Now I could see that Owen was actually looking at me, taking in my face, legs and bag in a neat inventory of my personal “assets” (if you could call them that). I looked over at him. His arms were folded across his chest. He nodded at me and offered a “Hey.” I turned redder with a “Hi” in reply and went back to my screen.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yup”
“Good, good.” He paused and leaned further back in his chair. “What you up to? Aside from typing, obviously”
“Oh, I’m busy fucking up an essay that has to be in by Friday”
“Going well then?”
“Suprisingly no” I laughed.
“Well, it sounds like it is going well, in that you’re fucking it up”
“Yeah, I’m good at fucking stuff up. Fucked up, that’d be me”
He smiled and picked at a non-existent loose thread at the bottom of his shirt. I could see sandy fuzz above his waistband and immediately I slapped a steel lock across my thoughts trying to prohibit any further internal elaboration. Of course that never works and impure thoughts flooded through me as I flicked across his features. He simply sat there coolly with a slight grin on his face. I could practically see the cogs working behind the intense look in his eyes. I coughed and shifted from side to side in my seat, adjusting my skirt and pulling myself up taller. I was buzzing. I felt so uncomfortable. All this flirting was causing my brain to have severe difficulties functioning. How very pathetic. I thought women were supposed to be able to multitask.
I queued more junk, hauled myself up and over to the printer, collected it all up and inserted myself back into the hot seat. Still he sat observing me. I picked up the paper and felt for the folder again, trying not to look at Owen and consequently losing my grasp on the stack, the sheets sliding out onto the floor. Bollocks. Trying to be cool and fucking it all up in front of the one person I did not want to look a fool to. I dumped the rest of the pile back on the desk and reached for the errant sheets, at the same time nearly colliding with Owen. I swerved in avoiding action, blurted out a flustered “Sorry” and realised Owen was using my ankle as a handhold as he picked up a sheet from underneath the desk. He narrowed his clear sky eyes as he brought up the stray sheet and placed it on the pile. At the same time running his hand in one sweeping, nerve frying movement across my skin all the way up from my ankle to my knee. Thank goodness I remembered to shave. He held onto my knee, spun me round and pulled me in.
Our chairs bumped gently together as we became enthusiastically anoxic.
Part three later.
