I picked up the phone and said nothing. The voice on the other end was not a recording, but an actual person. And I just listened. “I’m sorry” he said. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I want you to know I apologize and will leave you alone from now on.” I said “Thank you” and hung up the phone. I sat there for a bit just stunned. Hoping he meant what he just said. The next few weeks as I went to sleep, I did look out the window and I watched my phone, but I never heard from him again. Thankfully, it was a week or two of complete craziness, but it went away. It left as quickly as it came like in the movie Twister, without warning. Every once in a while I found myself looking over my shoulder, but that was because of my own fear. During this time, I was stressed. Things at home with my girls was going from bad to worse and I felt like I was on a train without breaks. The hits just kept coming, one after another. I spent a lot of time at work talking with dreads. He had of course offered to help during the blind date issue, but aside from sleeping in my house really what was there to do? My children had no idea any of this was happening at the time being there were so many things going on with them and I didn’t want to scare them. We had enough on our plates. Things with dreads was still on a professional level although I noticed we began to become friends. It was nice to have an advocate at work and be able to discuss both personal and professional things with someone who didn’t know all my history and baggage. One night my friends and I decided we should go out. Let loose. Relax. So dancing it was! As we walked into the club, I got a call from dreads. “Where are you?” hmm…where am I? Not something one director says to another outside of work hours. “I’m out” I replied “What’s up?” I thought maybe something happened or he needed my opinion on something he was working on for the following Monday, but no. It was more personal than that. “I’ll come meet up with you, where are you” I remember looking at my friends and thinking, this is about to take a left hand turn into god knows where. I told him where we were and a short while later he walked in. Looking all cool and collected. He danced with my girlfriends and bought us drinks and I kept my distance. It had been a long stressful few weeks and I couldn’t imagine getting myself into anything else right now. I had a bad taste in my mouth from what happened with blind date guy and I just didn’t have the energy. It was a fun night and although I believe a line was crossed, boundaries were not messed up. Yet. The end of the night came around and he grabbed my hand and on the dance floor we went. I could feel his face come close to mine and our bodies swayed together to the music. His hand on the small of my back, his cheek barely touching mine and then I realized….we work together, what the hell am I doing and I pulled away before things got out of hand. We were already too close and I could not do this. We paid our tab and said our goodbyes and h kissed me and everyone else on the cheek and said our good nights. I dropped off my friends and as I pulled into my driveway my phone rang and for a split second I got nervous, but when I looked at the caller ID this time it was dreads. I answered in my most surprised girlish voice. “Hello?” he immediately began talking as if we were already in the middle of a conversation. “I had a great time tonight, your friends are great, thanks for including me” and so on. I really didn’t invite him and I had to hold back my snake tongue from saying something smart and pointed. I don’t play the girl very well in a lot of respects and I didn’t want to cloud his vision of the hard ass I was when I was at work. I was Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl and I could not lose hold of being fierce just because he was smooth…..and handsome……and articulate…and sexy…..I needed to keep clean boundaries, no blurred lines and my composure. I’m really not sure I have any idea how to do any of that. For an intelligent woman I really have no clue what I am doing.