Accidentally on Purpose

  Accidentally on Purpose

  Accidentally on Purpose

  L.D. Davis

  © 2012 L.D. Davis

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and situations are entirely a result of the author's over active imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is coincidental. No part of this novel may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

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  Acknowledgements

  I would like thank Evelyn Erndt for her editing skills, big brain, and magic fingers.

  I would also like to thank Brittania Bombardier for her help even though she's mad busy with work and family.

  My thanks also goes out to Christopher Bombardier for his inspiring words and allowing me to quote him.

  I want to extend an enormous THANK YOU to Lorien Vanover for her wicked editing skills, insightful thoughts, patience in waiting for me to finally finish a novel, and most of all, for your friendship.

  Thank you, to my daughter Sarah Boris for your sketches. Okay, sometimes you're awesome. Just think, in another four years, you'll be allowed to read this!

  Finally, I would like to thank my husband Kris for leaving me alone when I'm writing and not freaking out when I went through two ink cartridges in one night to print this out.

  This novel is dedicated to all of my girlfriends. Never accept anything (or anyone) less than you deserve.

  Anyone who can rationalize love through intellect, has no idea

  what love is, for it is an emotion, and cannot be rationalized.

  For love is crazy.

  ~ Christopher Bombardier~

  Chapter One

  I was already plastered when Kyle walked into the bar. He was the last person I expected to see in this small bar, less than a mile from my home. He was the last person I wanted to see. I couldn’t even be an alcoholic in peace.

  Kyle was my boss, and a dick. There was no kind way of saying it, or at least in my plastered mind, there was no other way to say it.

  He looked around, as if he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to be in this hole in a wall. I crossed my fingers, hoping he’d turn and leave, and he almost did. Then he saw me. He hesitated for a moment, but then walked over.

  Oh shit, I thought. God, give me the strength not to break a barstool over his stupid head.

  “Emmy,” he said, sitting himself down in the stool next to me.

  “Kyle.” I surreptitiously took in his dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes while he called the barmaid over. I once thought he was cute, until he opened his mouth.

  “I’ll have whatever she’s having.” He told the bartender.

  “I’m having double shots of Hennessey.”

  “Okay. Great,” He shrugged.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, almost in an accusatory tone.

  “What are you doing here?” He looked at me.

  “I live here.”

  He smirked. “Here in this bar?”

  “I mean I live nearby. Less than a mile.”

  He nodded, stared at the drink the bartender put before him. “I was passing through.” He said quietly.

  “Passing through where? Where were you coming from?”

  “You ask a lot of questions. In fact, I think this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk at once.”

  “Maybe you’re just not listening to my eyes and my facial expressions, because I talk a lot with those.”

  “Really,” He was amused.

  “Yeah. You should pay attention.”

  “What do you say with your eyes and facial expressions?”

  “Depends on what you said to me with that hole you call a mouth.” Another shot was put before me and I took it like a trooper. “Are you going to drink that or are you going to make love to it?”

  He gave me a full blown smile now. I had never seen anything like it on his face before and was a little taken aback.

  “You’re drunk,” he stated the obvious.

  “Yeah, and my intoxication makes you only a little less of a dick.”

  He looked at me, and I looked at him. I had no mute button tonight. He had pushed me to the edge earlier in the day, barking more orders at me than I could keep up with, and then barking some more when I didn’t complete them in a “timely manner” and then barked some more, just to hear himself be a man yelling at a woman.

  “I guess I can’t argue with you. I can’t deny it.” His smile faded and for a moment he looked sad and I felt bad, but only for a moment. He swallowed his Hennessey and his expression had changed.

  “I guess you’re not a drinker,” I said, watching his face contort from the burn.

  “Not much. Bartender, can you keep them coming? For both of us.”

  “You better eat some nuts or something, or you’re going to puke, for sure.”

  Two hours later, I was mopping puke off of my jeans in the parking lot. At least it wasn’t chunky, and I said as much.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kyle slurred. He was looking a little on the purple side.

  “You can’t hold your liquor!” I slurred back. I threw the bar mop in a nearby trash can. I seriously doubted that Lilly, the perturbed bartender wanted the towel back. “I told you to eat some nuts!”

  “Then I’d just be throwing up nuts.”

  “That sounds funny.”

  “It sounds funny when you say nuts, too.” He dug his keys out of his pocket.

  “You can’t drive, Kyle. You’ll kill someone, maybe yourself.” I was pretty drunk, but he was way worse off than me.

  “You hate me anyway. Would it matter if I died in a fiery crash?”

  “I don’t hate you…much. But you can’t drive. I may be drunk, but I know you can’t drive.”

  “Well, how did you get here?”

  “I walked. Just come to my house for a little while until you are sober enough to drive.”

  He thought about it for a moment, and then agreed.

