Slice of Pi 2 (11 page)

Owen tried not to roll his eyes. He was the one who had emphasized communication. “Yes, it's really all right. I'll let you know if it's not.” He had never played with actual denial. Sometimes he held off his orgasms as long as he could, riding the edge of pleasure, but he'd never made himself come to a complete stop once he got there. “I imagine it would be uncomfortable if it happened for too long.”

“Uncomfortable, but no permanent damage?” Iris's smile was back, just a small upturn of her lips.

“I'm worried I'll slip up and disobey. Go too far accidentally.” Owen put an arm over the back of the couch. “You know, come without permission.”

“Well, I could always punish you.” Iris licked her lips, a slow drag of her tongue. “Do you like the sound of that?”

Owen nodded deliberately, keeping eye contact. “I'd like that very much. Are there any times I shouldn't text you? Like when you're at work?”

Iris shrugged. “My phone is always on me. I might not be able to get to you right away if I'm in a meeting, but that wouldn't be a problem, right?”

“No, it wouldn't.” He smiled, excited and nervous in equal measures at the prospect. Despite the mixed emotions, it felt good to know there was more play ahead.

Iris's expression was hungry, as if she wanted more right that minute, but she just nodded. “Okay, then. It's a deal.”

7 

Iris got ready for
work in a fog on Monday morning. She hadn't slept well, waking up every hour or so feeling like it was time to go to work, so when her alarm actually went off she felt unrested and groggy. Plus, her entire night had been plagued with unsatisfying sex dreams, despite the incredible orgasm she'd had with Owen and the additional one she'd given herself after he left for the night, thinking back over their shared experience earlier that day and what was yet to come.

Even though she felt unrested, the prospect of this new experience with Owen was enough to make her smile on the drive in to work. How long since she'd been this excited about anything? She finally felt like she had something fun in her life, rather than the same old routine, and she couldn't wait to explore it. But no, she had to pace herself. It would be easy to get caught up and confuse her feelings for the new experiences with feelings for Owen. Even if she
did
develop feelings for Owen, she'd learned that relationships were not her forte. There were so many reasons why commitment was a bad idea. She had learned too many unhealthy habits from her parents, and she didn't want to repeat their mistakes. Plus, the idea of giving up her independence made her squeamish.

She hadn't always been this way, of course: despite her parents' toxic marriage, for years she'd clung to the hopes of settling down with someone special. First it was Malik, in her sophomore year of college, who had been her one-and-only from September all the way through May. He was sweet, devoted, affectionate, and completely milquetoast. She wanted desperately to love him, but when he started to drop hints about marriage, she balked at the prospect of spending the rest of her life with someone whose idea of excitement was ordering a different special from the local chain restaurant every Saturday night. After that, she'd gone to the opposite extreme and had spent a wild few months with Dylan, a divorced guitar player in his early thirties who turned out not to be as divorced as she'd thought, putting a swift end to that arrangement. She'd pushed through a string of bad first dates into a few short-term relationships, but either there was no spark, or the spark came with a price: jealousy, control issues, insecurity, or the overwhelming urge to make her into something she wasn't. By the spring of her senior year, she'd sworn off the bullshit altogether. She was going to live alone forever and that was that.

But then she'd met Mike.

Iris sat in the parking lot for a few moments, letting herself remember what she'd mostly tried to forget. Mike had seemed like The One: a balance of spontaneity and stability, compassion balanced with confidence, and she had fallen hard in no time at all. They'd moved in together after college. They'd had their disagreements, of course, like all couples, but kept coming up against the same issue over and over: sex. Specifically, Iris's desire for more of it, and Mike's insistence that she was asking too much of him. Maybe she was. He accused her of being selfish, choosing her physical needs over her emotional ones, and wouldn't listen to her perspective that they overlapped. There was only so much masturbation a person could do, right? She could have lived with it, put their sexual differences aside, except that over time, he started to make her feel guilty for those needs. She had issues, he said. In his eyes, her upbringing had screwed up her perspective on sexuality, and she was compensating for her sheltered childhood by going overboard as an adult. He treated her high sex drive like something she needed to overcome, baggage she was carrying with her to every relationship.

