After Hours

The first time I saw Victoria Chen, she was tearing apart a junior associate in the conference room, and I thought she was the most terrifying person I'd ever encountered.

The second time I saw her, she was on her knees in the parking garage, helping a security guard catch his escaped hamster, and I thought she might be the most interesting person I'd ever encountered.

By the third time—when she walked into my office, closed the door behind her, and said, "I have a proposition for you"—I knew I was in serious trouble.

My name is Mia Santos. I'm thirty-two, a senior project manager at Hartwell & Associates, one of the most prestigious marketing firms in Chicago. I've spent six years clawing my way up from entry-level account coordinator, sacrificing weekends and relationships and any semblance of work-life balance to get where I am.

And then Victoria Chen became my new boss, and everything I thought I knew about myself got thrown out the window.

📅 Three Months Earlier

The email announcing Victoria's appointment as Chief Creative Officer came on a Monday. By Tuesday, the entire office was buzzing with rumors. She'd come from some boutique agency in New York where she'd turned around three failing accounts in her first year. She was ruthless. She was brilliant. She'd allegedly made a grown man cry in a pitch meeting.

I wasn't intimidated. I'd worked with difficult executives before. I'd survived the regime of David Palmer, who once threw a shoe at an intern for bringing him the wrong kind of coffee. Victoria Chen couldn't possibly be worse.

She was worse. And also completely different than I expected.

The first week, she called a meeting with all the senior staff. We filed into the conference room like condemned prisoners, clutching our laptops and our anxiety. She stood at the head of the table in a perfectly tailored navy suit, her black hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, and looked at each of us in turn.

"I've reviewed the work this office has produced over the last two years. Some of it is excellent. Most of it is mediocre. A concerning amount of it is garbage."

Silence. Several people looked like they wanted to sink through the floor.

"I don't say this to demoralize you. I say it because you're all capable of better. You've gotten comfortable. Complacent. That ends today."

She laid out her expectations—longer hours, higher standards, a complete overhaul of the creative process. People grumbled. People complained. Two senior associates quit within the month.

But the work got better. Undeniably, measurably better.

I found myself staying late most nights, not because Victoria demanded it, but because I wanted to. There was something electrifying about the new energy in the office. Something that made me remember why I'd gotten into this industry in the first place.

Victoria noticed.

"You're still here." She appeared in my doorway at 10 PM on a Thursday, looking somehow fresh despite a fourteen-hour day. "Do you ever go home?"

"Do you?"

The corner of her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close.

"Touché." She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "What are you working on?"

I showed her. The Hendricks account, a rebrand for a heritage whiskey company that was trying to appeal to younger demographics without alienating their core customer base. I'd been tweaking the social strategy for days, never quite satisfied.

Victoria listened. Asked questions. Pushed back on some of my assumptions in ways that made me reconsider everything. By midnight, we'd completely restructured the campaign, and it was better than anything I would have come up with on my own.

"Good work," she said as she finally left. It was the first compliment I'd heard her give anyone, and I floated on it for days.

The late nights became a pattern. Victoria would find me, or I'd find her, and we'd end up talking for hours. Work, mostly, but sometimes other things. She told me about growing up in San Francisco, the daughter of immigrant parents who'd expected her to be a doctor or a lawyer. I told her about my family in Miami, the chaotic warmth of Sunday dinners with three generations crowded into my grandmother's tiny kitchen.

She told me she was divorced. Two years now, from a man she'd married because it seemed like the right thing to do. No children. No regrets, except the years she'd spent pretending to be something she wasn't.

"Have you ever done that?" she asked one night. We were in her office, sharing takeout from the Thai place around the corner. "Lived a life that didn't fit?"

I thought about Jake, my college boyfriend who'd proposed and I'd said yes even though every instinct screamed no. About the string of relationships since then, all perfectly nice men who I could never quite connect with. About the dreams I'd always pushed aside because they didn't match the picture I was supposed to want.

