It was an average day in mid-March. I am scrolling through twitter and I see a tweet from one of my coworkers, “I could stare at my bracket as long as I stare at boobs.” Such a typical thing for a man to say, but for some reason, I felt the need to reply with the puke emoji. Then he responded back saying that he was wondering if I would say something about the tweet, to which I responded saying that I was joking and that boobs are awesome. The conversation continued from there and went on for hours and hours.
**For a little background, I started working in an office right after high school graduation and Dallas was hired shortly after me. He befriended my sister, who also worked in the same department as us, then we sort of became friends. We never got together outside of work or texted, but we did follow each other on Twitter and became friends on Facebook as well. We bonded over music and my crush for him started to develop secretly. We were always chill with each other from the beginning and I even would go to him for advice sometimes. I never told anyone about my crush and eventually, it just went away.**
So, our conversation progressed. He had already made assumptions about me based my age and on how I acted at work. I am ten years younger than him and was rather shy, but I have changed quite a bit this year. I told him that I had a Tumblr account that would shock him and I ended up sharing a link with him. At this point, I was not thinking anything of our conversation. I mean, I did send him a link to my porn blog, but I did it as a friend.
Once he went through my Tumblr, that’s when everything changed. I played it off at first. “There’s no way that he’s flirting with me.” “It’s Dallas! That’s my dude!” I forgot that I had posted a picture of me in a bra on my Tumblr, which is honestly something that I hardly ever do, but of course Dallas saw it. “That girl in the red bra is cute…” OK DEFINITELY FLIRTING NOW! Still, at this point, I was trying to play it cool, even though my pulse was racing. Dallas is into me. We continued to talk and he sent me a few gifs that I reposted. To anyone else, our conversation was probably cringe-worthy, but there was just something about how he made me feel while we were talking.
I was 24 and had extremely low self-esteem. The only relationship I had ever been in was one with someone who lived across the ocean that I only got to see in person two times in a five year relationship. Having Dallas tell me that he had been attracted to me for the past year and occasionally thought about me in the shower, whoa.
Hello Confidence – it’s nice to meet you.
The next day at work was the most unproductive I had ever been. I had been up until after 3am talking to him about how I wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with me. When I woke up, I thought that it was all just a dream. That was until he messaged me shortly after we both got to our desks that next morning. I still couldn’t believe that it was actually him that I was talking to that way.
We hadn’t made eye contact since talking this way and I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to look at him without blushing. He came over to my desk shortly after I shared that with him and we were able to keep it professional, but he also did not hide the fact that he was staring down my shirt the entire time. Now, office romances are always risky, but this…. oh boy. Not only did we work in the same office, but his wife also worked with us. Yes, that’s right, Dallas is married.
Not that this makes anything about the situation less wrong, but we were not talking this way in hopes to end up together. Dallas loves his wife, but sex is lacking in their marriage. All that Dallas and I wanted from each other was sex and later that day, we had sex for the first time. He met me at my apartment during his lunch break. Like I said before, my self-confidence was at an all time low, but things were different with Dallas. I let him into my apartment and he immediately started to kiss me. At 24, I had only been kissed a handful of times in my life, so I still considered myself to be a beginner. He paused and asked if I wanted to take this to the bedroom, so I led him there.
We took off shoes and coats once we got in my room and then continued to kiss. It was the type of kissing that I thought only existed in movies. Then he did the thing – he picked me up, completely off the ground. I am a big girl, so that was something that I never expected to happen to me. There we were, him holding me with my legs wrapped around him, kissing. Then he threw me on the bed and started to kiss me all over, while undressing me. He made me feel something that I had never felt before – comfortable in my own skin.
I had to go to work shortly after and I remember people asking me why I was smiling so much. Saying that I had just slept with a married man wasn’t something that I wanted to just blurt out to everyone, so I kept it to myself as long as I could. Later that night, I was playing pool on league with my best friend and she kept asking me why I was in such a good mood. I ended up spilling the beans to my best friend just hours after. Saying it out loud – that I had slept with Dallas – I almost didn’t believe it myself. How was this what my life now was?
It has been a little over a year since Dallas and I first slept together. I no longer work with him, which turned out to be one of the best decisions I had ever made, for multiple reasons. We have went through phases where we said that it was over, but we both end up coming right back to each other. It has become less frequent since we no longer see each other at work anymore, but we still do occasionally get together.
A.