After six months, she said “fuck it” and moved out. Maybe she
was
full of emotional baggage, but she wasn't about to give up her sexuality for a relationship that she didn't need anyway. She declared “no boyfriends, just flings,” and hadn't looked back since. She was proud to be living the single life, needing no one. Including Owen. She could spend time with him, have hot, kinky sex with him, and remain independent.

At least . . . she hoped she could.

Walking down the long, air-conditioned corridor into the office, she felt an odd sense of déjà vu, or like she was displaced in time. There was a name for that, some foreign word that meant you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she couldn't think of it. She felt like she had changed drastically since last being in that hallway, in that office, but the building itself hadn't changed at all. Had it only been a week since Will had gotten married and they'd all drowned their happiness in champagne and 3
A.M.
pancakes? He would be back today, as would the rest of the staff, as if nothing had changed. Iris, though, felt like she was a completely different person.

And she honestly didn't know whether that was a good or bad thing.

The memo in her in-box notified her that there would be “breakfast and wedding pictures” in the conference room at 9:30, so she had half an hour to catch up with all the documents waiting for her. A vacation was nice, but the rest of the world didn't go on vacation just because PI Games did, and a bunch of the mail was hers to deal with. Her sense of being overwhelmed was only assuaged when she had organized and sorted every piece and made her day's to-do list. She wasn't quite able to finish that task, which would have to wait until after breakfast. At 9:25, she made her way into the conference room with the rest of the PI Games staff.

Will looked tan and happy. Yes, actually tan, which was remarkable considering the guy never got beyond a pasty white, kind of like her. He had had breakfast catered by the diner around the corner, which was so much better than bagels, except maybe Sugar Rush bagels, of course. They all loaded up on hot food while Will started up a slide show of photos from the wedding and their honeymoon trip. No one seemed to mind. Will deserved happiness, and Iris was glad for him, even if it evoked a few twinges of jealousy that surprised her. She'd never thought of herself as the marrying type, not after watching her parents' marriage fall apart and her subsequent failed relationships. It was probably normal to want monogamy and commitment when someone else had it and was so clearly happy. Didn't mean it was the right way to go for her.

When the slideshow ended, people clapped, and Will looked pleased and then held up his hands to quiet them. “Thanks, folks. That's all you'll have to sit through from me! Enjoy your breakfast and take your time getting back into the swing of things today. Caleb, Isabel, and Matthew, I'd like to see you three in my office at ten-thirty to discuss some new game ideas that came up recently
.
Oh, and I hope in all the excitement that no one's forgotten about the Halloween party. Only two weeks away! Have a great day, folks. Good to be back.”

Iris returned to her office soon after, her unfinished paperwork weighing heavily on her mind. The problem with working in human resources wasn't the difficulty of the job. It wasn't particularly difficult, and it played to her organizational strengths. She found it satisfying to make a complete spreadsheet and organize data, even though that realization made her feel a little sick. What kind of boring person liked to organize data? She didn't want to admit that sort of thing to anyone. Whenever people asked why she chose to go into HR, she said that she enjoyed helping people and providing them with meaningful employment opportunities, not color coding files and sorting them into the right places. That sort of enjoyment was embarrassing.

A knock on the open door a few hours later made Iris look up to find Isabel standing there. “Hey, some of us are going to get a late lunch at Philly's. You want to come, or did you already eat?”

Iris checked the clock. Wow, it was already after one. Apparently going out after the wedding reception had broken some ice between her and her other colleagues, since she hadn't been invited to these lunches before. “Yeah, that would be great. Let me grab my purse.”

Philly's was a sandwich place run by some guy who came down to Florida after living in Philadelphia all his life, at least if the story on the wall near the door was true. Iris had been to Philly's a handful of times, and while she'd often seen the broad-armed owner in the window making cheesesteaks, she'd never spoken to him. The story was probably true, though. He had a thick accent that didn't belong in Tampa, where everyone else's accents seemed to melt away in the Florida heat.

Isabel and Iris joined up with Phil, Caleb, and Matthew and headed toward the restaurant. She was supposed to feel equally about all the employees, but she could treat everyone fairly while still knowing that these people were her core favorites at PI Games.

