My Lesbian Manager Asked Me for a Favor

My manager and I both have girlfriends. I can’t tell anyone else, so I’m telling you. Names of people, the pub and the neighborhood have been changed for privacy reasons.

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Two weeks ago, at The Two Crowns (Hornsey, London).

They’d issued warnings for extreme heat. Not that the massive company that owns The Two Crowns gave a fuck.

My shift started at 7am and, thank God, it was delivery and line cleaning day, which, with the pub opening at 10am, meant at least three hours of alone time in the cellar.

“Morning, boss!” I said, popping my head in the doorway of the office.

“Hales!” Sarah said. “Morning, love! How are you getting on?”

“Oh, you know. You?”

“Yeah,” she said. Her smile was tired.

I asked if she wanted a coffee.

“Oh my god, yes, love! With ice, please.” She blew me a kiss. “You’re the best, Hales!”

As the coffee machine heated up I went down to the cellar.

Behind the bar, you have to act interested. Friendly. Like every stranger who bellies up to the bar deserves your full attention. The cellar requires no persona. Nobody wants anything from me down there. I can go move some kegs around, refill ice or just have a seat by the sundries shelf - the CCTV blindspot. Just to breathe for a bit. Or sit on my phone.

With the heatwave, the dress code was a little different than usual. Shorts, a t-shirt and steel-toed boots. The boots were hot and torturous, but required. I’ve broken enough toes (one) to know you want steel between you and a keg of fucking Carling. The shirt came off quickly though. In that kind of heat there was no other way.

I went up to the office and put the tumbler of ice coffee on Sarah’s desk.

“There ya go.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Sarah said. “Whoa, sailor!” She looked me up and down.

I grabbed my tits like a naked lady just out of the shower. Sarah laughed.

“Let’s not pretend this is doing anything other than repulsing you,” I said.

We laughed and I went back to the cellar.

Sarah is, I think, 38 or 39. She’s gay, in a relationship with Rita, whom I also know, but would rather not. Rita lucked out with Sarah. That’s the kindest way I can put it.

Sarah is short, sweet and strong. Pub strong. The kind of girl who will help you shift a fridge herself instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

And yes, I’ve noticed her. Of course. She wears skinny jeans and fitted button-downs most days, and sometimes, when she sits at the end of the bar doing rotas or invoices, I might catch a glimpse through the gap between two shirt buttons. Looking away is difficult.

I always feel bad about it. I really like her as a person. She’s my manager. She’s nice to me. Turning that into something sexual felt wrong. Not to mention I have a girlfriend.

I was in the middle of floating all the fobs for the keg lines so that I could flush them with clean water when Sarah came down the cellar stairs.

“Oi!”

“Oi!”

“So fucking hot up there, I can’t.”

“Yeah,” I said, panting a little. All this moving around a keg maze.

“Getting on alright down here?” she asked.

“Yeah, not bad,” I said. “I’m about to go up and flush these.”

“Water already?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit, you’re quick, Hales.”

I just smiled. Compliment me more, please?

“Great job, love, really!” She looked around. I’d managed to organize and clean here and there as I went along, so it looked better than it should in the middle of line cleaning and deliveries. “I’m going for a ciggy, you coming?”

“You know it, boss baby!”

Outside we sat up on the A-frame picnic table, feet on the bench, and I lit both our cigarettes. The city really felt like a fucking cesspit in this weather.

“How’s Gia?”

“Yeah, good. She’s got her own pub now, did I tell you?”

“Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?”

And so I told her. And she seemed excited for her.

I noticed her being a little more tired than usual. A bit of sadness or anxiety in her movements, it felt like.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. She turned and looked up at the third floor, where I knew the windows to her and Rita’s apartment were. They live in the pub, as is pretty common in London pubs. “Just had a sort of a rough one with the missus yesterday.”

“Mhmm, copy that.”

Line cleaning meant you had to either drink or waste about 12 Pimms pitchers of beer. Most of the staff, myself included, usually spent Monday nights not wasting it. I’d watched Rita put away about two pitchers yesterday, and that was only after we closed. She usually got an early start on her drinking.

“Anything serious?”

“Nah, usual bullshit, honestly, love,” she said. “Nothing exciting.”

We smoked in silence for a bit. I poked the wood grain with the butt of a lighter.

“You think she’d try to fight me if she heard I thought you were out of her league?” I said.

Sarah laughed. “I don’t know, I’ll ask her.”

I laughed as well.

“Thanks, love,” she said, rocking her shoulder into mine.

“Rita really gets my goat sometimes, though,” I said. “Sorry if that’s overstepping.”

“Meh, whatever. Not gonna defend her today, she’ll have to do some apologizing first.” She paused. “Not that that’s likely to happen.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Alright,” I said, flicking the ember of my cigarette and getting up from the bench, giving Sarah my hand. “You coming as well?”

She slapped my hand and laughed. Then got up and off the bench herself. “Back to it, Hales.”

