I had slammed my driver door and started over toward Coworker, who was leaning against his car. In the harsh blue light of the floods mounted on the building we had parked behind, his face was half in shadow. But I could see the grin. The way his eyes traveled over me as I made my way over to him. It was drizzling. The fine mist had swirled around him like the smoke around a magician.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, half laughing as I took in the rusting steel dumpster, burgeoning with boxes and the stained cement block and shabby steel doors of the building.

He had shrugged. “You said someplace close, and someplace private. This fits the bill.”

I had made a dramatic show of looking around. “Behind a TJ Maxx?”

“Relax. There aren’t any cameras back here.”

“It isn’t that.”

He had sat on the hood of his car, which dipped under his weight. He put his feet up on the bumper, and the soles of his chukkas squealed softly against the damp surface. He had looked at me as if studying. “Then what is it? Is it not a romantic enough venue for you, Mr. No Names?” His voice had been low. Teasing. The light had raked across him, casting minute details in exaggerated relief: the cuff of his pants, the fuzzy grain of his shoes, and between, the twin bands of soft, shimmering pink at his ankles.

That this sight intoxicated me was nothing new.

I was thirteen when my older brother had walked into our shared bedroom and caught me tugging repeatedly at the crotch of my slippery nylon running shorts with a vengeance. I sat, frozen and horrified as he came to stand at the foot of my bed, a hand on each post in a Last Supper pose, a knowing smirk on his face.

“Don’t stop on my account.” He had winked.

Devin could always shrug off a host of activities as typical teenage behavior—especially that which he had engaged in himself. It had always made him an ideal roommate…almost. In spite of his typically laissez faire approach to elder brotherhood, I had intuited even then that I probably couldn’t confide the fantasy behind the act—that I was thinking of Mr. Slater, the gym teacher, and his black Adidas Sambas sinking into the wrestling mat as he spoke to our class about form, rather than, say, Kirstin Wilcox, who sat in front of me in homeroom.

Devin had rummaged in a drawer for a moment before coming up with an item that he tossed at me, which struck me softly in the chest before tumbling limply to rest on my busy hand. A white tube sock. I had glanced up at him questioningly.

“Try using that when you wax your carrot,” he had said simply, and turned to leave.

“Then what?” I asked stupidly.

Devin had paused at the door. “Then throw it in the wash, doofus. I’ll leave you to it.” Another wink, and he was gone.

Even though he had only done what countless older brothers, neighbors, friends, and cousins had done for their teenaged comrades, Devin had unwittingly planted a seed that day, which took root in me with such ferocity that it has since wrapped its tendrils around every part of my sexual existence. Because as I had stretched the ribbed cotton sheath around my youthful self and resumed my “private time,” Mr. Slater’s white crew socks suddenly became the center of my fantasy. With laser focus, my mind’s eye had traced the lazy way they bunched at his ankles behind the tall, proud tongues of his sneakers as the soft knit material caressed me.

It was with such an aching bliss that I emptied myself into the sock that day that I grew desperate to find it again. I experimented with every kind of sock I could get my trembling hands on. Dad’s were always the best. Time and time again I snuck into my parents’ room to pilfer a neatly folded pair of trouser socks from the tall boy dresser at his side of the bed. My favorites were black with gold fleurs de lis—the distortion of the pattern as I stretched them and butteriness of cashmere against my skin cracked me open more times than I could care to admit.

Coworker’s smug smile had returned. “You’re hard,” he observed. No doubt it had been obvious in that light, with shadows sweeping across every ripple in my pants like the sun does the surface of the moon. He heaved a shuddering sigh and ran his hand between his legs. “You want this.”

I hadn’t felt the need to compare our definitions of ‘this.’ “Of course I do,” I had murmured, stepping up to the car and placing my hands on his thighs. He had responded instantly to my touch, his eyes closing, his back arching, and his own want straining against the confines of his trousers. His shoes gave a small squeak as he shifted back, almost a whimper to echo of his appetite. My own ravenous need to get my hands on him had mingled with the electric thrill of knowing that just my touch held a power over him, just as he had unknowingly had enslaved me.

---

“Shit.”

