A/N: It's been longer than forever, I know. And I wholeheartedly apologize for my absence. Let's just say I've suffered much in the past couple of months, including a devastating computer crash and the increasing ferocity of junior year schoolwork. This is just a little something I've been pecking away at for a while. Hopefully, it will tide you over until summer, when I'll be back writing at full capacity. So until we meet again, this is Iced Tea Junkie, signing off. Peace.

Strictly Business

At long last, the meeting was over. The president and most of his underlings had already cleared the building, gone home to dress and ready themselves for the office party later that evening. Yet two of his top executives, a man and a woman, lingered behind with the purpose of filing their thoughts for the day. They perched at opposite ends of the conference table, both of them tall, rigid, lifeless and grim.

Silence had brought them together, and silence would keep them apart.

The woman had a light, natural tan and near-black eyes, evidence of her Spanish descent. She was wearing a slim, black suit, pointed black shoes, and a pair of black driving gloves. (She wore these everywhere, even indoors; she didn’t like to handle things directly.) Her dark hair was tightly secured with a large, plastic clip, also black, which matched her rectangular, black-rimmed glasses to the point of perfection. Her name was, as a matter of fact, Perfection. Perfection Seville.

The man, Jacob Harding, was no more than an icicle posing as a human. His white-blonde hair was cut short and slicked back, contrasting little with the pallor in his face. His steely gray eyes matched his all-gray suit. Gray was his color of choice.

Although you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at them, as they rarely made eye contact or seemed to acknowledge each other’s existence, the truth is that Jacob and Perfection were madly in love, and had been since the day they met. Of course, neither of them had spoken a word of it to anyone: not to their coworkers or their cats, or aloud to their own reflections. And especially not to each other. They would both rather grow old and die alone than admit their feelings at the risk of rejection.

Jacob had always assumed life would be easier, and therefore more efficient, this way. Why expend extra energy socializing when he could be furthering himself up the corporate ladder? It came as a terrible shock to him when Perfection opened her mouth to ask about something other than business for the first time in years.

“Are you going to the party tonight?”

“Why, yes,” he replied coolly, savoring the moment – though dreading it simultaneously. “Are you?”

She merely nodded in response, slipping back into silence as swiftly and smoothly as she had slipped out.

Sun set, and Jacob and Perfection left the building one after the other, timing it so that they wouldn’t have to share the elevator. The less physical contact there was between them, the less chance they had of exposing their secret. Unfortunately, the careful separation they had worked seven years to maintain was about to be run through the shredder and tossed out the fifth-storey window, all in the next couple of hours.

-

Theirs was no common company, and as such, the office party was no common affair. Dress was formal: gowns and tuxedos. It was not strictly black-tie, though most of the employees regarded it that way. There was hardly any color in the room until Perfection arrived.

Using his peripheral vision, Jacob watched her enter the hall while sipping a martini and chatting with some fellow from upper management. She had on a long, black frock, continuing to conceal her mysterious body from the world. The executive would’ve given his Swiss accounts to catch just a glimpse of flesh: a shoulder, an ankle, anything – even if he never ventured to touch it.

When she shrugged off her coat, he nearly choked.

She began slowly, peeling away the collar to reveal a flash of cardinal red. Then, with a soft exhalation, she let the whole thing fall to her waist. The woman was wearing a dainty number suspended by spaghetti straps. It fluttered an inch above her knees and gave way to the longest, sexiest calves the doorman had ever seen. He fumbled with her coat and muttered his apologies.

Perfection turned a lot of heads that night, but Jacob refused to look. He was already developing a painful erection and had no desire to make matters worse. Miss Seville, however, had already made up her mind. She had endured six weeks of tango lessons and bought an absurdly red dress for the sole purpose of conquering her fears. Tomorrow she could hang the damn thing in her closet for all eternity and return to the comfort of black, and never so much as glance at him again, but tonight she would ask Jacob to dance.

Steadily, she advanced towards her prey, black-sheathed arms at her sides. (She had substituted her driving gloves with a pair of silk ones that ate past her elbows.) Jacob didn’t look up, but he could smell her coming; she always wore a hint of Chanel. Just then, the music started up. It was a fierce tango.

“Good evening, Mr. Harding,” she said, still in her usual, flattened tone. “How are you coming along on the Mason deal?”

Thank God! Jacob thought. She’s only here to talk shop. The tenseness melted out of his nerves at once, and most of his body relaxed.

“Fine, Miss Seville, just fine. And how are you handling the Ballinger report?”

“It’s…being handled. Speaking of which, would you like to dance?” She clenched her fists and bit her cherry-stained lip, bracing herself for a rejection which never came.

“Yes, I’d love to!” he blurted out, before his Mensa-accepted mind could pull the reins on his all-too-eager mouth.

And they danced. Good lord, did they dance! It was only for the briefest twinge of time – a single song – but their sharp-angled steps dissected the dance floor into a million slivers. Conversations dropped and martini glasses shattered. Everyone halted their menial living for a moment to watch. Two perfect beings, together as one. If you listened closely that night, you might have heard the time-space continuum tear a seam in his favorite pair of pants.

