Dahlia opened her eyes and stared at her surroundings. This was not her bed, nor her room. She wasn’t by herself.

She wanted to groan out loud when she realized she had fallen asleep in the living room, on the couch, and currently laid sprawled over Jared. He still wore his clothes from the previous night, now rumpled, even though his pants were undone and his shirt half unbuttoned.

She untangled herself from his arms, and rose slowly to her feet. It was chilly and she had a kink in her neck, but her body had more important things to worry about, like relieving her bladder. She slipped her dress over her head, her underwear a lost cause since she had no idea where it had been thrown the night before.

She quickly made her way to the upstairs bathroom, nearly screaming when she saw her reflection on the mirror— her hair was all over the place and her mascara had given her raccoon eyes. She quickly washed her face and rinsed out her mouth. As she tied back her hair, she stopped dead in her tracks.

“Are you kidding me!?” she groaned as she stared at her neck where a round, red mark was slowly turning purple. “How am I going to show up to work with that on Monday!?”

“Just tell them you had a wild night with a handsome beast.”

Dahlia yelped and spun around to find Jared at the doorway of the bathroom. She admired his chest through his open shirt, his tousled dark blond hair. He looked tired and was grabbing at his temple, probably hungover.

“I can't since everyone saw me leaving with you, remember?”

Eyes still closed, he shrugged. “Everyone needs to mind their own dang business,” he grumbled with a grimace. He was getting too old for hangovers.

“How are you feeling this morning?” she asked, as she looked through the cabinet.

“Okay.”

“You sure? ‘Cause you look like crap,” she murmured, handing him a bottle of ibuprofen.

“What a sweet nurse." He rolled his eyes as he popped the lid off and took two tablets.

“I have never been sweet,” she snorted and walked out. She needed a long hot shower and to get into her pajamas. She was starting to feel a little queasy and didn’t want to start vomiting in front of him. “You should take a shower. I'll make you some coffee, do you want any food?”

Jared shook his head as he followed her. Yes, he really needed a shower. He needed some coffee, some sleep, and at the rate he was feeling, he might need something else from her again. He was sure she wasn’t wearing any underwear under her dress, as he was sure he’d seen some lace peeking from under the couch. The dress covered her in ways that were making his heart race a little, and he didn’t think it was good for him. He had recently discovered she had a bottom that could make grown men cry… 

He didn’t think she'd be so welcoming if he tried to initiate another session of last night's activities. If so, he would totally appreciate it, but he knew that even though they’d gotten close last night, today was a different situation. “Just some toast and coffee. I doubt my stomach can handle anything else.”

“Ok. I’ll get the— Oh.”

He saw it; He saw the way her eyes rounded when she turned to face him and found him shirtless. Saw the spark that filled them, the interest.

Maybe if he just mentioned that they should…

“I'll get the coffee later. I'll go take a shower first.” She said quickly as she turned and left, leaving him standing shirtless in the hallway.

Never mind.

She knew that he was staring at her. She could feel him staring at her, she knew that he was glancing at her even while he pretended to be interested in something on his phone. He hadn’t mentioned anything about last night besides that comment earlier regarding her wild night with a handsome beast… It wasn’t entirely a lie, but…

She reached over for some more cream cheese for her bagel. Weirdly enough, cream cheese was one of those things that didn’t make her want to throw up. Things she could still eat without becoming sick were in a short list as opposed to things that made her sick. She took a bite and stared at him, head cocked to one side.

“Yes?” he asked, without looking up from his phone.

“Idiot.”

He finally raised his head, rolling his eyes at her.

“Alright.” He put his phone down, straightened up and gave her a questioning look.

She took another bite and made sure to chew extra slow before speaking. “You got drunk at a work party, sat at the bar by yourself, and kept throwing me dirty looks until I went over to talk to you. You mentioned something about me going on dates with Anthony. I’m sure that we will be the talk of the office when we go back on Monday.” Jared said nothing, just continued to stare at her.

Finally, he added, “Why did you go on dates with that… man?”

“His name is Anthony.”

“And?”

She rolled her eyes. “It was work related. We talked about some samples he wanted approved to bring to work. We discussed it over lunch, sometimes met up at the rep dinners.” She sipped on her orange juice slowly since it had been making her queasy lately. “I thought you liked him. You were always chatting with him when he came around the office.”

