Layoff

I had worked for an electrical supply distributor in their warehouse for a little over five years. Most of the employees worked up front in sales, purchasing or other management positions. There were only three of us that worked in the back. My job was to pack customer orders. The other two employees in the back were the shipping and receiving clerk and the warehouse manager who mainly kept track of the orders and stocked the shelves that I was emptying to fill orders. It wasn’t intellectually challenging, but it kept me very busy and in good physical condition.

The warehouse manager and I had a playful almost bordering on flirtatious relationship. Rob was a black man, old enough to be my father. He was good looking for someone his age, intelligent, funny, and very caring. I knew that he had a thing for white women, and being a small blond woman, I would tease him incessantly. Not to be outdone, he would bait me with not-so-subtle insinuations of the advantages of being with a well-endowed black man. We were both married, and we knew that nothing could ever happen, or we would both lose our jobs and possibly our marriages. Still our sexual banter would make the day go faster and we both enjoyed it. We would occasionally be verbally chastised by the HR office, and we would back off for a month or so. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to provoke him, and he enjoyed it as much as I did. I don’t even remember when the sexual tension started, but it wasn’t long after I joined the company. I guess you could say that it had been going on for about five years. Because we had the sexual tension, it allowed us to share other feelings and emotions. We developed a deep personal connection and became best friends. But only at work. The shipping and receiving clerk, a skinny white man in his thirties who was married and had two kids himself was the only other person in the warehouse. He found our banter amusing and would even occasionally participate in some of the discussions. Most of the time, however he would just say nothing and roll his eyes when Bob and I would verbally tease each other to the obscene.

Everything changed on a Wednesday morning at precisely 10 am. Without warning, we were pulled into the conference room and informed that the office was closing effective immediately. The functions of our office were being consolidated with another company that acquired us about a year ago. At the time of the acquisition, we were assured that our jobs were secure and that everything would continue as normal. However, that assurance proved false. Slowly the name of the company changed. First, a little addition to our logo saying that we were a division of the parent company. Then, last month, a formal name change. Now, a full closing of the local office. We should have suspected something as the last two weeks we had only processed custom orders and a few same day pickups. We had stopped sending most of our normal orders.

We were to gather our things and leave immediately after the meeting. We would be paid through the end of the month which was conveniently Friday. Then there was a two-month severance package that included health benefits. That may have cushioned the financial shock but that didn’t cushion the emotional shock. In fact, if they had not written it down, I would probably not even remember hearing anything other than I was out of a job and the world as I knew it had suddenly changed. A group of us went to lunch together. Not having to go back to work we stayed at the restaurant for over two hours. One by one, the other employees left. Eventually it was just Rob and me.

My husband was gone on a work trip until Saturday. I wouldn’t have to pick up the kids from aftercare until five thirty, and I didn’t want to be alone. It would have crushed me to be alone after getting laid off that suddenly. As we left the restaurant, I asked Rob to get into my car so we could talk. Honestly, I really didn’t have anything to say, I just needed him near me, and we drove in silence. Without thinking, I drove home. I pulled into the garage and pushed the button to shut the garage door. We sat in the car, and he started to say something to break the awkward silence, but I leaned over and kissed him before he could complete his sentence. He asked if I was sure that I wanted to do this. I replied that we had been talking about this for five years now and we no longer had a reason to resist. I asked, “What were they going to do now, fire us?” I told him that I needed him. We got out of the car, and we kissed again. The passion overwhelmed us, and I was completely naked before I entered the house. My clothes laying a path from the car to the door. He didn’t resist and we had sex on the couch in the family room. I cried afterwards and he held me. Not because I regretted having sex with him but because of the emotion of losing the job. Over the next two hours, we made love in my bedroom and then again in the shower. Every time I started feeling bad again, I sought comfort in his embrace. After showering, I drove him back to the restaurant. The company was paying our normal salaries through the end of the week, and I convinced Rob that we should not tell our spouses that we had been let go until Friday afternoon. That evening, I picked up the kids at the normal time and pretended that nothing had changed even when I talked to my husband that evening.

For the next two days, I dropped the kids off at school in the morning as usual. I then met Rob at a parking lot near where we used to work and brought him home. After five years of flirting, we knew each other’s fantasies and we sought to fulfill every interracial sexual desire that we had teased each other with for the last five years. I was a blond, white vixen and he was my black stud. What we did was perverse, pornographic, and erotic. We were very caring with each other but there was no love at least of the romantic kind. I know that was not the right thing to do, but I needed that time to come to terms losing our jobs. It was an emotional avoidance technique. Every time I started to feel bad, I would lose myself in a sexual fantasy with Rob. We were like teenagers who just discovered sex, and we had no boundaries. We even had a threesome with an old high school friend of his on Friday because he knew that it was my favorite fantasy to have a threesome with two black men.

By Saturday afternoon when my husband came home, I was finally ready to move on. I told him that I had gotten laid off on Friday. He took it better than I did. Rob and I both quickly found other jobs. His unfortunately was on the other side of town about a 45-minute drive. I never found a companion at my new job like I had with Rob. For a month or so we messaged often, but without being together every day, our conversations quickly waned. Although we messaged often about hooking up again, we only did twice. Once when Rob’s new company was shut down for a power outage after a storm, I called in sick, and I had him over to the house. About a year later, on a holiday where the kids had school, but we were both off work, we met for lunch and rented a cheap hotel room. It just didn’t feel the same and we never hooked up again. I think it has been two years since we last messaged.

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