I glanced up from my laptop. Reese was staring intently at her cell, pushing her hair behind her ear like she always did when she read something that annoyed her. I sometimes wondered if it was some residual idiosyncratic behavior from childhood. I swirled my empty coffee cup, trying to get the last few remaining chunks of ice from my latte to loosen the remaining caramel syrup from the bottom. “Problem?”

“Benson is running late.”

“Okay…” I shook my slowly at her as she glanced up from her screen. The goal was to convey my cluelessness at her meaning, but I overshot and ended up pissing her off. Her expression hardened as she spastically shot her arms out.

“Benson—my sales consult for this entire fucking presentation?”

I put my hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, okay. Calm down. So he’s running late. What’s the problem?”

Reese was already spiraling out. She raked her hand through her hair and started pacing the conference room, studying the carpet tiles.

“He’s got the final figures slides. The plan was for him to plug them in now, but people are going to start showing up in ten minutes—” She trailed off as her phone gave a muffled buzz in her hand. She glanced at it. “Okay. He says he’s got the figures on a flash drive on his desk.”

I rattled my cup. “Flash drive? Geez. Why not use a floppy disc?” I scoffed, leaning back in my chair.

Reese dropped the phone on the conference table, which slapped dully against the glossy faux wood surface. “Why not shut the hell up and grab it for me while I get this set up?”

I leaned forward, folding my hands angelically before me. “Because I don’t know who Benson is, so how could I possibly go to his office?”

Reese was already back in the zone. God, it gave me whiplash how quickly she could shift like that. She was bent over her laptop, the screen illuminating her eyes and giving her a freakish White Walker appearance. She didn’t glance up as she pointed to the glass doors behind her. “Go out these doors to the left, pass the elevators, right at the next cube farm, and then it’s like the second or third office on the left.”

I hated this errand boy shit, but Reese outranked me. “I’m supposed to go into someone’s office, even though I don’t know him, and get something from his desk,” I verified. “Won’t his door be locked?”

She finally paused long enough to shoot me a look that told me I was pathetic. “Just ask someone there if they can let you in.”

I was sure to sigh gustily as I left the room.

The office was a minefield for someone like me, but it wasn’t wholly unfortunate. One could learn to compartmentalize—to detach and take in the view while suspending the emotional reaction until it could be replayed later. Usually this occurred in the sanctuary of my bedroom or my shower stall, but occasionally it couldn’t wait that long. Ashamedly, I had driven from the work parking lot with pants soaked through from impatient exhilaration more than once.

But in this moment, I had a purpose. So no problem, right? With Reese’s sense of urgency propelling me across the third floor, I passed the elevator bank. Like a Frank Lloyd Wrightian compression and release, the narrowed corridor had suddenly folded back, but unfurling anticlimactically into the cube farm she had promised would be there—the soulless institutionalized landscape every American fears will be the setting of their life’s work.

As I turned right and skirted the perimeter, I passed two men conversing in the aisle. One casually leaned against the plastic partition of a cubical, his right leg crossed over the left with the toe of his burnished brogue pressing into a carpet square as if staking its claim. Our eyes briefly met, and almost without conscious thought I performed the flick, nodding a greeting while also studying the gap at his stylish plaid pant leg. There was an unmistakable sheen of high quality cotton at his ankle, the infinitesimal rows of black thread hinting at the caramel skin beneath. Bands of royal purple and forest green formed a grid pattern that served as a terrestrial map of his leg.

As if on cue, my phone gave an irritable buzz in my pocket, and I knew it was from him again.

---

Our fingers tangled as we both fumbled at the button on his pants. When it finally slid free, the crotch of his trousers parted like a seed pod that could no longer contain its fruit. A stripe of damp had bit through my own pants at my chins where my legs braced against the bumper, slick with drizzle. But it was the wet of him on my hand as it snaked beneath the waistband of his shorts that had my attention, a glorious hum pervading me. He had been positively slick with perspiration inside his clothes. I had burned thinking what the inside of his shoes must have been like.

