1
It all started one ordinary afternoon.
My name is Kate. I am twenty-five years old. Until recently, I worked as a sales agent at a company that sells event tickets. To be honest, the work itself was pretty boring. The same thing, day-in, day-out. Never anything exciting. The pay was decent, though, and I couldn’t have hated it too much, because I never even began looking for a better option. Besides, it wasn’t as if every day were eight hours of me dying of boredom. There was some entertainment.
One, there was the game room. Whenever I was bored, I would retreat to that sanctuary of recreation. The room was equipped with ping-pong, air hockey, foosball, and darts, just for starters. I would sometimes be there for hours before my boss came in to glare at me.
Two, there was the kitchen. That place had an abundance of goodies. Pastries, cookies, muffins, brownies, chips, candy — anything a glutton’s tongue could desire. Even with so many hungry beasts coexisting in that office, the goodie table never ran dry. It was like the goose that laid the chocolate egg. Besides the fact I gained ten pounds, that little corner was my dear friend. Well, like the friend one hangs out with even though it’s clear they’re a bad influence.
Three, there was the never-ending, mindless online chatting. Since most of the company’s internal communications were online, we used that opportunity to chat about just about everything, just about all day long.
Oh, by the way, I met my boyfriend, Brad, at the office.
The fun part? Our relationship was a secret (just to avoid unnecessary rumors). My naughty side enjoyed that secrecy. We would chat about the previous night’s ‘amorousness,’ then talk business, then maybe switch back again, all in the same conversation.
One afternoon, Brad and I were chatting like any other day. I hadn’t been in the game room all week because it was being renovated. Even the kitchen fare, though as plentiful as ever, was a bit stale and bland. Everything seemed to be conspiring against my being sufficiently entertained. I was extremely bored, and in urgent need of a vacation. I told Brad that I wanted to go to a randomly chosen place I’d never thought of before.
He said “Okay,” and I said “Yay!”
