Chapter 28: Lunch with Martha
The fluorescent lights of the cafeteria buzzed like a trapped insect, casting a sickly sheen over the laminated tables and the sea of office chairs. Alexey stood at the edge of the room, tray in hand, feeling like a visitor from a distant, more visceral planet. The bland, comforting smells of steamed vegetables and roasted chicken felt alien. His body was a silent symphony of aftermath: a pleasant soreness, a deep-seated fullness, and the hummingbird-quick memory of release.
He’d changed in a stall, using the spare khakis he kept in his filing cabinet for emergencies. The soiled ones were rolled in a plastic bag at the bottom of his backpack. A quick, awkward wash with paper towels at the sink had to suffice. He still felt Jess’s presence inside him, a quiet, possessive anchor.
He scanned the room for an empty table, hoping to disappear.
“Alexey! Over here!”
Martha Sparks waved from a small table by the foggy window, a half-eaten salad before her. She smiled, a genuine, warm expression that made her green eyes crinkle. He hesitated for a second, his instinct screaming for solitude, but his ingrained politeness won. He wove through the tables and sat opposite her.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, spearing a cherry tomato. “Or fought a war. Server meltdown?”
“Something like that,” he said, his voice a little rough. He cleared his throat. “A… complicated debugging process.”
“Tell me about it. My spreadsheet macros are staging a mutiny today.” She took a sip of iced tea. “So, you’ve been a bit… absent lately. In a good way. Less hovering by the coffee machine looking lost. More… I don’t know. Purposeful.”
He felt a blush start at his collar. “I have been busy.”
“Mhmm.” Martha’s gaze was perceptive, but not unkind. “Busy with the mysterious new girlfriend you mentioned at the holiday party? The one who ‘doesn’t like to share you’?”
He’d let that slip weeks ago, a clumsy, proud deflection when she’d asked if he wanted to join a group for after-work drinks. He nodded, poking at his mashed potatoes. “Yes. Her name is Jess.”
“Jess. I like that. Strong.” Martha leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. “So? Spill. What’s she like? I need details. My dating life is a barren wasteland of guys who think ‘netflix and chill’ is a personality.”
A strange, defiant pride surged in him, cutting through the residual haze of shame. Here, in this fluorescent-lit world of spreadsheets and protocol, he had a secret. A beautiful, terrifying, magnificent secret.
“She is… incredible,” he started, the words feeling inadequate. “She is a graphic designer. Very creative. Fierce. She has this laugh that makes you feel like you are the funniest person in the world.”
“Smart and funny. Killer combo. Is she pretty?”
The question was so simple, so normal. It anchored him. “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said, and meant it utterly. “She has… this energy. When she walks into a room, everything else just… fades. Her eyes are very dark, like you could fall into them. And her smile…” He trailed off, shaking his head with a soft laugh. “It is dangerous.”
Martha grinned. “Dangerous, huh? I like the sound of that. You got a picture?”
He did. He’d taken it last weekend. Jess was leaning against her yellow Mini Cooper, wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket, her head thrown back in mid-laughter, the city lights a blur behind her. She looked vibrant, powerful, and utterly herself. He pulled out his phone, swiped, and handed it over.
Martha’s eyes widened. She let out a low whistle. “Holy shit, Alexey. She’s stunning. Like, ‘should be in magazines’ stunning. And she looks… fun. You’re a lucky man.”
He took the phone back, looking at the photo himself. The pride swelled, warm and solid in his chest. “I am. I am so lucky I sometimes think I will wake up.” He put the phone away. “She is… unlike anyone. Direct. She knows what she wants. It was intimidating at first. In Russia, or… in my life, things were more… indirect. Games. With Jess, there are no games. Only truth.”
“That’s rare,” Martha said softly, her playful tone softening into something more sincere. “And kinda terrifying.”
“It is,” he agreed, a wave of emotion tightening his throat. He thought of the truth of her body against his, the truth of her commands, the truth of the device still nestled within him. A truth so vast it had reshaped him. “But it is also… freeing. I never had someone look at me and see… me. And not just see me, but want me. Exactly as I am.”
The words hung in the air between them, more vulnerable than he’d intended. Martha didn’t tease him. She just nodded, her expression thoughtful. “That’s the good stuff, Alexey. That’s what everyone’s looking for in this dump.” She gestured around the cafeteria. “Hold onto that.”
“I intend to,” he said, and the conviction in his own voice surprised him.
They ate in comfortable silence for a minute. The mundane clatter of the cafeteria settled around him, no longer alien but merely a backdrop. He was here, but he was also hers. The dual reality was becoming a permanent state.
“So,” Martha said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “She a big romantic? Flowers and chocolates?”
Alexey barked a laugh, the sound startling them both. “No. Not… not in the traditional way.” He thought of the black box on her bedside table, the cold silicone, the remote in her purse. His face heated again, but this time it was accompanied by a secret, thrilling smile. “She has her own language. Her own way of… claiming moments.”
