Chapter 1- the hunger

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Brooks

It’s an anniversary of sorts, my fifteenth year as the CEO of the company. The biggest woman in tech, I sell special metal alloys that my team of scientists create in another state. Here we run a tight ship, a small cog in a massive machine of experimentation, creation, manufacturing, and the all important sell to the biggest companies, hospitals, and weapons manufacturers of the world. My face has crossed People, GQ, and Forbes. My name may not be a household name, but I’m one of the most powerful women in America, if not the world.

But at forty-six, I still have a hunger. A hunger I thought I had satisfied in college. Sitting at my desk, late one night after everyone has gone home, I sit in a dark office. The city lights behind me flicker like stars. The empty space of my office leaves an ache in my chest. It’s sharp contemporary style leaving me like a husk. I have a single picture of her and on my computer is the familiar images of women.

It’s no secret that I am lesbian. It’s not something I have hidden since high school. When I was kicked out, but through street wits and sheer brute force I clawed my way into a scholarship program and to the top. After her…I touch the photo, I went back into the proverbial closet when I entered into an intern program. I burned through other women like match sticks. None of them were like her. None of them had her desire, her spark…her willingness.

Sure, I have been tempted. I played with fire with a number of women, who left me for that very reason. I smirk as I trace the shape of my old lover. My other hand moves down my flat stomach, feeling the hint of abs from careful diet and exercise despite my extreme hours. My eyes flicker back to the women on the glowing screen. A parade of colorful candy to me, but just like the thin women in my life that I burned through like matchsticks they leave me equally as empty despite fulfilling my desire. They boast emptiness. There is no intimacy as my eyes drop back down to Shannon.

She had been real. She was a human being, so sweet, so submissive, and perfect against the hard edge of me. I dredge up the old image of her. I don’t have any pictures of the shy chubby girl I had met. I had been hard and driven and somehow she saw me. She had seen all of me and out of that love, yes love, grew something else.

As she grew in more ways then one, she grew more confident in her body and herself as a person. My fingers trail the edge of my slack’s button, but I think as my fingers slip under easily without releasing it how hard it became to do the same thing with my former lover. Her weight crawled up over the semester, skyrocketing our senior year when this picture was taken.

My fingers connect with my own moisture as I examine that cherubic face and I remember her own touch. I moan in frustration, even my pleasure is filled with loneliness of a soul who took joy in such debacherous pleasure and still loved me, all the hard edgesa and kinks.

Standing up, I leave the picture, turn off the computer, and walk to the window to stare out again. I had gained the whole world, but had lost the most important thing, her love.

***
Ash
First Day
Scrabbling, as usual always running late. My tiny messy studio more of a hinderance to reaching the door. I wear a pencil skirt, a cute blouse, and a cardigan. My high heels offer me a few extra precious inches to my short height, but also throw me off enough to bounce my knee off the edge of my couch, snag the heel on a Ben & Jerry’s pint and spoon and I knock off the Playstation controller from my table.

“Shit,” I mutter before I manage to reach the door and the elevator. I still manage to catch the metro downtown and grab a coffee at the corner stall as a prize for making it on the dot—a double mocha mud slider coffee. The sugar and caffeine run through me as open the skyscraper’s glass door. A woman guard flashes me a cocky smile.

“You’re new,” she says, unfolding her muscular and very toned body from the tiny chair. I always liked a woman in uniform. Sliding up to the desk, I fumble in my overlarge knock-off Gucci bag for my intern card. My best friend had given it to me, saying it was a necessary to working at a big wig place like this. It’s totally not my style.

If it was me, I’d be in an oversized frumpy sweater and sweats on the couch, working remotely from someplace nicer than my studio. Who needs strangers, unpredictability, and the sharp edges of the world.

“One second…” I look up to read her badge. “M-m-madison. I have a card…really.” My cup ends up on the counter, a mass of keys and geek related key chains, two books—one Harry Potter and the other Jane Eyre, a dozen pens that roll off onto Madison’s ledger and just miss her own black coffee.

“Easy, there,” she says with a chuckle, gathering my errant pens in her dark cream colored fingers. I love the razor sharp cut along her temples as she organizes the pens back into the bag.

“Here!” I say and thrust the card infront her face, blushing. “I’m s-s-sorry. I’m such, damn…fuck.” I blush running out of words as my cheeks keep turning darker and darker matching my hair as my eyes drop. I can’t meet Madison’s gorgeous dark dreamy eyes now.

“Calm down, luv. No reason to be nervous on your first day. Let’s see…Ashley. That’s a pretty name.” I don’t have the courage to ask her to call me Ash. I nod, cheeks still pink. “You’re…oh, you’re up on the top floor. Guess you ought to be a little nervous.”

My eyes shoot up.

“Are you their new intern?” She asks. I nod and she makes a face that she doesn’t have time to hide. “Sorry, luv, but you’ve got a tough boss. Interns don’t last long up there. Good luck.” She salutes me and I feel my insides tighten as I grab my bag and start towards the elevator. “Hold up, luv.” Turning around, I see she has my latte. Blushing, I return and grab it.

It’s not until the elevator, I realize she has written good luck one it with a smiley face. Smiling, I think it can’t be that bad.