Office Mate

  a romantic comedy

  by Rachel Van Dyken

  Copyright © 2024 RACHEL VAN DYKEN®

  www.RachelVanDykenAuthor.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  OFFICE MATE

  Copyright © 2024 RACHEL VAN DYKEN

  Cover Design: Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs

  Editing & Formatting by Jill Sava, Love Affair With Fiction

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A Note On Content

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  Also By Rachel Van Dyken

  A Note On Content

  We know that some of you like to know if there is anything in a book that may be difficult for you to read.

  Some real-life issues are discussed/portrayed within these pages.

  If you would like to see what they are, please click HERE

  Or scan the QR Code

  As always, thank you for reading!

  Dedication

  Grandma Nadine

  Thank you for living on In my books

  Chapter One

  Ace

  There was a stain on my jacket, not noticeable, but enough that I wanted to immediately shrug out of my black coat and toss it in the trash. Was it from the oatmeal this morning? Or was it from that bleary-eyed guy that stumbled next to me with a pickle in his hand and a weird smile who had me immediately thinking I was about to get shanked?

  No idea.

  The point was.

  I was late.

  I hated being late.

  Actually loathed it.

  If a person came up to me and said, do you want to die or be late I would choose death, that’s how much my anxiety crept up on me. I’d like to think that I got better over the years, the therapy, the wonderful drugs that were given to me to help me calm myself.

  In the end, it was yoga that hit hard along with self-talk. I just had to talk to myself about why I was feeling the way I was and stretch, then I was good, so I had no clue why the stupid stain was making me want to go to prison.

  I walked into the elevator and took a deep breath.

  Those were good for you, breaths, as my Apple watch loved to remind me.

  I took another and finally felt at ease. I was hiring a recruit today and the patience I’d need to just sit while watching people touch their face or move in their seats would be—huge. They should thank me for not losing my mind while a hair touched a cheek and smudged lip gloss.

  I shuddered.

  Gross.

  Lip gloss was the worst, it stuck onto things, lips, jackets, cloths, napkins, food. I shuddered again. The worst kind was shiny, it was always stickier and the young people that came in for new hires almost always had it covering their giant lips.

  Don’t even get me started on the filler.

  Get stung by a bee instead… easier, cheaper, and probably organic.

  I took another deep breath in, then paused.

  I paused, I never paused… but the person in the elevator with me was suddenly on her knees and looking up with blinking eyes like she had no clue she existed.

  “Um?” I held out my hand, prepared to wash it off later about a billion times, but I didn’t want to be rude. “You good?”

  Her hair was jet-black, her eyes were bright blue, and she looked up at me like she hadn’t seen another human in years. Her small fingers gripped mine while she stood wearing a very, very, very sad looking black suit with a missing button in the middle and shoes that had been clearly tarnished on the sides. Even her hand was cold. “I’m not good.”

  Honesty. Well, that was new. “Okay, do I need to call someone or?”

  Her eyes welled with tears. “I have nobody to call.”

  It hit me.

  Because I didn’t either.

  And I hated it.

  I hated I had nobody, that I was an orphan, that nobody other than my best friend Dustin cared.

  I kept her hand in mine, something that was so not my usual MO since I hated all germs and all things that made me feel dirty.

  I held it in mine. She was warm where I always felt cold and indifferent. I didn’t say I liked it , but I did like how our random hands touched and moved against each other.

  The doors to the elevator closed and opened, then closed again, we rode wherever we were going to ride until it took us to the top of the building.

  “Why are you here?” I finally asked, gripping her hand tighter like my body knew that I needed something other than air. I needed touch. I needed something.

  She looked down at her tattered shoes. “I’ve done seventy job interviews in the last year, I’m here to eat.”

  “I like food.” I said after a minute. It wasn’t a lie. I did like food, it always filled me the way I wanted. Physically, emotionally, it did its job until it was done and it felt complete. Food was basically one of the only things that never truly let you down.

  “Me too.” She sniffled. “I think I really, really need that right now. I need…” She paused as a tear slid down her porcelain cheek. “I need to feel something.”

  “Feeling is important because it makes you feel whole, but don’t for one second think that it’s going to make everything okay.”

  “I know that better than anyone,”” she whispered. “I’m assuming you do too.”

  “Yeah.”

  I refused to admit she was pretty with her long lashes and full pink lips.

  “Ok.” I nodded. “Ok. Let’s go outside and eat.”

  The elevator doors opened to the rooftop restaurant, and I did the most insane thing I could have ever done in my life.

  Maybe I was tired.

  Maybe it was the stain on my suit.

  Maybe it was just life.

  But I turned and pulled her against me and whispered, “Can I kiss you?”

