The Sexual Harassment Suit Will Not Be Filed Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Emma was a hard, dedicated worker. It said so on her resume and though she was as vulnerable to the temptations of Facebook and Twitter as anyone else, when she got going on a project, she refused to be dissuaded. So as she typed out her recommendations on Project Atticus File A114, she barely noticed Ruby Lucas arriving at her cubicle until the secretary cleared her throat.

Then Emma looked up, into the chic ensemble and glamorous make-up of an executive assistant who looked more like a model doing a 1960s-themed photoshoot in their office, and was so out of her weight class that she felt abashed, like she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Mills wants to see you,” Ruby said, without preamble, and turned on her heel without explanation. Her skirt was just long enough for the sway of her hips to be in perfect pendulum counterpoint to the fringe of her hem, her stockings hard-pressed to stretch all the way down her endless legs.

Not that Emma was in any mood for the office sport of ‘look at Ruby,’ not after hearing those five words. The boss-lady wanted to see her. Her boss-lady? Was she getting fired? Promoted? Regina Mills was so saturnine, it could go either way. She reminded Emma of a cat. You never knew if you were going to get to pet the kitty or if you were going to get your hand bitten.

Pet the kitty, Jesus, Swan! Emma thought to herself as she rose, gathering a few of her things and doing a quick spot-check of her appearance. She dusted some crumbs from lunch at her desk away from her slacks, tucked in her blouse again, tightened her belt one notch over complains from her spine. Her hair was still in the updo she’d put it in that morning, barely, and when she powered down her monitor screen, her reflection’s make-up looked presentable.

She started the long walk to Regina’s office.

Regina Mills was the rising star of the company’s aerospace division, no pun intended. She’d flown jets, not just approved overhauls for them. She knew the product line inside and out, could take apart a turbine and put it back together. If Regina’s flight got delayed at the airport, she could probably give it a thump with her fist and get it working again.

And Christ, was she hot. Emma worried she was being gross, thinking that way—she’d heard a few of her co-workers talk about how Regina looked, well, more what they wanted to do to her while she looked that way. But there was no denying it. If Ruby looked like a model, Regina looked like a goddess. The starched shirts, the sleek trousers, the occasional dress like the pelt of a lioness or something—and the way she looked at Emma! Emma knew she wasn’t the only one, not even the only woman, who’d fantasized about those Bette Davis eyes.

Being in Regina’s commanding presence, she consistently felt like some moist, juicy cinnamon roll, fresh out of the oven, all warm and gooey on the inside, while Regina’s looks considered just how much of her she could eat without breaking her diet…

Emma tried her best to once again banish her gay thoughts as she came to Regina’s door—Ruby had already sat back down at her desk outside, buzzing the intercom to inside: “Ms. Swan to see you, Reggie.”

The intercom clicked. Even through tinny speakers, Regina’s voice was cool and controlling, a firm finger-touch rolling down Emma’s earlobe… “Send her in.”

Ruby gave Emma a look and, belatedly, Emma realized she should open the door. And go through.

Regina’s office was chillingly precise. Paintings of nondescript things on the wall, unassuming furniture, a large desk whose surface held only a computer and an inbox and an outbox. The outbox’s stack of papers always outnumbered the inbox’s.

Behind the desk, Regina sat flanked by the view out her floor-to-ceiling windows. Skyscrapers in the background on either side of her, like intimidating goons. Emma gulped and heard her name in greeting. “Em-ma.”

That was how Regina always said it. Emma’d had a typical sorority girl dialect when she’d started working as an intern, her voice climbing and lingering at the ends of sentences, and Regina had given her name the same treatment, the second syllable delivered with a pop of her lips. Em-ma. Like a kissing sound at the end, mwah.

They’d both come far since then, Regina into a vice presidency, Emma into lower-middle management (there were a number of people who technically reported to her without ever really reporting to her). Regina held onto the nickname, sort of an affectation. Like the way she looked at Emma.

“Ms. Mills,” Emma said, low-key enough. “How’s tricks?”

Regina steamrolled over her attempts at sociability. “Do you recall Subsection B, Paragraph Twelve of your employment contract?”

“Hold on, I know this one, was just thinking of it five minutes ago—“ Emma didn’t know why she made lame jokes around Regina. She’d done it back when they were more or less the same rank, working together on presentations, and she’d never outgrown the habit even as Regina dragged her up the corporate ladder with her—and a few dozen other employees from the branch office in Des Moines, Emma reminded herself before she could feel too connected to this woman.

“The contract that you signed, in the wake of the Patriot Act, designates this company as a defense contractor and you as a government employee with a corresponding security clearance. That being the case, in the event of a credible breach of corporate secrecy, we retain the right to go through private communications.”

“Excuse me?”

“We can read your e-mails,” Regina said, barely mustering a sigh over Emma once more driving outside the fast lane.

