But at the same time, I realized I had no right to do so. After all, I was the one who kept running away and avoiding giving her any sort of commitment whenever she hinted at it.
“A smart woman doesn’t wait around forever,”my mother would say to me when I was a teenager.
She had advised me when I find someone who I thought was worthwhile, I should waste no time in making sure that they were mine. But it had been more than two decades since she had given me that advice and I was not young blood anymore.
“Get a hold of yourself,” I said, trying to relax my muscles that had tensed up so badly.
Kathy was special. But I couldn’t let her control my emotions like this. So what if she has a date? I tried to push the thought of her out of my head, trying to convince myself that I was not jealous of Kevin kissing her and having a date with her later today.
It’s Kevin. He will probably bore her to death within the first five minutes.
I turn on the monitor of my computer and turned my attention to the tasks I had planned to get to before the end of the day.
No more thinking of Kathy.
Taxes. Balance sheets. Investments. Meetings. Profit margins.
I tried to rack my brain for other possible things to think about. But somehow, even something as mundane as ‘taxes’ led me straight back to thoughts of Kathy.
There was no escaping from her.
“Kathy?”
My head snapped up at the sound of my office door opening after a knock. To my embarrassment, it was my secretary standing there in front of me.
Great, I had begun to see her hallucination when she wasn’t even there.
“Sorry,” I muttered under my breath. “You can come in. I was just expecting Kathy to deliver some work to me, so her name slipped out.”
“I just wanted to give you this file,” she smiled at me sweetly and placed it neatly in the corner of my desk.
“How’s everything out there today?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
The truth was, I had all but exiled myself in my office ever since I had overheard Kevin this morning. I didn’t trust myself to go out, lest I run into him and end up causing a scene.
“Everyone seems to have fallen back into the work schedule. It seems that the team building session this weekend was a hit,” she told me, smiling appreciatively.
“Great,” I replied. “That’s what I want to hear.”
“Of course, there is something else as well,” she pursed her lips, “But I don’t think it’s important enough to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an office gossip, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously,” she started off with a disclaimer, “But apparently, there is news that two employees have broken the rule of not dating co-workers.” My heart sped up as soon as she finished telling me. I knew exactly who she was referring to. But I still tried to appear clueless, hoping to glean as much information out of her as possible.
“Oh, would you happen to know who they are?” I said with an eyebrow raised.
She bit down on her lip. “One of them is Kevin, and the other…”
“Stop,” I waved my hand in front of her to dismiss her. “On second thought, I have a lot of work to go through. Let everyone know that I am busy for the day and not to disturb me.”
She looked a bit perturbed at the random timing of her dismissal but nodded and left me alone promptly. So, it seemed that my worst nightmare was coming true after all. Kevin clearly had a big mouth and he had been chatting away to everyone about his date with Kathy.
I felt possessive instinct take over me and almost called Kathy in to make her call off her date with Kevin. But before I could press the call button, I stopped myself and took a deep breath.
The news of their date was too fresh for me right now and I was clearly having a hard time controlling my reaction to it. I paced around the room and concluded that being in the office was not helpful for my mental health right now. I decided to take an early day off.
“Oh, and do me a favor?” I told my secretary before I left the office. “Make sure Kevin gets extra tasks and works overtime today.”