Come clean

You look at Cheryl for a long second, the folder of numbers still sitting between you, and the morning’s rage finally finds a direction.

“A certain HR rep has been fucking my wife for the last four months on nothing but a made up affair,” you say, voice low and raw. “Ruby. She has been coming to my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays while I am here. She built the whole thing on the story that I have been sleeping with you. Natasha believes it. She has apparently seen “the way” I look at you at staff socials and decided that was proof. So she stopped touching me and started letting Ruby take care of her instead.”

Cheryl’s expression freezes. The competitive sharpness drains away, replaced by pure surprise.

You keep going, the unfiltered frustration spilling out.

“She thinks it is you I have been fucking. Late meetings. Competition. The looks. All of it twisted into an affair that never happened. Four months of my wife getting eaten out on my kitchen counter because of a story Ruby fed her. And the worst part is I wish I had actually been getting my dick wet regularly over the last few months. Instead I have been walking around hard and rejected while the two of them played house behind my back on a complete lie.”

The fluorescent lights hum overhead. The rest of the floor continues its ordinary morning around the cubicle. Cheryl stands there with the revised projections still in her hand, staring at you as the full ugly shape of the situation settles between the two of you.