Not Safe for Work

by Nisha J. Tuli

To the person I was and the one I became. It’s never too late if you want it enough.

These men are the Khakis—white hetero men of mediocre competence and undeserved confidence who wouldn’t know their way to a clitoris if someone strung them over a swamp rife with testicle-eating crocodiles.

I’ve spent the better part of five years consciously and unconsciously aware of every move Rafe Gallagher makes. Our close proximity is concentrating that awareness, calcifying it into something I’m not sure how to name.

I scan the deck, definitely not looking for Rafe. He probably stayed behind to chalk pentagrams on the floor of our suite and summon his closest friends from the ninth circle of hell.

“I want someone who makes me feel a little like I’m… burning in the best kind of way.”

What I meant was it’s hard to believe you’re an introvert because you shine in every room you enter.”

“There’s nothing unmissable about you. That’s all I meant. That there isn’t anywhere you could go where everyone wouldn’t notice you.”

Why are there drawings of me in Rafe’s sketchbook? The one from Hawaii makes a modicum of sense, I suppose. We’re sharing a room and can’t seem to get away from each other. I’m an easily accessible subject. But the one at my desk. What is that about? Why did he draw that, and how did he get all the details so right? What stood out the most was how beautiful I became under the strokes of his pencil. Is that how he sees me?

“Rafe, why did you draw me?” I whisper. The silence drags on so long that I don’t think he’ll answer, but then he says, “Because I draw things that are beautiful to me.”

I’ve done a lot of things in the past few weeks that some might call career-limiting moves. I blackmailed my boss and then made out with his son. And I can’t stop thinking about doing it again. The making out. Not the blackmail. Though I’m not ruling it out for future consideration.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he ventures, and I consider making a joke about how I know that, but I’ve done that before, and it always seems to catch men off guard. What I’m supposed to do is pretend I don’t think I’m beautiful and act like he’s the one handing this knowledge to me.