Khent's reply is there, easygoing as he is, like he doesn’t understand what it means. “If you're worried about it, I can pay the security room a visit. I'm sure their system is overdue for a check.”
It tears a new crack in my heart to read, to want to follow that flutter of hope and trust him that it’s that simple, it’s that easy.
But if not the elevator, it was going to be somewhere else. A janitorial closet, the parking lot, in my office again when someone came by to drop off a report. As long as we were together, we were going to find other ways to deflower office property. One day we were going to slip up in a way we couldn’t come back from, and it was going to be just like it was with James, all over again.
I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like but this is finding new pieces of me I didn't know existed. They're unguarded and tender to pain. I chew my lower lip and peck at the keys, carving out a response.
“It's not just about the camera. That can't happen again.”
Each short response is all I can tear out even though it's not enough to finish the job.
I weigh the familiar feeling of heartbreak against the lesser-known feeling of breaking someone’s heart. I don’t think I’ve really had to do that before.
I hate myself for letting it get this far. Not just for my own feelings, but for how I’ve gotten tangled up in Khent’s life. I feel like I’ve led him on by letting myself give in to the fever. If I had just stayed away from him, he never would have had his heart trifled with, he might have found a mating bond with someone else, someone more deserving of him.
He might have never even believed we were going to be something special because of this bond.
I’ve never had it in me to believe something as earnest and vulnerable as that. This was the direction it was heading all along, after all. It was never going to work out.
I look around my office, eyes sweeping from the test from the phishing training, to the spa receipt stubs, and the little bottle of oil I’d brought home from that day.
Everything I'm going to put in a box to forget about, after.
There’s another ping, another message from Khent. I can almost hear the way he would say it, the quiet surprise in his voice. “No more sharing elevators?”
What I'm about to do is cowardly. I've given a lot more respectful goodbyes to guys a lot less good to me than Khent was. Usually I make a point to do this in person, but I can't see that happening in our particular circumstances. I've never broken up with someone over text or phone before, and certainly never email.
But it was going to hurt no matter what. I could either save myself all the time and feelings that were ever going to happen between me and Khent and end things now, or wait for it to hurt more later.
“No more anything.”
He doesn't respond after that.
I had hoped before when we first got entangled in all this, that I was replaceable, for Khent’s sake. Now I hope the same thing, but it nearly breaks me in half to try.
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