  Walking, I found, can be almost as dangerous as driving intoxicated. Twice Kyle stepped into the street without looking, almost getting hit by angry drivers (in New Jersey, all drivers are angry). He fell in my driveway, and when I tried to help him up, I fell down with him. I wanted to be angry, but I found myself rolling on the gravel, laughing with him, at nothing in particular. It took us a long time to get up and make it the rest of the way to the house.

  We stumbled through the foyer, down a hall, and into the family room. I didn’t turn on the light, because I was too intoxicated to think of something as brilliant as that, and both of us tripped over the coffee table and ran into the couch before collapsing onto it, giggling like little school girls.

  His head rested on my shoulder. His hair smelled edible, like strawberries. In sober times, I would have never allowed any physical contact from a tool like Kyle.

  “You’re such a tool,” I said more to myself, than to him, but he heard me anyway.

  “I know,” he sighed deeply. “But I’ve been okay tonight, though, right?” I could feel his eyes looking up at me, searching for approval.

  “Yeah, you’ve been okay. Almost normal.”

  “I don’t mean to be. I mean I guess obviously I mean to be a dick sometimes, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Life has just molded me that way.”

  “That’s a load of crap Kyle Sterling. You make choices in life. You can choose to be a dick, or not to be a dick.”

  He was quiet. I didn’t know if he passed out or if he was thinking about what I said. After a few minutes he said “You never talk this much at work.”

  “I told you, I say a lot with my eyes and my facial expres
sions.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You keep me too busy for conversation.”

  “You’re different now than you are at work. You barely object to me, let alone call me a dick.”

  “Work is work. Outside of work is outside of work. I know how to be professional.” At that moment, I remembered that I was wearing puke pants. I jumped up and started to undo my jeans.

  “What are you doing?” He asked. Even though there weren’t any lights on in the family room, light from the foyer gave the living room an eerie glow, and we could see each other a little bit.

  “I’m wearing puke pants!” I stripped out of the jeans and turned the light on. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get any puke on my Mom’s couch. She would kill me and bury me inside of the thing.

  After thoroughly searching the couch for traces of puke, I looked at Kyle, who was looking at my underwear with a stupid smile on his face.

  “Who lives in a pineapple under your jeans?” He sang softly. “SpongeBob booty pants!” He ended his little song with a soft slap to my rear.

  I stared down at him, a hand on my hip.

  “You’re a pig.”

  “I thought I was a dick.”

  “You’re a pig dick.”

  “Now we’re going into new and crazy territory,” He laughed and I couldn’t help but to laugh with him.

  I sat down beside him again. Why, I don’t know, when I could have sat on the loveseat, or in the big chair, or on the floor, or on the moon or anywhere else besides right next to an attractive drunk man when I was drunk and half naked myself. I wasn’t seated for more than a few seconds when he leaned over, grabbed the back of my head and kissed me. I kissed him back for a moment, before remembering who and what he was. I pulled away, and when he tried to pull me back, I put a hand on his chest.

  “No, Kyle,” I was saying no, but his kiss was awesome. My lips were getting all pissy with me because I stopped and said no. “It’s the alcohol that’s making you like this. You’ll regret it in a few hours.”

  “Give me more to regret then,” He pushed me back on the couch and kissed me again. I should have stopped him again. I didn’t think he was going to make me do anything I didn’t want to do, but I didn’t stop him. I kissed back and didn’t stop his hands from roaming wherever they wanted to.

  “You’re still a dick,” I whispered into his ear, and then he proved to me what a dick he really was and I hoped my mom would never find out what we did on her couch that night.

  Chapter Two

  At six a.m., the alarm on my cell phone startled both of us awake.

  “What time is it?” Kyle blinked at me. He looked way more sober now, and I guess I did, too.

  “It’s six. I have to get up.” I found my shirt and put it on, backward.

  “Why do you get up so early? You don’t have to be at work until nine.”

  I was a little irritated at this, but tried my best to mask it. “You come in at nine. I go in at seven, seven thirty at the latest.”

  “Why? You’re not scheduled until nine.”

  “I haven’t come in at nine in a year. I try to get a head start on the day, and it takes some time to get everything ready for you.”

  He thought about this, probably for the first time since I started working for him almost a year and a half ago.

  “You have to get up. You need to get home and get yourself presentable. You have a meeting at 9:15, and the rest of your day is pretty packed. I’m going to go put on some jeans that don’t have puke on them and drive you to your car.”

  I walked out of the room before he could get up. I didn’t want to see him naked, even if I had felt him naked. Seeing him naked in this sober state would be something entirely different, even though he saw me naked. Crap.

  When I returned to the first floor, he was ready and waiting at the front door. He looked serious again, not the fall down drunken guy that he was a few hours before. I’m sure I looked all business again, too, even with my shirt on backward.