I had lowered my face between his parted legs, wrapping myself in his musk. When I took him into my mouth, he had gasped. I had felt the hood of the car flex beneath us as his hips answered my touch, tasted the salt of him on the tip of my tongue, which I fluttered across his frenulum, heard him moan as he became lost to primal urge. But for me, that had just been the opener.

My hands were attending the main event, which traveled down this legs where I splayed my fingers across his finely swathed ankles. Though I couldn’t see it, I could practically feel the houndstooth pattern on my fingertips. The fabric of his socks glided between our skin as our bodies moved in opposing force. And the further he plunged into me, the further down I roamed, feeling the sticky crevice between his Achilles and the chukka that I had longed explore since I had first laid eyes on him. The leather of the inside of his shoe was as moist as the rest of him.

“God, what are you doing?” he had half moaned, half giggled as his head lolled back. He had sunken back on his elbows, his body sloped like a cradle into which I now had fit perfectly. “That tickles.”

I pulled away from him and looked up. I could see the underside of his jaw, darkening with stubble, and the muscles at the side of his face working as though he was devouring the sensations I fed him. “Do you want me to stop?” I asked through a grin. I knew he was in no place to negotiate.

He rocked his head forward and gazed at me. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he said breathlessly.

---

“Can I help you?”

I had been studying dark office three doors in. I turned to see the owner of the voice approaching. It was Mr. Purple and Green Socks himself. He had a warm smile, but his brow had a wary crease to match the knife sharp lines pressed into his pants.

“Maybe you can,” I said smoothly, pleased at how confident I sounded. “I am looking for Benson’s office.”

He jingled his keys in his pocket nodded at the door. “You’ve found it. That’s Grant Benson’s office there. And you are…?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thrusting my hand out and furnishing name. “I’m here for Reese Caffery. She and—er—Grant were working a project together and he has a component she needs in his office. It’s kind of time sensitive.” I knew that dropping Reese’s name would be the ticket I needed to gain entry. Her no-nonsense intensity was renowned at Meckley—she was not to be fucked with. It worked. His demeanor instantly shifted.

“Ah. Yes. Okay. Nice to meet you.” He pushed the door open and ushered me into the office, placing a hand on his chest. “I’m Cole Ebberhart. I didn’t realize you were with Reese. I guess Grant’s running a little late today.” I surveyed the office as Cole raised the shades. It was certainly nondescript enough—the same faux wood credenza with overhead cabinets stood behind the same laminate topped desk that every other office in Meckley had. A wilted peace lily rested sadly on the sill, a few binders tipped lazily on the shelf. Yet this office was markedly unique. It had a flavor. A smell. It was faint beneath the stale scent of the HVAC and the harsh multipurpose spray the custodial staff used that feigned citrus, but it was there—an unassuming layer of sandalwood and pear and mint and perhaps a little bit of fabric softener. It was a blend of fragrances that had become well-known to me and instantly evoked a visceral response.

The scent of Coworker. I felt myself flush with an excitement laced with apprehension at having peeled back the layer of anonymity between us. Coworker was Grant Benson.

“What is it that you’re looking for, exactly?” Cole asked.

“A flash drive.” I eased behind the desk. The redolence of Coworker was stronger back here, and I vibrated to think that I was occupying the same space that he did each day. I glanced at the kneehole beneath the desk, momentarily basking in the thought of his feet resting there. A brief flash of my father’s socks, the repeating pattern fleur de lis neatly arrayed across Coworker’s ankles sizzled in my mind. God, I needed to settle down.

Cole plucked up a memory stick that had been placed in front of a framed photo and held it out to me. “This, perhaps?”

As I reached for it, my eyes fell on the photo. It was Coworker, alright. Not that I had had any doubt after how much of him I had drunk in over the months. He stood smiling at the camera from what looked to be the gracious front porch of an old farmhouse, looking relaxed in jeans and a polo. One arm was around a woman who was considerably shorter than he was. She wore a flowy, effortless sundress and cradled a girl that looked to be no more than a year old. Coworker’s other hand held onto the collar of a labradoodle. “He’s married,” I murmured out loud, my lips registering the truth before my mind could.

Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Grant? Oh, yeah. For a few years now. Patti’s terrific.” He cocked his head. “So you do know him, then?”

I blinked. “No. Not at all.”