The Copy Room Confession

Subject: You are not going to believe this.

Joe,

Okay, are you sitting down? Because you need to be sitting down for this. Do not read this standing up in the hallway with your mop bucket next to you like some kind of sage cleaning monk. Sit down. Okay? Okay.

You know how Tuesdays are my long days? Twelve-hour shift on the rig, then I hightail it across town, grab a coffee that tastes acrid and burnt, and sit through Professor Jansen's psych class from six to nine? Well, tonight is a Tuesday. And I'm telling you right now that this Tuesday did not go the way Tuesdays usually go.

Class let out at nine. Nine fifteen I'm dragging my ass upstairs to the third floor copy room because I left my flash drive in the computer there and it's got my ten-page paper on it. The paper that's due Thursday. The paper I definitely did not finish yet. So I'm muttering to myself the whole way up, which you know is my baseline setting anyway.

And the copy room lights are on.

Now who the hell is on the third floor at nine fifteen at night, Joe? Students are gone. The secretaries left at five. It's just me and the roaches and whatever ghost lives in the vending machine. But the lights are on, so I poke my head in, all ready to apologize to some poor professor, and it's Herbert.

IT Herbert! The guy who fixed my laptop back in October when I swore at it in front of him and he just laughed! Remember him? I showed you his photo on the staff page and you said he looked like a librarian who lifts weights?

So there he is, standing at the big copier with the top open, this huge roll of cables over his shoulder like he's some kind of tech Santa Claus, and he looks up and goes, "Hey, Krystal, right? Paramedic lady." And I swear my brain did a thing it has not done in a good long while, Joe. It went *oh, hello.*

I'm fifty-two years old! I have laugh lines you can see from space and a knee that sounds like bubble wrap when it's cold! And here I am, standing in a fluorescent-lit copy room at nine fifteen at night, feeling like I'm twenty-five and my ears are on fire. It was ridiculous. It was embarrassing. It was great!

So he's got this quiet way about him, you know? Not chatty like the other IT guys who want to explain everything. He just works. He asked what I needed and I said my flash drive and he walked over, plugged it in, pulled up my files, all smooth. No fuss. And he's got forearms, Joe. Why does IT have forearms? Who authorized that?

Anyway. I should have grabbed my drive and left. That was the plan. Grab and go. Instead I heard myself say, "Hey, while you're here, can you look at the stapler? The thing has been eating my papers for a month." The stapler! Of all the excuses my dumb brain could generate, I went with office equipment!

He says sure, and I hand him the stapler, and here's where it gets interesting. He's showing me the jam release, and I reach to see what he's pointing at, and his hand brushes mine. Just a brush. Barely anything. But we both felt it and we both knew we both felt it, and nobody pulled away fast the way polite people do. He just looked at me. Calm as anything. And I looked back.

And then I said, "Is it hot in here, or is it just the copier?" Which, God help me, is the worst line ever spoken by a human being. He laughed though. He actually laughed, this nice low laugh, and said, "It's mostly the copier. Maybe a little me."

Maybe a little me! The nerve! I liked it!

So then I did the thing. I don't know where it came from, honestly. Maybe it's turning fifty-two and feeling like furniture at work. Maybe it's you being on nights all week and me missing you. Maybe it's that I've been a responsible adult for so long that somebody left a door cracked open and I just walked through it. But I looked at him and asked, plain as day, "Can I kiss you?"

Because that's how it works, right? That's how we raised the bar in this house, that you ask, and I'm not about to break our rules. And he didn't even hesitate. He said, "I was hoping you'd ask," and I swear my knees went for a second there.

And before you panic, or cheer, remember we have the deal. We sat at our kitchen table back in March and agreed, both of us, out loud, that either of us can say yes to somebody else as long as we ask them plainly, use condoms every time, and tell the other one everything afterward. You said, and I quote, "Just come home and tell me." So this letter is me keeping my half of that deal. Everything in it was agreed before tonight, with you, and I was straight with him that I'm married and that he could say no at any point.

So I kissed him. Up against the paper supply cabinet, Joe. The paper supply cabinet! We were making out next to three reams of legal-size and a box of toner, and halfway through I started laughing because it was so stupid and so good at the same time, and he laughed too, right into my mouth, which honestly made it better. His hands were on my waist and mine were flat on his chest and I could feel his heart going, which meant I wasn't the only one whose body had voted yes on this.

I pulled back for air at one point and said, "I'm old enough to be your..." and he cut me off and said, "Don't. You're gorgeous and you know it." Which I do not know it, mostly, but I liked hearing it so much I let it go. He said he's twenty-nine, by the way. I asked because I'm nosy. Twenty-nine and he kisses with the air of someone genuinely curious about the response, if that makes sense. Present, you know? Not performing.

We stood there kissing for I don't even know how long. Long enough that my coffee got cold on the table next to my flash drive, which I never actually took, in case you're wondering how gone I was. At one point the copier finished its job all by itself and scared the daylights out of both of us and we broke apart laughing like two grown adults, one of whom has varicose veins, caught acting like fools. You know what I mean.

And here's where I have to stop and catch my breath even typing this, because what happened after the laughing, after we looked at each other and I asked the next question out loud with the composure of an adult woman... well. That part needs its own paragraph and maybe a glass of wine, and I've already been typing for twenty minutes and my tea is cold too.

I'll tell you the rest in about ten minutes, because I know you're on your break at eleven and I know exactly where you'll be, and because the rest of this story has an ending you are going to want to hear in person.

Actually, no, I'll tell you the rest right here, because I promised you every detail and I keep my promises. Give me a second. Deep breath. Okay.

But Joe? One more thing before I get to the good part. When you finish reading this, come home. Not at seven like Thursday. Tonight. Because I have plans for you the very second you walk through that door