“He has a crush on you, you know?” Jared made a disgusted face causing Dahlia to frown. Did he really find her that unappealing that he had to make that face? She felt a little hurt.

“I know,” she said flatly, teeth grinding. Jared’s nose flared, eyes blazing. He was obviously not amused at this new discovery. “He told me.”

“Then that was not work lunch,” he muttered, still glaring at her.

Dahlia scoffed and turned back to her breakfast. “Just because he tells me that he finds me interesting, doesn’t mean that I’m going to do anything. I’m not easily flattered.”

“I think he was being inappropriate.”

“Oh, really?” Dahlia cocked her head, studying his face because he was starting to sound ridiculous.

“Yes. That had nothing to do with work.”

“You say it as if it’s a bad thing, but nothing happened either way. It’s no big deal.” She sighed and stood up, carrying her plates over to the sink. She turned to look at him one more time. He was staring at his coffee mug as if he was trying to find something on the bottom of it. “Honestly, I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. Besides, why should you care? Nothing happened, he mentioned he liked me. I’m a very likable person. I said, thank you and we kept talking about work related topics.”

“I care because you are my wife, in case you have forgotten that.” He scowled when she let out a short laugh. Did she not take him seriously?

“Jared, nobody knows that we are married,” she stopped. “Or at least, they didn’t until last night when you decided to cause a scene. It’s going to be your fault if we both get fired.”

“Nobody else knows, but I know. Do you think it’s right to go out and have lunch with another guy just because everyone else thinks that you are single?  If that's the case, I can go out and have lunch with other women and it’ll be perfectly fine, since everyone assumes I am still single.”

Dahlia stared at him, “You already go out and have lunch, brunch, sometimes dinner, with other women. You say that they’re your friends, but I know at least one of them is not. I don’t say anything, because we are pretending we’re ‘single’. That was a hypocritical comment."

“They are my friends.”

“I see what type of friends you like!” She huffed and turned away, but he caught her upper arm.

“What do you mean?”

She yanked her arm out of his grasp. “Exactly what I said. They’re trying to get into your pants. They come and they saunter in there, acting as if they own the place. Tiny skirts, low-cut blouses, and so much makeup you could run a spatula down their face like cream cheese on a bagel. I am a woman, I am not blind, I can see a woman seeking to get laid from a mile away, like that Sherry woman. I just want to… urgh!”

Jared threw his head back and laughed. “You’re jealous?”

She scowled at him and crossed her arms. “I am not jealous, I am pissed off! There’s a difference, and you’re acting like such a damn man, it’s infuriating. You insinuate that I go out to lunch with people with other intentions, while you do the same and those women are not trying to hit on you?”

“Because they’re not? Well with the exception of that woman.” Jared looked down at her, a smirk on his face. “I have known all those women for years, and clearly nothing has happened.”

“It still bothers me! They bother me. Sleazy, easy, and available.” She poked a finger at his chest. “That’s inappropriate. You allowing those women to parade around there as if it’s nothing.” She glared at him. “Sometimes, I have gone to talk to you about something, and find them sitting in your office, their freaking skirts hiking up to their crotches, and you smiling like an idiot. They look at me like I’m dirt. They give me looks as if they’re challenging me to say anything to them, or to you. I'm the supervisor!” The punch he gave him on his arm caught him off-guard.

“Hey!”

“You make me so angry!” She muttered and walked away, leaving him standing by the sink.

“What the hell?” he murmured angrily and rubbed his arm. For a tiny person, she packed a punch. “Freaking hormones.”

Between his hangover, Dahlia’s anger, and the punch, he was not having a good day already. He wanted to go after her, but he doubted she’d want to talk right now. Here he was, thinking that maybe after last night, something would’ve changed.

How wrong he was.

…

Dahlia sat on the small bench by one of her bedroom windows, trying to calm herself down.

She opened the bottle of orange juice she had brought with her from downstairs. Splitting one prenatal vitamin in two, she popped one half in her mouth and gulped it down with orange juice, doing the same with the other. She tried to ignore the wave of nausea that hit her immediately. She gagged for a moment, willing the vitamin to stay down. “Oh baby, one day I'll tell you just how much I suffered.” She said as she patted her belly and went back to staring out her window.

