The Boss

I’d reluctantly agreed to go out that night with one of my roommates from the apartment I was living in. The wildest one, naturally.

Lucy had recently joined a crew, and there was this guy who was “super-hot,” in her words. She’d been chasing him for a while, but so far, she hadn’t managed to get him to see her as anything more than a friend. “Come on, come with me and meet him, see what you think.”

I tried to convince her I wasn’t interested—among other things, I had a tough exam the next week. But no dice. Deep down, I’ve always had the same problem: I can’t say no. “Come on, maybe you’ll meet one of the other guys—they’re not bad either.” In her own way, she was telling me that I, naive and innocent as I was, couldn’t aim for that guy and should settle for one of the others.

We got to the bar where this crew hung out almost every evening, and sure enough, there he was—Victor. There he was with his blue eyes, dark hair slicked back, piercing gaze, and an arm covered in tattoos. A mix of Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze, but taller and more jacked.

Victor, the alpha male of the pack, who they also called “the boss” and, more often, “Khaki,” after the khaki color of the military uniform he usually wore—either in that camouflage shade or navy blue.

Lucy wasn’t wrong when she described him, and I’ll admit, my jaw practically hit the floor when I saw him.

The boss was flirting with Carmen at that moment, the only girl in the group who didn’t give him the time of day, the only one who still resisted him. And that was probably why he paid her more attention than the others.

That was Victor: a misfit, a rebel, a touch violent (only with guys), a troublemaker, captivating, charming… irresistible.

And me? Well, I was like Sandy meeting Danny in Grease. I even looked like her—blonde, prim, eyes downcast, a convent schoolgirl who’d never been touched.

I was in my fourth year of law school, and that year was a real challenge.

I’d started college like most girls, at 18. My parents scraped together the money for my tuition, and for the first three years, I lived with the Clarist nuns, the same ones who’d taught me in school years before.

When I moved to the city from my small town, my life was pretty dull. I barely talked to anyone, and every day was the same. Mornings at the law school, afternoons in the dorm, doing nothing but studying.

But in my fourth year, everything changed. The nuns, strapped for cash, shut down the dorm, and I had to find an apartment with other girls from school. Fate landed me with Lucy and Clara, two girls who were nothing like my old, equally innocent (or more so) roommates.

And, predictably, my grades took a hit. I’d gone from acing everything to slipping, even failing a class or two. It was a miracle I passed anything at all, because studying in that apartment was impossible. Lucy and Clara were still in their second year, with some first-year classes still pending. Every day was a party at our place, and even with my door closed and earplugs in, focusing was a lost cause.

So I gave in and went out with them, if only to see this supposedly amazing guy they couldn’t stop talking about at home.

And just like in Grease with Danny and Sandy, the moment I walked into the bar, he noticed me and broke away from the group to come say:

“Hey! I’m Victor. You are?”

“Olivia,” I replied, blushing to the max, barely able to look up.

“You’ve got such beautiful eyes,” he said, and that’s when I melted on the spot.

“You too,” I mumbled, but he didn’t hear me. One of the girls had just shown up and grabbed his arm, turning him around:

“Hey! You gonna finish that story or what?”

He grinned and stepped away, heading back to where he’d left the others. But before he did, he grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him.

There were three tables loaded with drinks in a corner of the bar. Victor was in the middle, spinning some story that was probably made up. But everyone was cracking up at his antics, the girls especially. There were eight or ten of us, guys and girls, though a couple of pairs weren’t paying much attention—they were too busy making out and groping each other practically on top of me.

That October 20th was a turning point in my life. Looking back now, after all these years, I sometimes wonder if I should’ve told Lucy no and stayed home studying. Told her I didn’t need to go out with guys, that I just wanted to be a criminal lawyer, that I wasn’t interested in living life with a capital “L,” which is what I started doing from that day on.

But then again, if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have met him—the person who shaped my life, for better or worse, from that moment forward.

Senior Year

My fourth year of college was a total disaster—I completely lost my way. In the end, I let myself get swept up, and I was almost always tagging along with Lucy to the Khan, the bar where Victor’s crew hung out, a crew I was now part of. Sometimes I even went alone if she couldn’t come with me for whatever reason.

The only thing I figured out in all that time was that I had no clue what was going on there. On one hand, all the girls claimed they’d hooked up with the boss at some point, though I thought most of it was just big talk, as exaggerated as the stories he told. Because, in reality, Victor only had eyes for Carmen, a skinny Latina girl who wasn’t nearly as stunning as the others. The only thing that set her apart was her apparent indifference to him, to Khaki, as everyone called him.

Lucy definitely didn’t achieve her goal of getting him into bed. As for me, I can say—at least it seemed this way—that Victor stopped a couple of guys from hitting on me. Or maybe that was just my imagination, because I had no intention of letting any of them charm me.

When the year ended, I left the apartment and spent the summer with my parents, trying to forget everything that had happened in that wild, unusual year, so different from all the others in my life.