"Maybe," I said. "I'm still figuring out what fits."

She looked at me for a long moment, and something passed between us. Something I couldn't name but couldn't ignore.

"So am I."

The Hendricks pitch was on a Friday. We'd been preparing for weeks, the whole team pulling together the best work we'd ever done. Victoria was leading, but she'd insisted I present the social strategy—my baby, my vision.

It went perfectly. The clients loved it. We won the account, the biggest win of the quarter, and the entire office went out to celebrate.

Victoria didn't join us at the bar. Said she had paperwork, but I caught something in her expression—a flicker of loneliness that I recognized because I felt it too. The disconnect of being in a crowd of people and still feeling fundamentally alone.

I left after one drink. Made some excuse about an early morning. Went back to the office, where I knew she'd still be.

Her door was open. She was at her desk, staring at her computer screen without really seeing it. When I knocked, she looked up, and for just a second, her careful composure slipped.

"I thought you were celebrating with the team."

"I thought you might want company."

I don't know which one of us moved first. One moment we were on opposite sides of the room, and the next I was pressed against her bookshelf with her mouth on mine, her hands fisted in my hair, every nerve ending in my body singing with electricity.

She tasted like coffee and lipstick and something I'd been hungry for my entire life without knowing what it was. I kissed her back with everything I had, years of confusion and suppression and half-acknowledged wanting all pouring out at once.

When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, she pressed her forehead to mine.

"We shouldn't be doing this."

"I know."

"I'm your boss. This is completely inappropriate."

"I know."

"If anyone found out—"

"Victoria." I cupped her face in my hands, made her look at me. "Do you want to stop?"

She held my gaze for a long moment. Then, quietly, fiercely: "No."

"Neither do I."

What happened next was a blur of mouths and hands and whispered half-sentences. She locked her office door. I pulled her shirt from her waistband. She walked me backward to the couch, and everything I'd been taught about professionalism and boundaries and keeping my personal life separate from my work went up in flames.

It was reckless. It was stupid. It was the most alive I'd ever felt.

We tried to keep it professional. For about three days.

The problem was that now I knew what she sounded like when she came, and it made it very hard to focus on quarterly projections. The problem was that she knew exactly how to make me lose my composure, and she used that knowledge with devastating precision. A look across the conference table. A brush of fingers as she handed me a document. A text message that arrived in the middle of a client call and made me choke on my water.

My office. 8 PM. Don't be late.

I wasn't late. I was fifteen minutes early, pacing outside her door like a teenager, my heart hammering so hard I was sure security could hear it.

The weeks that followed were the most intense of my life. We were careful—no touching during work hours, no lingering glances in meetings, nothing that would give us away. But after hours, when the office emptied out and the city lights came on, we abandoned all pretense.

Her couch. The desk. Once, memorably, the supply closet during a fire drill, both of us stifling laughter against each other's mouths as the alarms wailed and the building emptied around us.

"This is insane," she said afterward, both of us disheveled and breathless. "We're going to get caught."

"Would that be so bad?"

"It would be a disaster. For both of us. Me especially—I'm supposed to be leading this office, not sleeping with my subordinates."

The word 'subordinate' stung, even though she was right. In the harsh light of day, outside our stolen moments, I was very aware of the power imbalance between us. Victoria could end my career with a word. Every promotion, every opportunity, every step forward would now be tainted by the question of whether I'd earned it or been given it.

"So what do we do?"

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she pulled me close, tucked my head under her chin.

"I don't know. I just know I don't want to stop."

📅 Present Day

The proposition came after two months of secret rendezvous and growing paranoia. Victoria called me into her office, closed the door, and for one terrifying moment I was sure she was about to end things.

"There's an opening at our New York office. Executive Director of Brand Strategy. It's a step up—more responsibility, bigger clients, a significant salary increase."

My stomach dropped. "You want me to transfer?"

