The Day I Was Left Alone in My Boss’s Office

After several months helping Don Ernesto with his business, I decided it was time to look for something more serious, something office-based, with set hours and real projects. I sent my résumé to half a dozen studios without getting a single response. Weeks went by, and I started to resign myself to the fact that no one would call.

Then, one afternoon, my phone rang. It was a guy named Rodrigo, an architect who said he’d gotten my number from a mutual acquaintance. He had work for me, or so he claimed, and set up a meeting for the next day. I had nothing to lose, so I showed up on time and ready to give it my best.

Honestly, my first impression of the place was anything but professional. I expected an office with floor-to-ceiling windows and blueprints hanging on the walls; what I found was an old house right in the center of town, with peeling paint and a doorbell that barely worked. This can’t be an architecture studio. But I was already there, so I knocked on the door.

A tousled guy in shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt opened the door, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. He looked like anything but the owner of a business. He introduced himself as Rodrigo, shook my hand with a half-asleep smile, and invited me in to what he called his office.

He explained that he’d been out of school for a couple of years, that he was just starting out on his own as a freelancer, and that he rented the house to use it as both home and studio. While he talked, all I could think about was how to make my escape with some dignity. But when he started telling me about the projects he had underway, something changed. They were real jobs, ambitious ones, exactly the kind of experience I needed.

He asked me the standard questions, or what he considered a job interview, and after half an hour we reached an agreement.

—Welcome, you’re hired. You start Monday —he said, as if he were doing me some huge favor.

It was Thursday afternoon. Before I left, I asked him about the dress code, half joking, because he was practically greeting me in pajamas. He laughed and told me I could come dressed however I wanted, unless he gave me plenty of notice about a meeting with a client.

***

The following weeks were better than I’d imagined. I liked the work, I learned quickly, and above all, my relationship with Rodrigo kept growing closer and closer. We talked about everything: life, music, food, the little stupid things people think about when they share eight hours a day with someone in a quiet house.

And I’m not going to lie: I started feeling attracted to him. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world, and he didn’t have a model’s body, but there was something about the relaxed way he carried himself, the way he focused on the screen, that undid me. I found myself thinking about him after hours, making excuses to get closer to his desk.

I noticed details that before would have gone completely unnoticed. The way he rolled up his T-shirt sleeves when he started drawing, the way he bit the pencil while thinking, the line of his neck when he stretched his back after hours in front of the plans. I’d get home and still have him stuck in my head, and more than one night I closed my eyes imagining scenes I would never have dared tell him about.

So I started playing. I brushed against him when I handed him a drawing, twirled a lock of hair around my fingers when he talked to me, let double-entendre comments slip out to see if he’d react. I wanted the tension to build, I wanted to see him hesitate, to throw him off balance even for a second. He’d smile, sometimes blush a little, but he never made a move. And that restraint made me want him even more.

***

One Tuesday he left me alone in the office all afternoon. He had an important meeting with a client on the other side of town and asked me to finish a few details for a delivery due the next day. I closed the door behind him and got to work, but the hours felt endless. When I finished my part, there was still a long while before I could leave.

Boredom is dangerous. I started wandering around the house, nosing about without any bad intentions, opening drawers, looking through shelves. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, just a couple of condoms forgotten at the bottom of a drawer in his bedroom that made me smile. So the reserved guy has a few surprises.

Resigned to dying of boredom, I came up with a much worse idea. I went back to his desk, sat in his chair, and opened his computer. The screen didn’t have a password, which was practically an invitation. I opened the browser and checked the history, expecting to uncover something juicy. Nothing. Cleaner than an operating room.

Either he’s a saint, or he doesn’t look at anything at all. I found it incredible; even I, who consider myself discreet, look through my own stuff every now and then. But curiosity had already won, and I wasn’t about to give up that easily.

I moved on to the folders. Most of them were work folders: budgets, invoices, renderings, scanned contracts. Dead boring. I opened one after another with little hope, like someone leafing through an old newspaper just to kill time. Until, near the end of an endless list, I found one with a name that didn’t fit the rest: “old photos me.”

I stared at that name for a good while, the cursor hovering over it, torn between closing everything and going on. I knew I was crossing a line, that it was none of my business, that if he found out it wouldn’t just be the flirting that would end, but the job too. But curiosity weighed more than common sense, as always when it came to him.

My heart gave a leap. Worst-case scenario, I’ll see pictures of him; after all, he never posts anything on social media. I clicked, convinced there would be nothing compromising. What a surprise I got.

From the very first image, a shiver ran through me. The hairs on my arms stood up and I felt heat rising up my neck. They weren’t vacation photos or family pictures. It was him, completely naked, in front of the bathroom mirror I recognized as the one in the house.

He didn’t have a Greek god body, I already said that, but something about that image left me breathless. Maybe it was that I’d spent weeks wanting him in silence, maybe it was just the shock of seeing him like that, without the armor of the wrinkled T-shirt and the glasses. Whatever it was, I caught myself biting my lip, unable to tear my eyes from the screen.

I went to the next photo. And the next. Each one left me hotter than the last. I could feel myself getting wetter, a warm pressure between my legs that was hard to ignore. I looked at the closed door, the clock, the empty house. I was alone. Completely alone.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I put the images on slideshow, one after another, and leaned back in his chair. I slipped one hand under my blouse and found my nipple already hardened, so tight I could feel it against the fabric of my bra. I pinched it slowly, imagining it was his fingers, his mouth, his teeth.

The other hand went down on its own. I unfastened my pants just enough to slip my fingers inside and sank them in while the screen kept changing. I fucked myself imagining it was him, that it was that part of his body I now knew by heart. Each new photo tore a sigh from me that I had to bite back so I wouldn’t fill the house with my voice.

Then, in the middle of the sequence, a video started playing. Him, alone, jerking off in front of the same camera. Seeing him move, hearing his ragged breathing through the tiny speakers, was too much. I quickened the pace of my fingers, matching him, determined to finish right when he did.

I let out one of the strongest moans I remember. I arched in the chair, legs tight and my heart pounding against my ribs, while on the screen he came with an intensity that only made me wish it had been on my skin and not on his.

***

And right at that instant, when my thighs were still trembling, my cell phone rang on the desk. The shock of seeing his name lit up on the screen cut off my pleasure at once. For a second I thought he’d found out, that somehow he knew exactly what I had just done in his chair, with his photos.

I took a deep breath, straightened my clothes with trembling hands, and answered.

—Hi, Rodrigo —I said, and my voice came out weaker than I would have liked.

—Are you okay? You sound weird —he replied, with a tone that was part curious, part worried.

—Yes, yes, I’m fine —I lied—. I just got scared by the ringtone, that’s all.

—Well, I’m just calling to let you know the meeting ran long and I’m not coming back today. Lock up when you’re done and I’ll see you Monday —he said, oblivious to everything.

—Sure, don’t worry. See you Monday.

I hung up and sat there for a while staring at the dark screen, my body still vibrating and my breathing ragged. I closed the folder, shut down the computer, and erased any trace of my visit. But something had changed inside me, something I wasn’t going to be able to ignore anymore.

As I gathered my things and turned off the lights in the house, I realized that the silent fantasy I’d been carrying around for weeks had become a certainty. It wasn’t enough anymore to imagine him, it wasn’t enough anymore to have his photos or my fingers.

Monday I was going back to that office. And one way or another, I was going to make sure Rodrigo stopped holding back once and for all.