  On the quick drive to his car, I gave him a rundown of his schedule for the day and reminded him of the phone calls he had to make before his first meeting.

  “But don’t worry,” I said out my window as he stood by his car. “As usual, I will have everything written down for you on your desk when you get in.”

  He nodded. I put my window up and drove away without looking back.

  At quarter to nine, Kyle and an entourage walked past my desk. He didn’t even glance at me, which was typical, and I was okay with typical. I followed a moment later, coffee in hand, just the way he likes it. I put the mug on a coaster on his desk while he “yelled” at the entourage. He raised his voice, but not nearly as loud as usual, and every few seconds he’d rub his head. Hangovers can be a bitch.

  I tapped my watch on the way out, as a silent reminder that he needed to make a few phone calls and would have to finish yelling later. On his way to the board room for a meeting, he stopped at my desk.

  “Reschedule my second meeting, Emmy.” He rubbed his head again. “Maybe reschedule all of them after this one.”

  “I can clear your schedule up until one. That’s the best I can do.” I say without looking.

  “How do you know that without looking?” He frowned.

  “I know every aspect of your schedule up until Wednesday of next week, where it gets a little murky. I know which meetings are more important than others, who can wait, who can’t wait, who will be irate, and who will be more irate.”

  He frowned some more. Typical. “Just clear my schedule as far as you can.” With that he walked away, rubbing his stupid head.

  When he returned a little more than an hour later, he didn’t look any better.

  “Did you clear my schedule?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, following him into his office. He collapsed into his chair and held his head. I put a blue Gatorade on the coaster and three Tylenol next to it. He looked at the Gatorade, confused, but before he could ask me any questions, I walked out the room. I returned a moment later with a baked potato that I ordered from a diner down the street while he was out of his office.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Eat the potato, drink the Gatorade and take the Tylenol. Eat and drink slowly so you don’t make yourself sick,” I spoke briskly, professionally, as I lowered the blinds. "Rest for a little while – I’ll hold all of your calls and keep anyone from coming in. You should feel better just in time for your 1:00 meeting.”

  Before I closed the door, I saw him staring at the three items I left for him as if they were alien. Typical.

  Kyle’s lack of enthusiasm for work today didn’t make my work load any lighter. I threw myself into it, head first, completely emerged myself in it. The more I worked, the less I thought of the night before. It was only a one night thing. It didn’t change the fact that he was still my boss, and obviously, it made him no less of a dick. Reminiscing about it would only be a stupid distraction from important things. Besides, it was a mistake, an accident even.

  Forget the fact that he was the first person I had slept with in almost a year or that even though I was drunk I remembered it clearly (and it was effin fantastic!). Forget the fact that I have a hickey, which I haven’t had since high school, on my neck under the scarf I was wearing, tied fashionably around my dumb neck.

  A little before one, before anyone arrived for the meeting, Kyle came out of his office, looking well rested, and less hung over. I didn’t ask him if he was feeling better, I barely took my eyes off of the computer screen.

  “Emmy, email Diedrick with the financial reports I told you to do yesterday. Did you do the reports?”

  “Yes.” I write down the note about Diedrick, and he continues on, giving me extra work to do on top of the heavy work load I already had.

  “Did you order my tux for the gala?”

  “Yes, I did that last week.”

  “Emmy, I didn’t even know about that gala until Monday.”
His tone was accusatory, as if I was lying to him.

  “I have known about the gala since they first announced it two months ago, Mr. Sterling.”

  “I need a copy of that guest list, who’s who.”

  “It’s already on your desk.”

  He barked a few more orders at me before going back into his office. Once the door shut, Eliza, the receptionist said just loud enough for the few of us in the office to hear: “What a dick.”

  By six, almost everyone in our part of the building had cleared out. It was snowing, and I sometimes found myself staring out of the window. I loved to watch the snow fall onto the city, but I had a lot of work to do if I didn’t want to have to do it over the weekend. Kyle came out of his office, jacket slung over his shoulder, sleeves rolled up, as if he had been in his office doing physical labor. I almost snorted at the idea.

  “Did you need anything else before you leave?” I asked him, not taking my eyes off of the computer as I typed.

  “I don’t mean to do it.” He said quietly. I looked up, surprised at his demeanor.

  “You don’t mean to do what?”

  “Be a dick.”

  I looked away. He sat down in the chair next to my desk, but I kept my eyes on my work. In the near two years that I’ve worked for him, he’s never once sat in that chair. I felt a little uneasy.

  “I know you said I have a choice, but I almost feel like I can’t help it.”

  “You have a seven o’clock dinner date with Miss Venner,” I said softly, continuing to work. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be late, especially with the snow.”

  He was quiet for a moment, probably feeling put off by the way I changed the topic.