The clank of the fire door shutting behind us echoed through the empty pub as I opened the door down to the cellar. Sarah came with me.

“Too fucking hot in the office,” she said in response to me looking at her questioningly.

“Fair.”

As I carried on floating the keg line buoys, she checked the delivery papers and browsed the delivered cases and boxes.

“You know, I see the looks you give me sometimes.”

My stomach dropped. Then, to my surprise, I was excited instead of panicking at her sudden accusation. I didn’t look up from what I was doing.

“What looks?”

“Hales! Come on!” she laughed.

“What?!” I looked at her, smiling in disbelief.

“You know I’ve been a woman on planet Earth for decades, love. I know when men look at my tits.”

“Jesus, Sarah! I…” I turned around and hit my knee on a keg then. It was empty and the sound rang through the cellar. Sarah laughed.

“Shit! You alright?” she said.

“Yeah,” I grasped for something to say. I felt guilty like I had to excuse my actions. As I rubbed my knee with my knuckles, I looked at her. “Sarah, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t.”

“No?”

“Nah, not at all.” She shrugged.

“Right. Well, sorry anyway,” I said. I meant it too.

Sarah said nothing. Her little smile thinned into something serious. She looked up at the cellar door, then around the cellar, slowly.

“Hales,” she said.

She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the delivery note in her hand, bending the corner back and forth.

“I’m going to say something stupid,” she said. “And if I’ve read this wrong, I hope you can pretend I never said it. I mean that. And please don’t hold it against me.”

The cellar hummed around us. Coolers, fans, old pipes ticking somewhere in the wall. Above us, the pub was quiet. For now.

“Okay,” I said.

Sarah gave this tiny laugh through her nose. Like she was judging her words before she’d even said them.

“I know you’ve got Gia,” she said. “I know I’m your manager. I know this is probably something I could get sacked for even saying.”

My mouth had gone dry and my chest went hollow between my lungs.

“Sarah, I–”

“I’m not asking as your boss, god forbid,” she said quickly. “I’m not. You can say no and nothing changes, I mean nothing. I’ll never mention it again.”

She had the papers in one hand, the other braced against the shelf beside her. Her shirt was stuck slightly at her ribs from the heat. One of the top buttons was open. Not to look sexy. Just because God was trying to burn us.

I still thought it was, forgive me, Lord, so fucking sexy.

“What are you asking?” I said.

She held my eyes for a second, then looked away.

“I just miss being wanted,” she said.

Her words hit me and made me sad. I wanted to hug her. I also wanted to look down her shirt. Both things were true, which made me feel like a terrible person.

“Sarah,” I said. “Could you maybe be forgetting you’re gay?”

She nodded, quick and serious. “Totally. I mean, genuinely, very gay. That’s not changing.”

“But what are we talking about then?”

“I’m not suddenly into men,” she said.

“Right.”

“I’m not asking you to kiss me. I’m not asking you to think this means something. I don’t want you thinking I’ve been secretly waiting for the right bloke to come along and fix me.”

“I don’t think that.”

“You might,” she said. “After.”

Fuck. After?

“Closest I ever got to a boy was snogging Caleb Nichols in year nine because I was drunk on cider and got dared to do it,” she shuddered. “Awful. He tasted like Wotsits. This isn’t that, love. This isn’t me wanting a man. It’s not even really about men.”

“What is it about?”

She breathed in, then let it out slowly.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m stupid. I had a horrible night. I haven’t felt good in months. And you’re kind to me.”

I swallowed.

“You’re always kind to me,” she said. “Not in a creepy way. Not because you think you’re owed something. You just are.”

I didn’t know what to do with that.

“And then sometimes,” she said, quieter now, “you look at me like you’d maybe enjoy… making me feel good?”

“I would,” I said. Her not mincing words encouraged me to not mince mine. “Enjoy, I mean,” I said, and gestured and rubbed my forehead. “With you.” Never mind, still minced.

“Really?”

“Yeah. But what are you actually asking me to do?”

“Well,” she said, starting toward me but going past. “I was thinking, maybe we could make use of your hiding spot?”

“My hiding spot?” I asked, laughing.

“Hales! Please!” She raised an eyebrow at me. “You think I don’t know you come down here to hide?”

She stopped inside the CCTV blindspot and stood against the shelf. I could tell her hands trembled as she played around with the shirt buttons on her stomach.

“Can we?” She motioned me over.

I came over, drenched in sweat. Thanks to the heatwave, I had an excuse.

“I want you to go down on me,” she said. “No sex. No making out.”

My eyes must have gone wide. “Right…” I said.

“Are you OK with that, love?”

I looked down as she unbuttoned her shirt. She wasn’t doing it in the way that girls had done in front of me before. Usually there was kissing, touching, some kind of passion. This was different. Mechanical almost, and her eyes were a little frightened, the look was more of a friend wishing not to be judged.