The next year, my family’s finances improved a bit, and they could afford to rent me a modest apartment where I lived alone, with the goal of finally finishing my degree.

I tried to keep a low profile and avoid even passing by the Khan, but it was pointless. In a world ruled by social media, you’re always trackable, and soon enough, they not only knew I was back but also where I lived. I’d spent the whole summer saying I was staying in my hometown and not returning to the city, but it didn’t matter.

Things went back to how they were before, or close to it. The only thing stopping my tiny apartment from becoming another party spot was its size.

The big news this time was that Victor and Carmen were finally an official couple. Or so it seemed, even though both of them kept flirting with other people in the crew nonstop.

A Rebel

Victor had a rough childhood. His dad bailed on the family when he was just two, leaving him and his newborn brother with their mom, who had to raise them with next to no money. It was tough for all three, and as you’d expect, things got messy when Victor and his brother hit puberty. Without a father figure around, they were aggressive with their classmates, and their mom had her hands full dealing with their bad grades and constant expulsions from school.

Luckily, by their early 20s, both settled down. His younger brother got a girlfriend pregnant young, and against everyone’s expectations, he stepped up, took responsibility for the baby, and threw himself into a job to support his new family.

Victor, meanwhile, found work as a cop, of all things. After yet another trip to the station for one of his many street fights, one of the officers saw he wasn’t a bad kid deep down and suggested, “Join the force. That way you can hit people legally.”

And that’s what he did. He was in great shape and passed the physical tests easily. The written exams too—he wasn’t dumb and studied harder than he ever had, discovering he wasn’t half bad at it.

Right after passing, they sent him to riot control, where he got his fill of cracking down on rowdy protesters—there were always plenty. He was always on the front line, and unlike his colleagues, he wanted someone to act up so he could go all out. And he did, especially during the protests after laws were passed that favored women over men. “I’m a feminist to the core,” he’d say. “For me, women come first.”

Later, driven by his passion for motorcycles, he got transferred to Traffic. That’s where he found his place—nothing in the world beat riding the roads with Oscar, his usual partner, on a 500cc BMW Trail.

When he wasn’t on duty, he spent mornings at the gym with Martin and Samuel, his loyal crew lieutenants who’d nicknamed him “the boss.”

His life boiled down to the same routine: gym, shifts, and flirting at Khan in the evenings. Whenever girls were around, his natural charm kicked in—playful, suggestive—and I wasn’t spared the winks he gave everyone else. I’d gotten them the previous year, but now they were more persistent, like I’d changed somehow, or maybe he had.

And that was weird, because last year he wasn’t dating anyone, and this year, at least in theory, he was with Carmen.

Seduction

From the moment I met him, just like I imagine happened with the other girls, Victor was a kind of “platonic love.” He was the ultimate “hot guy,” the embodiment of masculinity, the kind of man you think about on a sleepless night.

We all flocked around him just to be near him, to hear his stories, because he was insanely charming. The Khan meetups were nothing and fizzled out fast when Khaki wasn’t there.

But the problem was, he was already with Carmen, probably the “alpha female” of the group, and no one dared challenge her reign.

That’s why what happened that day caught me completely off guard, though, to be honest, there were already signs pointing that way.

It was a Tuesday. I remember it clearly, just like I remember what I was wearing. Unlike the year before, I’d ditched my prim, oversized dresses and started dressing like the other girls in the crew. That afternoon, I had on tight jeans and a fitted tank top that, I’ll admit, showed off my breasts quite a bit.

Carmen wasn’t there that day, and the boss was in a mood. He seemed annoyed for some reason, not his usual witty self, just sipping his usual rum and orange, sitting quietly in a corner while the other guys took over telling jokes and stories to make us laugh.

After a while, I got up to leave. Exams were coming up, and I didn’t want to stay out too late.

But as soon as I stepped outside, the boss followed me and started hitting on me, inviting me to his place.

“But, Khaki, how can we do that? What’ll Carmen think if she finds out we were there, just the two of us?”

“I don’t care what she thinks. Why should I? Why do you?”

“But she’s your girlfriend… isn’t she?”

“We broke up,” he said flatly.

“Seriously?” I was stunned. Just the day before, they’d been all over each other, kissing and joking around nonstop.

“You really broke up?”

Without answering, he pulled me close and gave me a smile that could’ve melted the toughest woman.

“Look, Olivia, you’re the most interesting girl in the whole group. From the moment I saw you that day, October 20—” he remembered the exact date! “—I knew you’d be mine sooner or later. I couldn’t get you out of my head!” he lied, smooth as ever. “I would’ve gone out with you if you hadn’t left for the summer. That’s why I got with Carmen. But that’s over now.”

I was floored and didn’t believe a word.

“But what do I have?”

“Such a beautiful face,” he said with his most captivating smile, and then he kissed me. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, melting into a passionate kiss where time stopped for me.

And somehow, in the blink of an eye, I found myself at his place, unable and unwilling to resist making love with him.