"I want you to have options." She came around her desk, stood in front of me. "If you take that position, you won't be reporting to me anymore. We'd be in different offices, different cities. Different management chains."

"And that means..."

"That means no more hiding in supply closets." The ghost of a smile. "That means I could take you to dinner without worrying about HR. That means—" She took a breath, and I realized she was nervous. Victoria Chen, who had never shown an ounce of uncertainty in my presence, was actually nervous. "That means I could ask you to be my girlfriend. Officially. If you wanted that."

"You'd give up having me here? Working with me every day?"

"I'd trade it for having you in other ways. The important ways." She took my hands in hers. "I know it's a lot to ask. Uprooting your life, moving across the country. But Mia, these past two months... I haven't felt like this in years. Maybe ever. And I think you feel it too."

I did feel it. The terrifying, exhilarating certainty that I had stumbled into something extraordinary. The sense that my life had shifted on its axis the night we first kissed and would never quite straighten out again.

"What if I said no? To New York?"

"Then we figure something else out. Transfer to a different department here, or I step back from direct supervision of your accounts. There are options, Mia. I'm not trying to give you an ultimatum. I'm trying to give us a chance."

I looked at her—this woman who had walked into my life like a hurricane and rearranged everything I thought I knew. Who challenged me and inspired me and made me feel things I'd spent thirty-two years avoiding.

I thought about New York. The opportunity. The adventure. The possibility of walking down a street holding her hand without worrying about who might see.

I thought about my carefully planned career trajectory, the five-year plan I'd mapped out in meticulous detail. About how none of those plans had ever accounted for falling in love with my boss in a locked office after hours.

"Yes."

"Yes to which part?"

"All of it. New York. Dinner. Being your girlfriend." I grinned at her, feeling lighter than I had in years. "I'm in. For everything."

She kissed me—right there in her office, door unlocked, in the middle of the workday. We'd definitely have to be more careful until my transfer went through. But in that moment, with her arms around me and her laughter warm against my lips, I couldn't bring myself to care.

⏳ Two Years Later

The New York office is smaller than Chicago, but the energy is bigger. I run a team of twelve now, handle accounts that would have seemed impossible two years ago, come home every night to an apartment in Brooklyn that still sometimes feels like a dream.

Victoria visits every month. Or I fly back to Chicago. Or we meet in the middle, some random city where we can be tourists together, exploring and laughing and making up for all the time we spent hiding.

Six months ago, she got promoted. CEO of the entire company, youngest in Hartwell's history. She gave her acceptance speech in front of the board and thanked "my partner, who taught me that the best things in life are worth taking risks for." Everyone assumed she meant business. Only I knew she meant everything.

We're getting married next spring. Small ceremony, just close friends and family. Her parents are still adjusting to the idea of their daughter marrying a woman, but they're trying. My grandmother cried when I told her and then immediately started planning the menu.

Sometimes, late at night, I think about the version of me who existed before that first kiss. The woman who was so focused on climbing the ladder that she forgot to look around and see where she was actually going. I barely recognize her now.

Victoria stirs beside me, half-awake, reaching for me with sleep-clumsy hands.

"What are you thinking about?"

"That night in your office. When you locked the door."

"Mm. Highly unprofessional of me."

"Highly."

"Do you regret it?"

"Not for a single second."

She pulls me closer, and I go willingly, settling into the curve of her body like I was made to fit there. Outside, the city hums with its endless energy. Inside, it's just us, and the life we've built, and all the years stretching ahead.

"I love you," she murmurs against my hair. "Have I mentioned that recently?"

"Only about seven times today. But feel free to continue."

"I love you. I love you. I love you." Each word punctuated with a kiss. "There. Now it's ten."

I laugh, and she laughs, and somewhere in the distance a car horn blares and sirens wail and the world keeps spinning. But in here, in this apartment, in this bed, time moves differently. Slower. Sweeter.

I never did finish that five-year plan. But I'm pretty sure this is better than anything I could have imagined.