Martha watched his expression, her perceptive eyes missing nothing—the blush, the distant smile, the way he shifted slightly in his chair. She didn’t press. She just smiled back, a knowing, gentle curve of her lips. “Good for you,” she said again, simply.
His phone, face-down on the table, vibrated once. Not the internal, silent signal of the remote. A normal text notification. But his entire nervous system lit up like a switchboard.
He flipped it over.
Jess: Thinking about my lunch break. Hope yours was satisfying. The toy stays. I’m considering a new pattern for your 3 p.m. meeting. Something… insistent.
He read the message, and the cafeteria noise, Martha’s presence, the entire building seemed to recede, sucked into the vortex of those words. The fullness inside him suddenly felt charged, like a dormant battery reconnected. A fresh, eager tremor ran through him, wholly separate from any vibration. It was anticipation, pure and undiluted.
“Everything okay?” Martha asked.
Alexey looked up from the phone. The world snapped back into focus, but it was sharper now, more vivid. He met Martha’s gaze, the ghost of Jess’s dangerous smile on his own lips.
“Yes,” he said, his voice clear, carrying a new kind of confidence. “Everything is perfect.” He took a long drink of water, the cool liquid doing nothing to quench the deeper thirst her text had ignited. “My 3 p.m. meeting just got a lot more interesting.”
He placed the phone back down, screen against the laminate. A slow, deep breath filled his lungs, but did nothing to settle the low current now buzzing along his synapses. The device within him felt less like an object and more like a live wire, a dormant potential waiting for her command.
Martha’s eyebrow arched slightly, a silent question. “Good news?”
“The best,” Alexey said, his voice a fraction too tight. He shifted his weight, a subtle attempt to find a position where the persistent, filling pressure felt less like a screaming secret. The chair’s unforgiving plastic seat offered no relief, only a firm counterpoint to the internal presence.
He crossed one leg over the other, then uncrossed them. The movement was minimal, a quiet fidget, but the friction of his khakis and the shift of his muscles sent a bright, unwelcome spark of sensation straight to his core. He froze, forcing his body into stillness. A faint, hot prickling broke out across the back of his neck.
“You sure you’re okay?” Martha’s tone was laced with genuine amusement now. “You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“That thing where you look like you’ve got ants in your pants.” She grinned, taking a final bite of her salad. “Or you really, really need to use the restroom. Is the coffee here that bad?”
A nervous laugh escaped him. It sounded thin, even to his own ears. “No, no. The coffee is fine. I am fine.” He focused on the grain of the fake wood table, on the specific pattern of a scratch near his tray. He willed his heartbeat to slow. The fullness was a constant, low-grade hum of awareness, a thumb pressed gently on the base of his spine.
He squirms discreetly.
It was a tiny, almost imperceptible roll of his hips, a desperate, instinctive search for a phantom comfort. The motion pressed the flared base more firmly against him, a stark reminder of its purpose and its permanence for the day. His knuckles whitened where he gripped his knees under the table.
Martha watched him for another second, then mercifully looked at her watch. “Well, my mutinous macros await. Thanks for the chat. And the eye candy.” She winked, standing and gathering her tray. “Seriously, Alexey. I’m happy for you. She sounds… transformative.”
He looked up, meeting her eyes. The kindness there, the complete absence of mockery, grounded him. “She is,” he said, and this time his voice was steady, sure. “Thank you, Martha.”
She gave him a little wave and walked away, her heels clicking a retreating rhythm. He waited until she was swallowed by the crowd near the trash bins before letting his posture sag, just for a moment. He exhaled, a long, shaky stream of air. The text notification glowed in his mind. 3 p.m. Something insistent.
Glancing at the clock on the cafeteria wall, he calculated the minutes. A little over two hours. Two hours of pretending to be a normal man doing normal work, while carrying her engineered secret inside him. The anticipation was a cold, sweet trickle down his spine. It wasn’t dread. It was a fierce, hungry wanting for the disruption, for the proof of her distant claim.
He stood, his movements careful and deliberate. He walked his tray to the conveyor belt, each step a conscious negotiation with the foreign object nestled within. The walk back to his cubicle felt longer, every colleague’s glance a potential exposure. He settled into his chair, the familiar creak a mundane soundtrack to his extraordinary reality.
He opened his work ticket queue, the lines of pending tasks a bland landscape. He clicked on a server log file, the lines of code a familiar puzzle. His mind, however, kept drifting to the purse on her studio floor, to the small black remote that was an extension of her will. He typed a command, the keys clacking. She is probably choosing a setting right now, he thought. Deciding how I will feel.
His fingers stilled on the keyboard. A slow, unstoppable smile touched his lips. He let the warmth of it, the sheer absurdity and the profound rightness of it, flood him. He straightened his back, the fullness within him shifting from a burden to a lodestone. He turned his full attention to the code on the screen, a man calmly, eagerly, waiting for the storm.