Page 90 of The Associate
Mechanically, Samuel picked up his fork. The eggs were light, seasoned with just a hint of pepper and fresh herbs. The toastwas crisp, the butter melting into its golden pores. The food was good.
When the plate was clean and the juice glass empty, he set his utensils down with a soft clink. Then he sat. And waited.
The awkwardness descended, thick and suffocating.
What was he supposed to do now? Clear his plate? Offer to wash up? Was he allowed to speak?
He felt like a guest who had wildly overstayed his welcome, a spectator who had accidentally walked onto the stage.
He should say something. Anything. A ‘thank you for breakfast’ seemed grotesquely inadequate. A comment on the article Gael was reading felt presumptuous. His mind scrabbled for purchase, and in its frantic search, it landed on a stark, unsettling truth.
He knew nothing about this man.
Oh, he knew the public facts. Gael Wise, partner at Voss & Wise. A titan of mergers and acquisitions, famously ruthless in court, notoriously private outside of it. He knew his net worth had been speculated upon in legal journals, that his penthouse had been featured in an architectural digest. He knew the man could dismantle a hostile witness with a single, quiet question, and that his approval on a brief was the firm’s equivalent of a papal blessing.
But that was the boss. The myth.
The man beside him, the one who made coffee in soft pants, who had groaned into his mouth like a starved thing, who had held him through a panic attack with a voice of calm iron, that man was a complete stranger.
And shouldn’t that be wrong? Shouldn’t he, Samuel, know more about him than any other associate?
After all, he doubted Alina, or the smug George, or any of the sharp-eyed paralegals had been kissed until they couldn’t see straight. He was certain none of them had been ground against until they...
The memory detonated, fresh and vivid. The feel of that hard thigh. The grip on his ass. The blinding, shuddering release…
Heat flooded his face, a deep, crimson tide that crept from his neck to the tips of his ears. He stared fixedly at the empty white plate, willing the memory away, wishing the polished stone of the island would swallow him whole.
What the fuck am I doing?
The question echoed in the hollow of his mind, familiar and desperate. He was in a golden cage, being fed exquisite food by a beautiful warden, and he had just…surrendered. More than surrendered. He had shattered. He had shown the man every ugly, hungry, desperate part of himself, and now he was expected to sit politely and make…small talk?
“Come on.”
The words, spoken in Gael’s ordinary, low tenor, sliced through the thick air. Samuel flinched, a full-body jolt of surprise that rattled the empty juice glass. He hadn’t heard him move, but when he looked up, Gael was already folding the newspaper into a neat, sharp rectangle. He placed it beside his mug and stood.
All of Samuel’s fragmented, circling thoughts about conversation, about the surreal normalcy of breakfast, evaporated.
He obeyed.
Sliding off his own stool, he followed Gael’s retreating back out of the kitchen, his socked feet silent on the hardwood. The living room lay before them, vast and filled with light that felt accusatory in its brightness. It illuminated every sleek surface, every sharp angle, highlighting the stage where all his undoing had begun.
Gael walked directly to the charcoal armchair and lowered himself into it. One leg crossed over the other, an ankle resting on a knee. His hands came to rest on the arms of the chair, fingers tapping once, a silent, impatient drumbeat.
Samuel stopped a few feet into the room, stranded in the open space between the kitchen archway and the furniture, unsure what to do.
Sit on the sofa?
Remain standing?
Kneel?
The thought was a lightning strike, terrifying and magnetic. The dark cushion before the chair was an open mouth, a destination.It’s where you belong, his traitorous body whispered. It was where he had been forged into something new. To go there now, in the sober, light of day, felt like the most honest and the most impossible thing he could do.
He hovered, a leaf caught in opposing currents, his body vibrating with indecision. His eyes darted from the sofa to the cushion to the floor, a frantic, silent plea for a sign.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Gael’s voice cut through his paralysis, dry and observant. “Sofa is fine.”