“Yeah, I’m OK with that, Sarah,” I said. Saliva gathered in my mouth, as I saw her shirt open more and more with each button, gradually revealing her breasts to me for the first time. They stood up like there was an invisible bra holding them. Her skin had lost just the tiniest bit of youthful smoothness, but I could only see that now that I was the closest to her I’d ever been, standing inside the small blindspot.

“You can touch me there. If you want.”

“You sure?”

“Mhmmm,” she swallowed. She seemed nervous.

I carefully and slowly cupped her breast in my hand. My finger grazed the nipple a little. She inhaled sharply and let out a breath. I thought I could feel her relax into the shelf behind her. Her nipples got harder.

“Can I kiss them?”

She looked at me and nodded her head.

I bent down to kiss them when she put up her hand against my chest. “Give me a second, love.”

I took a half step back and waited while she kicked off her sneakers, pulled off her trousers and panties.

“Hales?”

“Hmm?” I said. Then I looked up when she didn’t go on. “Sorry, what?”

She smiled. “I know it’s not fair what I’m asking. You don’t get to…”

“I’d love to go down on you, Sarah.”

“OK, love.” She grabbed my face and planted a quick, hard thank-you kiss on my lips. It wasn’t sensual or wet or passionate. It was exactly a thank you and nothing more. I smiled, flattered. She lifted her leg up against a couple of crates. “Go ahead.”

I leaned down again and licked her nipples.

My hands moved from her breasts to her ribs, over her stomach, down toward her shaved pussy. She was in such great shape.

As I put her raised leg over my shoulder and, having kissed around her pussy for a little while, gave her a long, light, wet lick, she grabbed my hair and inhaled a soft scream.

She was so sensitive she seemed to feel and react to the beginning, middle and end of every touch.

I eased my finger inside her just a bit, as I flicked her clit with my tongue, all the while looking up at her body.

Images of Gia kept coming to me. What she would say if she saw me like this. The guilt of cheating was not helping me perform. I had to swat it away. I focused on Sarah and how much I actually enjoyed it, when my mind was present. Fuck, did I want to please her.

“Love,” she gasped. “You’re going to make me cum, I think. Fuck, that’s so good.”

I changed nothing and kept going. My job was to keep going and get her off. She needed it.

I could feel her breaths getting less frequent and more labored. Her stomach was tensing and bulging. She was very close.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

The fucking delivery. The guy banging on the metal cellar hatch.

“Don’t stop, love. Don’t fucking stop,” she cried and pushed my head into her pussy.

My beard was dripping as I suctioned her clit into my mouth and flicked it up and down with my tongue. My thumb had already gotten inside her and was moving around, as my index finger then lightly massaged around her asshole.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, Hales.” She pushed my head away and squatted down. “I’m gonna cum.”

I didn’t understand why she had to squat down. My hand was still on her pussy. “Rub it, love, rub it, make me cum.”

I put my palm flat against her and rubbed her pussy side to side, rapidly.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, love, yes, rub it, fuck–” She stopped breathing. Then she exhaled with a gasp as she squirted. I understood then.

She shivered and gasped and moaned. I kept going until she stopped me.

I smiled, laughed a bit. We both stayed squatted down for a second until I finally caught her eyes. “You OK there?”

She nodded, smiled, catching her breath and composing herself. She put her hands together in front of her face, instead of a verbal thank you.

“Stay down here, calm down. I will go stall the delivery guys for a few–”

“No,” she panted, but already grabbing at a blue roll on the shelf. “Wash your hands and face, finish the line cleaning, I’ll deal with them myself.”

“You got it, boss baby!” I chuckled and tucked away my erection.

KNOCK KNOCK

Knock.

“Coming!” she shouted, already mostly composed and now buttoning up her shirt. “You know…” She looked at me. “I hope that wasn’t too…” She was looking for words. “Too much?”

“No! Of course not! Happy to help.”

“I mean, it just doesn’t always happen”—she motioned to the wet spot on the floor—“quite like that.”

“A job well done, then?”

She laughed. “Great job as always, Hales!”

I saw Rita sneak out through the side fire door, sunglasses, worse for wear.

~~~ Around 10:15am

Rita came back, clearly feeling, though not looking, better. Hair of the dog, for sure. And she carried a big bouquet of flowers. Sarah came down, and after not five minutes of private-ish corner-booth discussion, as far as Rita was concerned, all their troubles were fixed.

Sarah went back up to the office with the flowers, passing the bar. “I’ll come down to help in a minute, Hales.”

Completely normal. I guess I was too.

Rita propped herself up on the bar.

“Hale! A pint of Guinness, please, my boy.”

“You got it, big dawg.” I smiled and poured. As I left it to settle, I moseyed over to her and leaned with both hands on the bar. “You think we’ll have another scorcher today or what?”

“God forbid, mate.”

“You said it.”

I cheated on my girlfriend.

To cheer up Rita’s girlfriend?

And now I was stuck there all day with blue balls while Rita got pissed and fucked it all up again.