The Glass Ceiling

I felt her before I saw her.

The air shifted in my office, that subtle change in pressure when someone steps through the door. I knew the scent by now. Jasmine and something sharper underneath, like crushed mint. Three weeks of catching it in the elevator, in the hallway outside my office, in the conference room after she'd left. Three weeks of pretending I didn't notice.

"Mr. Ashford? You wanted to see me?"

I looked up from the quarterly reports I'd been staring at for the last twenty minutes without reading a single number. Maya stood in my doorway, one hand on the frame, the other holding a tablet against her hip. She wore a navy blouse, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a pencil skirt that hit just above the knee. Professional. Appropriate. And somehow the most dangerous thing I'd seen all day.

"Yes. Come in. Close the door."

She did. The latch clicked with a sound that felt louder than it should have. I watched her walk to the chair across from my desk, the way her hips moved with that particular rhythm women have when they know they're being watched. She sat down, crossed her legs, and waited.

I had a speech prepared. Something about professional boundaries, about maintaining appropriate distance between management and staff. I'd rehearsed it in the car this morning, in the shower, lying awake at three AM staring at my ceiling. The words were all there, lined up like soldiers.

They scattered the second she looked at me.

Her eyes were brown. Not ordinary brown. The kind of brown that had gold flecks in it, the kind you could fall into if you weren't careful. She had a small scar above her left eyebrow, a white line against her skin. I wondered how she got it. I wanted to trace it with my thumb.

"You've been avoiding me," she said.

Not a question. A statement of fact, delivered with the same calm confidence she brought to every client meeting.

"I've been busy."

"That's not why."

I leaned back in my chair. The leather creaked. "Maya."

"Don't. Don't use that tone with me."

"What tone?"

"The one that says I'm being unreasonable. The one that says this is all in my head." She set the tablet on my desk, pushed it toward me. "I know what I felt. I know what happened in that elevator."

The elevator. Three weeks ago. Power outage, building emergency, stuck between floors for forty-seven minutes. She'd been nervous, her first instinct to joke about it, to fill the silence with chatter about deadlines and quarterly targets. I'd listened, nodded, made the appropriate managerial responses. Then the emergency lights flickered and went out, plunging us into complete darkness.

I don't know who moved first.

But I remember her mouth. The taste of coffee and something sweet, the way she gasped when I pulled her against me. I remember my hands in her hair, the silk of it, the way she bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. We didn't speak. We just touched, and kissed, and pressed against each other in the dark like animals.

The lights came back on seventeen minutes later.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. She got off on her floor without looking back. I went to my office, closed the door, and sat in the dark for an hour trying to figure out what the hell I'd just done.

"I remember," I said.

"Then why have you been hiding?"

"Because you work for me."

"So?"

"So it's wrong. It's inappropriate. I could lose my job. You could lose yours."

She laughed. Not a mean laugh, but a real one, the kind that crinkled her eyes. "You think I care about that?"

"You should."

"Why? Because some HR policy says we can't?" She leaned forward, elbows on my desk, and I caught that jasmine-mint scent again. "I'm not asking you to promote me. I'm not asking for special treatment. I'm asking you to stop pretending that night didn't happen."

"It shouldn't have happened."

"But it did." Her voice dropped, went low and rough. "And I think about it every single day. I think about your hands on my waist. I think about the sound you made when I bit your neck. I think about how hard you were pressing against my thigh."

I shifted in my chair. She noticed. Her eyes flicked down, then back up, and she smiled.

"This is a bad idea," I said.

"Probably."

"We could get in serious trouble."

"We could."

"I have a responsibility to this company. To my position. To you."

She stood up. Walked around my desk. I smelled her before she touched me, that jasmine and mint, and then her hand was on my shoulder, her fingers tracing the collar of my shirt.

"Your position," she said, her mouth close to my ear. "Your responsibility. Tell me something. When you go home tonight, when you're alone in your apartment, who's going to keep you warm? Your quarterly reports?"

I didn't answer.

"I didn't think so." Her fingers found the top button of my shirt, worked it loose. "I'm not asking for forever. I'm not asking for a relationship. I'm asking for one night. One night where we're not boss and employee. Where we're just a man and a woman who want each other."

"One night," I repeated.

"One night. No strings. No expectations. We walk away after, and we never talk about it again."

It was a lie. We both knew it. One night would never be enough. One night would be a door we opened, and once it was open, we'd never get it closed again.

But I wanted to open it anyway.

I wanted to feel her skin under my hands. I wanted to hear her make sounds I'd never heard from her before. I wanted to lose myself in her, to forget about quarterly reports and client meetings and the weight of being the person everyone depended on.

Her fingers found the second button.

"My place," I said. "Tonight. Nine o'clock."

She smiled, slow and satisfied. "I'll be there."

She buttoned my shirt back up, smoothed the collar, and walked to the door. She paused with her hand on the handle, looked back over her shoulder.

"Don't keep me waiting."

Then she was gone, and I was alone in my office with the scent of jasmine and the knowledge that I'd just made the biggest mistake of my career.

I didn't care.

I looked at the clock. Six hours until nine o'clock. Six hours to think, to change my mind, to do the smart thing.

I spent them imagining what she'd look like with her hair down.