When my 22-year-old coworker started texting me late one evening and wanted to hang out, I had a pretty good idea of where the evening might go. I was 37, and my response to that possibility was not especially complicated. I was excited.
Until then, she was someone I worked with. Now she was someone I worked with who wanted to see me outside work, late in the evening. The distinction had my full attention. There was a fifteen-year age gap between us, which I was well aware of. I still wanted to meet her.
We got together and had sex. It was great. There isn't a complicated emotional explanation hiding behind that sentence: I enjoyed being with her, and the attraction I'd been excited about turned into something that actually happened.
It wasn't just one evening, either. We hung out casually a couple of times that week, and a few days after the first encounter, we slept together again. That made the week considerably more interesting than a week involving a coworker usually is.
Nobody at work knows. As far as everyone else is concerned, we're still just two people who happen to work in the same place. We are, of course. There's simply a small amount of information missing from that description.
Being back at work feels a little weird now. We haven't stopped being coworkers because we had a good time together. The part of our lives that overlapped before any of this still overlaps afterward, except that it no longer feels quite as ordinary to me.
I get the impression she may already have moved on. That's my reading of things, not something I know she's decided, and I don't know what she wants next. I know what happened between us; I can't turn a few enjoyable days into a promise she never made.
For my part, I'm still very pleased about that week. The awkwardness at work hasn't retroactively made the sex less fun. I'd be happy to see her outside work again, and I'm hoping another late-evening message turns up.