“Read my—I have never, not once—I wouldn’t leak information, Regina, you know me. Who would I even leak it to?”

“Foreign powers. Corporate rivals. Stephen Colbert. How am I supposed to know?”

“Are you calling me a traitor? Are you sending me to Guantanamo Bay?”

Regina picked up a file from her inbox, looking it over while Emma’s outburst wrapped up. “No. Of course not. Honestly, Em-ma, show some decorum.”

“You’re the one talking about… the Patriot Act and stuff!”

“If the Latino woman can handle it, I think the blonde with blue eyes should be able to. Now, the leak has been found and it’s not you or anyone you know. But, in the course of investigating this security breach, I have seen your private files from the time of the incident. Do you recall sending an e-mail on July 25th, 2013?”

Emma rolled her eyes, a bit peeved at Regina for getting so heavy-handed with her just for entering a Fandango contest or whatever on company time. “Let me think—were there a lot of naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence in it?”

Regina smirked—this returned Emma to the thought of being a cinnamon roll, only with Regina snitching some frosting off her. She opened up a drawer of her desk, brought out a small case, opened it, took out a pair of reading glasses, nestled them on her nose, and examined the document from the inbox once more.

“From: ESwan@pinestaraero.net. To: lilydagreatest@gmail.com. Subject: Heatwave.” Regina cleared her throat. “’Hey Lil, I took nutmeg before bed and it did nothing. I had insomnia all night, barely got four hours’ sleep, napped on the subway train like a tourist—horrible place to have the Dream. I’m not even sure I should tell you about it, you huge perv, after you promised me your dumb fad diet would have me dreaming about puppies and kittens and shit.’”

“UMMMMM,” said Emma. “That’s private and I don’t see what it has to do with the aerospace industry and you already said I wasn’t the mole, Jesus…”

Regina paused a moment, staring at Emma as if trying to squeeze more words out of her suddenly parched throat, then continued. “’Okay, so I’m dreaming that I’m working late in the office. Everything’s dark, it’s just me and Regina. I can see the lights of her office are on, but that’s the only light except for my computer. Suddenly, I get an e-mail from her.’”

“I remember it, okay!” Emma cried, surprising herself at how strident she suddenly was. “And I’m absolutely sure I wrote that on my lunch break, so that’s not even a little bit company business!”

“Really?” Regina asked, setting the paper mercifully down. “Is this the kind of fixation you think one employee should have on another employee?”

“It wasn’t a—it was just a weird dream!”

“One of several.”

“They made a lot of Transformers movies too, so what!?”

“I’m going to have to make a record of this.”

That was like biting into an ice cube. Emma’s co-workers didn’t even know she was gay. “Regina, please. C’mon. It was just a stupid dream I had that I told a friend about. It’s nothing, nothing—“

“I would like you to conclusively identify the contents of this electronic communication, and then go on record assuring this company that the events relayed were absolutely false and had no bearing on reality.”

And just like that, Emma snapped back into peevishness. It figured. “This is all because you don’t want people to think you’re having an office romance? Fuck, why’d you hire Ruby then?”

She shouldn’t have said that. She should not have said that. But people tended to notice when someone as L Word as Regina hired a twenty-something Instagram model to be her secretary.

“Are you willing to refute these…” Regina held up the paper with a huff of disapproval. “Allegations, or not?”

“I’ll do it.” Emma laughed harshly, out of nowhere. “You want me to write ‘Regina Mills is straight’ fifty times on the blackboard too?”

Regina stood up from her desk. “I’ll thank you not to presume my sexual orientation.”

“Oh, you mean you have one?” Despite her looks, or maybe a little bit because of them, Regina was just about the most dead-below-the-waist woman Emma had ever met. For a woman so achingly lovely, she was as withholding and tightly wound as a submarine hatch.

Regina’s reply was to open another, bigger drawer in her desk. She took out a video camera, the kind that fit neatly on one hand. She opened up the little viewfinder window and aimed it at Emma before setting it down on her desktop. “Identify yourself for the record.”

Emma heaved a sigh. “Emma Augustine Swan.”

“Augustine,” Regina repeated ponderously.

“It means ‘beloved of God’.”

“No, it doesn’t. Read now.”

Emma shied away from the sight of her reflection in the camera lens, picking up the document and making an effort not to crush it in her grip. “From: ESwan@pinestaraero.net...”

“Skip to where I left off,” Regina instructed. “You’d received an e-mail…”

And then she did a funny thing.

She unbuttoned the first button on her blouse.

For Regina, that was a lot of button.

It was a lot of button for Emma too.

“Read,” Regina said, and Emma scanned the document to find her place, wondering how in the hell she was going to survive reading this out loud, with Regina watching her, with her button unbuttoned.

Emma cleared her throat.