Jared was outside pulling some boxes out of his car in the driveway. Whatever they were, he kept trying to move them all at once. She laughed as she watched him pick up three, drop one and trip over it. He cursed and sat on one while rubbing his right hand. Finally, he stood and carried two inside, going back once more for the last one.

She was still pretty upset about earlier. The hypocrite! How could he be angry about her going on lunch with Anthony when he had ogles of blonde bimbos around his office all the time? She bet if she didn’t live at home with him, they’d be lining up to his front door.

She went over to her bed and laid on her back, staring up at her roof. The paper cranes she had made earlier that year hanging from a circle of wire decorated with LED lights. Like a little child, she had added glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling because even if she didn’t like to admit it, she felt alone at times. The stars glowing in the dark at night reminded her of her sister back home and how they could stay up for hours just talking. She really missed her and couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken. What would she say if she told her that she was currently pregnant by a husband who wasn’t in love with her, and whom she had married just for business?

Sighing, she rolled on to her side. The photograph on her night stand showed her parents, father smirking into the camera as her mother glared at him, probably about something dumb he said. It wasn't hateful though, that’s just the way he would tease her. They really did love each other and had been together almost thirty years. She just wished that just like them, she could some day say that she had spent thirty love-filled years with the person she loved. All she got was a man who tolerated her enough to sleep with her and let her live in the house with him.

She jumped when her cell phone started ringing.

“This is Dahlia.”

“Hello, Dahlia, it’s Rosemary Jones, from HR.”

Dahlia wanted to groan out loud. Rosemary was a loud mouth and blunt woman who worked at HR.

“Hi there, what’s going on?”

“Well, I have an urgent request to make,” there was a pause from the other end, “Dr. Daniels is out and he couldn’t speak to you before he left, things happened quickly, and I am looking for some help.”

“Sure, what’s going on?”

“Well, our supervisor for the  Sacramento clinics won’t be available for some time,” there was another pause. “She had a stroke, and I don’t know when or if, she’ll be coming back. We are short one supervisor and since we have two at NORM plus and your lead, we were hoping you could help us. We need the NORM supervisors there since they can float between both the clinic and hospital.”

“So, I can’t send a lead?”

“Well, Dr. Daniels was thinking about sending you out there… That is, if you are willing to help lead the clinic for a couple weeks until we find a replacement for Lori. What do you think?”

Dahlia wanted to hit her head on the table. “When we say a couple weeks, are we talking about more than a couple months?” Because honestly, she didn't want to deal with the stress of a different team and her pregnancy.

“You would have to talk to Dr. Daniels about that. He just needed me to contact you. We weren't expecting something like this to happen to Lori…We will send you an email regarding that situation.” There was a pause. “I do believe he mentioned something about a raise.”

Dahlia rubbed her eyes. She really didn’t care about the raise, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing considering her current situation and how much it would evolve soon. “Let me think about it. I have a personal situation going on and I need to be thinking clearly before making a decision.”

“I just received an email from corporate. They just sent you an email regarding with the proposition. Do open it and read it through, then give me a call back. I’ll be handling your transfer if you're interested, okay.”

“Yeah, alright. I'll go ahead and look through it. Just give me some time to think it through and make my decision. Like I said, I have a situation I am dealing with.”

“I'll let them know.” There was a ruffle on papers on the other end, “Thank you for taking Dr. Dale home last night. Dr. Daniels had already decided to take him home if he didn’t stop ordering shots.”

Dahlia laughed nervously, hoping her voice didn’t give her away. “Yeah, I had to drive him home last night.”

“His home?”

“Well, yes. He was still passed out on the couch when I left. I left him a note attached to his keys. I hope he didn’t fall down the stairs…”

“Oh wow.” 

“If he did he would learn not to drink to excess, right?”

“At least the situation didn’t escalate to major things.”

Ha. If only she knew how they'd escalated. Oops.

“Well, thank you for that. I'll let Dr. Daniels know. Have a good day, Dahlia.”

“No problem.” It was. “I’ll call you next week.”

“Thank you.”

Great. Now she had more things to worry about.