-

At the office next morning, all water-cooler gossip disintegrated whenever Jacob or Perfection walked by, and no one dared mention the happenings of the previous night, save for an oafish intern named Stephen.

“That was some party, huh?” intonated Stephen, while nudging his elbow in Mr. Harding’s vicinity. The executive answered with a solemn,

“Quite.”

“So what’s the deal with you and Senorita Sexy? Please tell me you two are gettin’ it on, or else you, sir, are a disgrace to all of mankind!” Jacob took a deep swig of his mocha latté and made a break for the presentation room, where interns were not allowed. “Hey, c’mon, man! I was just talkin’!”

“And I was just leaving.”

He burst through the door, caught his breath and looked around, now wishing he could disappear completely. Ms. Seville was the current queen of this room, wielding her laser-scepter at the PowerPoint tapestry as a dozen foreign emissaries fixed their eyes in awe.

“Would you pardon me for a moment?” said the queen to her royal guests. “It seems we have an intruder.” She marched straight towards Jacob, who was shaking in his pinstripes like an anemic schoolboy about to receive his first pounding. And indeed, now that the physical barrier had been broken, Perfection had no qualms about grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him into the corner. Which she did.

“Ouch!”

“You interrupted my sales pitch,” she accused. Jacob shook his head in defense.

“Oh, no, I was just…” But words escaped him, as they were wont to do around her. “See, there was this intern…”

“Uh-huh,” she replied, charging headlong through any excuses he cared to offer. Her voice plummeted to a whisper. “Listen, if you want to talk, meet me in the boardroom after work. I’ll be in my usual spot.”

“Sure, yeah,” he whispered back. “Okay.”

Jacob stumbled out of the room in a daze, not sure whether or not he had dreamt the whole scene. Perfection had just invited him to talk, and she sounded pretty serious about it. She might as well have asked him to dinner. The impact was the same.

In all of the commotion, a drop of latté had jumped onto his tie. Jacob swore under his breath and beat a path towards the men’s restroom, where he scrubbed with obsessive-compulsive intensity until the stain was vanquished.

-

Five o’clock. Jacob packed up his briefcase, killed the lights, locked the door to his office and wandered down the hall, all to the sound of an imaginary death march drum-rolling in his head. What am I doing? he kept asking himself. As he neared the boardroom, the fear of confrontation loomed ever larger. When he put his hand to the cold, metal door handle, the tension reached an apex. It was now or never.

Jacob preferred never.

But just as he was about to turn tail and run, a black-gloved hand reached out and tapped him on the back. He whipped around to face her. Luckily for him, Jacob had suppressed the scream instinct long ago.

“Hello! What are you…why aren’t you in there?” He pointed awkwardly towards the boardroom. Perfection shrugged.

“I had to use the copier for a sec.”

“Oh.”

Silence ensued. The executives found themselves staring into each other’s eyes for a solid minute before respectively looking away, pretending to admire the wallpaper. Perfection spoke first.

“Let’s go inside and sit down, shall we? All of this standing around makes me nervous.”

They walked side by side like two negatively charged magnets, repelling one another whenever they got too close. The woman took a seat at the center of the table and motioned for the man to sit opposite her rather than next to her. This way, it would feel more like a business meeting than a…well, whatever it turned out to be.

Jacob noticed his hands become slick with sweat, though he fought the urge to wipe them in her presence. He wished to be excused.

“Ms. Seville, I – ”

“Perfection.”

“Huh?”

“Come now, Jacob, we’ve skirted around the issue for seven years! Can’t you at least have the decency to call me by my first name?” Perfection promptly shut up like a clam, her cheeks flushed and a nervous smile creeping across her lips, the first of its kind. What’s gotten into me? she wondered. I must be out of my head!

Jacob was thoroughly startled. He had never seen the woman smile, and before he could help it, he was smiling too. Like all deadly viruses, smiles are contagious. When Perfection frowned, he was cured.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, though for what, exactly, he was unsure. He knew he had offended her in some way, or perhaps in many ways over an extended period of time. Either way, apologizing just felt like the right thing to do. It was easier than saying “I love you”.

“I love you.”

Since she was already behaving like a lunatic, Perfection seized this opportunity to do the one thing her sane self would never allow, which was admit her feelings to Jacob. (She could always plead temporary insanity if it didn’t turn out well.)

Mr. Harding responded as expected: with absolute, undeviating silence.

But only because he fainted.

His head hit the table and everything went black.

When he woke up five minutes later, everything was still black. Perfection had her arms around him, and his eyes were just level with her stomach.

“Oh, thank God!” she cried. “For a moment, I thought – ”

“I love you too.” He spat out these words before they had a chance to dissolve on his tongue. “I’ve always loved you.”

Silence, once again.

But only because they were locked in kiss fueled by seven years of built-up passion.

-

It started with a dance.

It ended with naked, gloveless honesty.

And they lived perfectly ever after.