Dilemma - Chapter 3

Strictly Professional?

"And then her boyfriend comes out of nowhere!" Reggie said to Marcus, who stopped by the Brass Handle to pick up some junk food for the house.

"That sounds like an awful story," Marcus, the more rational of the two, replied. "So what happened to Jim?"

"I shoved a chair under his door knob," said Reggie with a nasty grin. "For all I know, he's still stuck in his office, unless Wilt came out from the dark room and gave him a hand. And that was yesterday."

"A pretty cruel thing to do to your boss," said Marcus, opening up the bag of sour cream and onion chips he had just purchased.

Reggie didn't really care. Jim had committed a crime by failing to divulge the fact that despite his intuition, Brenda was already spoken for. The scowl Reggie wore on his face was all that his best friend needed to see to realize that Jim had to pay.

"So, did you at least figure out who this guy is?" Marcus asked.

Reggie then went into the information Jim had given to him behind the door of his office, fearing that more projectiles would be hurled his way. Brenda met her boyfriend Oscar Minaya while they were in high school. Oscar was a starting forward on the soccer team, while Brenda, of course, was editor of the school paper.

When they graduated, the two seemingly went their separate ways. Brenda attended Forest State, and Oscar was accepted to Ohio State on an academic scholarship. She had only mentioned her boyfriend once while at the Forester her freshman year and that was in October. Jim figured that the long distance had taken its toll and that the two were no longer together.

Coupled with her ongoing fascination with Reggie, Jim came to the conclusion that Brenda had a new object of affection. This was further facilitated, as Jim thought, by Reggie's return to campus. Only was it earlier in the day that Jim came to realize, just as Reggie had, that Brenda and Oscar were still very much together.

"I guess this means that you're going to have to find someone else to have a summer fling with?" Marcus said at the conclusion of Reggie's story.

"Hell no, I'm still going after Brenda," Reggie declared. "That guy she's with is temporary. Besides, how long do you really think that this long-distance thing is going to last after she spends some quality time with me?"

"You say that like that's a good thing," Marcus joked, prompting Reggie to throw him out of the store.

While he spent his previous work shift fantasizing about Brenda, Reggie spent this shift thinking up ways to snatch her out of Oscar's hands. His plans, of course, centered around two questions: How serious were they still and how much did Brenda know about Reggie's feelings?

If he needed any doubt as to the latter question, it was all erased near the end of his shift, when Brenda came walking through the door.

"You're a ways out from the west side, aren't you?" Reggie asked, trying hard not to show too much emotion.

"Jim told me you were working here," said Brenda. "It was the least he could do for me after I rescued him from being barricaded in his office."

"Now who would do something like that to our beloved editor?"

Brenda leaned over the counter with a slight smile. "Well, word around the water cooler is that he was blocked into his office for failing to mention to our sports editor that the news editor…had a boyfriend!"

"I think your sources are a little off," Reggie said, acting as if none of that were true.

"Well, I'm not so sure, because it was Jim who told me," said Brenda, her smile getting wider.

"Jim was under some mental duress," Reggie argued. "He could have said that aliens had inhabited his brain at that point. But enough about Jim. What exactly do you find so amusing about the whole situation?"

"That's why I came down here," Brenda continued. "I wanted to let you know that I'm flattered."

"Flattered about what?" asked Reggie, playing dumb.

"I understand that you might like me a little," she replied, then laughed softly. "Well, maybe a lot. I mean, you did barricade Jim in his office."

"Look, it doesn't make a difference how I feel," Reggie said, the scowl on his face becoming ever more prominent. "The bottom line is that you already have a boyfriend. So, I guess that means anything I say at this point would be beyond the scope of professionalism and be borderline sexual harassment, if indeed that was truly how I felt."

"I just wanted to explain…"

"You don't have to explain anything," Reggie interrupted. "I made some assumptions based on some bad information, and I'm sorry. For the record, yes, I do like you a lot. I think you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life! From the moment I laid eyes on you last year, I wanted to be with you. Of course, I get a job a day later and figured never to see you again."

Brenda stared at Reggie, speechless to what was pouring out of him.

"However, having said all of that," Reggie continued. "I respect the relationship that you have with your boyfriend. I know it must be tough to keep it together since you two are about 100 miles apart. So, I'm not going to do anything to mess that up. Therefore, I think in the interest of the paper, we keep our relationship strictly professional."

Brenda's reaction was anything but professional. As soon as Reggie was done with his diatribe, she grabbed him by his convenient-store vest, pulled him dangerously close to her and kissed him. When they finished, Reggie returned to the other side of the counter, seeming quite dazed by what had happened.

"Didn't I just say that I wasn't going to do anything?" Reggie said.

"I'm sorry," Brenda replied. "It's just, well, that was so wonderful that you would say all of those things to me. Oscar never did."

"Wait a sec," Reggie said, quickly reacting to hearing her boyfriend's name. "He's not, like, in the car or anything, is he?"

Brenda shook her head. "Are you kidding? Do you know what he'd say if I told him that we were coming to a convenient store on the east side to talk to another guy?"

"So, now what?" Reggie asked.

"Like you said. In the interest of the paper, we should remain strictly professional," she calmly replied.

"But what about what just happened?"

"Oh, that. I shouldn't have done that. That definitely gave you the wrong idea. I'm really sorry."

"Then why?"

Brenda smiled. "Well, I had to know what I was missing out on."

Reggie smirked. "Not exactly a litmus test you should let Oscar know about. But since you mentioned that, did you figure out what you were missing?"

"Let's put it this way," Brenda said as she turned a bright shade of pink. "If I didn't already have a boyfriend, you and I would probably be in the stock room in the back of this place, and your boss wouldn't be too pleased. See you tomorrow, Reggie."

As Brenda walked out the door, Reggie felt the frustration, sexual and otherwise, well up inside him.

"You know what you just did is illegal in six countries!" he yelled towards the door, hoping that she would hear him.