“So how did everyone spend the vacation?” Phil asked after they'd ordered at the counter and pulled into a booth. “Isabel and Caleb? You two have some romantic couple's getaway?”

Isabel snorted. “Family dinner with my parents does not count as a romantic couple's getaway, trust me.”

“But we did get out to Cape Canaveral midweek,” Caleb added. “I hadn't seen it, and Isabel said she'd take me.”

Phil shook his head. “I haven't been since I was a little kid. How was it? Was there a launch? They're renting those launch platforms out to private companies now, right?”

“Yeah, but it was scrapped.” Isabel frowned. “We stayed over nearby to try to see it take off, but no go.”

“The rest of the place was awesome, though.” Caleb's face lit up like a small child's. “You can walk under the whole Saturn V rocket, and they have the shuttle there. The one that was retired—Columbia or Discover or something. I don't remember. You can see all of it. It was really cool. You should go, Phil. Honestly, everyone should go. It's fantastic.”

Iris nodded with the rest of them, her interest piqued. Space, like dinosaurs, was universally cool. She'd have to go sometime. Maybe one of her friends could join her, like Jen, whose kid would probably get a kick out of it. Or she could always bring Owen. Sure, they weren't dating, but he'd probably enjoy it all the same. She smiled at the silly thought.

When she tuned back into the conversation, Matthew was regaling them all with descriptions of a new game he'd played over the weekend, a dystopian survival game that seemed right up Iris's alley. She loved survival games. She loved all games, really, having started playing back in high school when it was a useful way to distract herself from her parents' arguments. Working at PI Games only fueled that addiction. Her coworkers didn't see this side of her, though. She knew they saw her as the HR manager, professional and business-oriented, and how was she supposed to enter a conversation about gaming next to people who made it their career? Personally, she enjoyed the individual challenge of gaming, the continuous desire to beat her best score. When she had nothing else to do, she had her games. Now, though, with Owen, she had a different kind of “score” to focus on. She smiled to herself at the pun.

Their cheesesteaks arrived, and conversation slowed while everyone took time to savor that first meaty, cheesy bite. Iris considered herself a generally healthy eater, but between her indulgences at Sugar Rush and these cheesesteaks, she might need to go vegetarian to compensate.

“What about you, Iris?” Isabel asked through a mouthful of sandwich. “What did you do over vacation?”

“I was supposed to have a friend join me at the beach for the last part of the week, but her kid got chicken pox and she had to bail. I went anyway, though.” Iris bit her sub and chewed. Maybe they'd think she was sad, going on vacation by herself, but she could live with that.

“I wish I could go on a vacation alone.” Phil shook his head. “It's nice to get away from everyone for a while, isn't it?”

“Yes, it totally is.” Iris nodded vigorously. “I'd rather have had my friend Jen with me, since she likes going dancing and all that, but a few days on the beach is better than no days on the beach.”

“You meet anybody?” Matthew asked, leaning across the table.

Maybe she should lie, but she couldn't see the harm in telling them. “Yeah, I hung out with this guy for a couple of days. Nothing serious.”

“Really?” Matthew leaned closer from his side of the table. “Is he cute? Are you going to see him again?”

“Stop being a stereotype, Matthew.” Isabel elbowed him. Out of everyone here, she was probably the closest to Matthew, so she could get away with comments like that. “Iris doesn't have to tell us about her relationship if she doesn't want to.”

“Why, because you never did?” Matthew asked, just at the same time that Iris said, “It's not a relationship.” Everyone around the table laughed.

“What about you, Matthew?” Iris deftly shifted the conversation right back to him. “You have any hot dates?”

“I did not have any hot dates, thank you very much, but I did a little bartending at Gigi's to make some extra cash during the week off.” He started eating his cheesesteak again with focus and intent, signaling that his part of the conversation was over. Iris liked Matthew, even if she didn't talk to him much. He had a great sense of humor and seemed to like the same types of games as she did. Now that she'd breached this social circle, maybe she could move beyond small talk and start talking to him about gaming.