Chapter One – New Pastures?
(Part Twenty One)
The bar was darkly lit but was very contemporary with dark walls, low lighting, and a funky, multi coloured bar, comfortable soft leather sofas and strong, clean lined tables. ‘I think they were going for a sexy vampire theme,’ I contemplated as I found Sarah tucked away in a corner of the room.
Sarah was a tall (maybe 5”9), sophisticated looking female. She was definitely a female all the other managers and associates seemed to be scared of.
I heard about Sarah yesterday from one of my colleagues who had a dispute with the way she spoke to him about a mistake he made on one of the accounts. Needless to say he did not make that mistake again.
I couldn’t believe she was this hard talking, ball breaking vixen who could scare the men of the office with one stern word; but that’s her profile in our office and I wanted to find out for myself if these were just lies made up by the men who wanted her job.
With an English rose completion, her dyed, sharply cut, shoulder length black hair made her rose cheeks even more apparent, she sat there with a big smile on her face. ‘So glad you could make it. I hope you didn’t mind but I ordered for you already,’ she said gleefully as I examined the huge Mojito she pushed towards me as I sat down and took off my coat.
She was so easy to talk to.
As we laughed about work (especially Ann and her army approach to getting people to do their job), our family lives and relationships, I realised we had gone through 6 cocktails each and I was starting to see double.
On the sixth drink, I realised the joke she told about Angus and his old methods of trying to close a business deal with female associates made my bladder scream and I had to hurry to the toilet.
As I tried to find the toilet and hover above it with precision (well as much precision as possible when your blood may have actually now turned to pure alcohol!) I finally felt the relief which was much appreciated and a semi drunken state of mind came back to me as I composed myself and headed back out.
The bar had got busier when I got back to my table and two men came over with two Martini’s.
One of the men was dressed in a smart looking black suit, dark blond hair, a dark coloured tie and had very chiselled features. The other man had dark brown hair, a grey suit, black tie and was slightly shorter than his friend, but both were attractive.
I straightened myself in the couch and smiled seductively (or so I thought but after six large cocktails you think your doing everything perfectly!), then the blonde haired man put fresh cocktails on the table and said, ‘Hi. We saw you from the bar and you both looked like you were having such a great time we thought it would be nice to join you?’ his friend smiled in agreement. I was just about to answer but Sarah’s mood changed rapidly. ‘Thank you for the drinks guys but we’re actually in the middle of a business meeting at the moment. Maybe next time?’ Sarah answered quickly.
The men smiled, nodded and went back to the bar. ‘Well that was a bit sharp. We haven’t spoke about work in a professional way since we got here. Are we going to start now? I really hope not as I’ve just dribbled some of the martini on my blouse and I really hope she hasn’t seen that!’ I considered as I pretended to brush some fluff off where the martini evidence was.
‘Sorry about that. I just thought we were having such a nice time getting to know each other that it might have been spoilt with the guys intruding. Well at least we got a free cocktail out of it,’ she giggled and although I was still a little perplexed by her reaction, I couldn’t help but join her in the laughter as we finished the cocktails and then decided to call it a night.
As we stumbled to the bus stop, we were laughing uncontrollably at how we were going to cope with the hangovers at work tomorrow. ‘Well this is my stop. Looks like it’s only gonna be 2 minutes…funny that, I think that’s what my last boyfriend did when we last slept together,’ I blurted out before feeling a flash of embarrassment.
There was an uncomfortable second of silence before Sarah looked at me shocked and then started to laugh loudly again.
We could hear the bus approaching and she waited with me whilst it came. The doors opened and the other passengers made their way onto the bus. ‘I’ve had a fantastic evening Neets. You’re such a great girl. I hope we can do it again soon. Maybe I could take you clubbing? I’m glad you’ve joined the company,’ she expressed as she closed in and gave me a drunken lunge hug. ‘That sounds great. I’ve had a great time too and I’m defo up for clubbing. You can be my new work’s party partner,’ I laughed.
However she didn’t laugh.
Instead she backed away and had a serious look on her face.
‘Oh no! Did I say something to offend her?’ I tried to think, as the past seven cocktails were now on the final level of blurring my thoughts.
Just as I was going to apologise for something I might have said to upset her, she put her hands on my face, tilted my head and leaned in to kiss me.
‘What the hell is going on here and why am I not pulling away?’ I screamed in my head.
The kiss was soft, passionate and actually very nice. It started off slow, with our mouths closed, with small movements then after a few seconds the pressure increased until I pulled away when some teenage boys started to wolf whistle as they entered the doorway, ‘I…I have to go now,’ I stuttered as I walked quickly onto the bus.
The doors closed just as I got on and I stared at a shocked looking Sarah standing alone at the bus stop.
‘Am I gay?’ I asked myself all the way home.