumped as I tilted my face toward his. In an instant, I was drunk.
“You look awful fancy.”
A blush warmed my cheeks and I tried to hide it by filling my cup. “I know.”
“Special occasion?”
I shrugged, looking around to indicate the party. It’s my birthday, I wanted to tell him. Make a big deal of me.
“You promised me a glass of wine this morning in restraints,” he said.
“True. Though I don’t see any funnels.” I filled his cup. He tapped it to mine and gave my body an open, brief up-and-down, at once businesslike and predatory. I took too big a gulp and felt my face burn brighter still.
Kelly had changed, but only into jeans. “How you feeling, after this morning’s workout?”
I flexed my left shoulder and it swore in protest. “Pretty dinged up. Can’t say I’ll be sad when your days of throwing me around are over.”
He faked a jab to his ego and gave me a wounded look, but there was mischief in his eyes. He hadn’t missed the double entendre I’d accidentally lobbed his way. “Be grateful there were gym mats.”
“And witnesses,” I cut back, and yeah, it sounded pretty bad—like we were agreeing things would’ve evolved into something scandalous, had the setting been different. Damn it.