  Her frown was brief before she wrapped her arms around my neck, her fingers were warm to the touch, my skin rapidly started heating up as she massaged me. “Yes. Whatever you want to do. Yes. I’ll give you a day of my life just make it good. I’m sad. I’m broke. I’m—“ tears poured down her face. “I’m everything I never wanted to be, so yes, if this is it—”

  “It?” I interrupted. “What’s it?”

  “I was coming up here to jump, not eat. I lied...”

  “No jumping,I said. “Only standing allowed, it’s in the rules.”

  She took a deep breath, it shuddered against her chest like it was hard to actually follow through with inhaling and exhaling. “Then kiss me like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Cheesy.” I nodded, her posture wasn’t as stiff as before. “Very cheesy.”

  “Necessary.” Her answer. “So very necessary.”

  “Okay.” I leaned in, could smell the air around us whirling, firing. “But you have to promise me you don’t attempt to jump ever, there’s always a way out, even if it’s a sad-looking guy telling it to your face.”

  Her smile didn’t falter, she just grinned bigger. “You’re beautiful, though I’ll admit you have Bambi eyes.”

  “You’re beautiful too, minus the Bambi eyes.” I added. “Is this the point where I take you on a date and create an insane meet-cute and marry you later?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Cool. Now step off that mental ledge and let me feed you.”

  She gripped my hand softly. “Did you forget about the kiss offer?”

  “Never.” I started pulling her toward the rooftop restaurant. “I just think it should be perfect and right now I can hear your stomach growling and I’m a bit terrified that if someone as amazing as myself kisses you, you’ll think that it’s totally fine to just die in peace.”

  “Depressing.”

  “I have a lot of charms.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ace. Yours?”

  She shook her head. “Wow, of course it is… tall, good-looking””—she looked down at our joined hands—“a Rolex, so you’re either in debt or rich.” Her frown deepened. “Sad though, still sad with those eyes.”

  “Being sad isn’t a crime.” I squeezed her hand. “Just like meeting a random stranger on an elevator on a rough day can actually happen, I mean it does in the movies, why not live out that fantasy?”

  “No wedding ring.” She inspected, tilting our joined hands left and right. “All right, let’s live out that fantasy today and I’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes. Also…” Her smile was kind, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “My name’s Bri. Thanks for helping me stand on my feet.”

  I didn’t say anytime.

  I was all out of promises, but I did have the best meal of my life with the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.

  Things went w
ell until it all went to hell months later, when I fell in love with her and got rejected.

  When she told me it was her, not me.

  When she walked out of my life after changing her number.

  A stain on my jacket was how “rough” my day had been going, I had no clue that my year would end with a stain on my heart and a girl that had no social media who I couldn’t contact who made me open up, only to make me close down the minute she walked out of my life.

  A true partner? A mate?

  Yeah, that didn’t exist, not in the real world.

  Chapter Two

  Bri

  Two Years Later

  Walking up to a crazy huge company in Seattle was not on my bucket list, in fact, the whole plan was to move to some sad farm in the middle of the country think about my life choices, maybe even possibly jump up on farmers only dot com and find a man to take care of me despite his inability to shower every day.

  Trust me, I tested it.

  Both dates were so bad that I thought it was a joke. Though I couldn’t complain about the tight Wranglers.

  So being in Seattle, again, was not one of my life choices, but it was the only job, the only firm that hired me for marketing.

  I knew I was good at it, even though it was marketing for a hotel that I had zero care for with all its modern facilities and yoga studios—it was still a job and at this point I was so done after the last few years of being a failure that it made sense.

  I mean, everything made sense other than knowing that I had to compete for this paid internship with one other person who passed all the tests.

  Apparently, he graduated Ivy League and had a vendetta for all humans attempting to get the same job. Basically, on paper he was an ass, in real life, I imagined he’d be terrifying, but I knew enough and had experienced enough that nothing really scared me anymore.

  Not after what I’d been through.

  I always thought of the word after as, after him, after that experience, after that moment in my world where things went dark, so why now? Why would I even care about a tiny little bleep on my career trajectory?

  I had my MBA was only twenty-five and was going to be working at the biggest hotel chain in the world.

  Things weren’t sad.

  Maybe I was, sometimes, but career-wise anyone would be jealous.

  I straightened my black faded jacket and made sure my white button up was tucked into my skinny jeans and double checked my second hand camel-colored boots.

  I looked okay, not my best, but it hadn’t been the best year either.

  I missed him.

  I missed what we had.

  And realized on a daily basis what we both did wrong without even realizing it at the time and now had literally no way to contact him.

  Whatever, now was not the time.

  New job. New life. No thoughts of the past.

  I opened up the glass doors to Emory Hotels, the Seattle Flagship for the Pacific Northwest, and walked toward security only to be suddenly stopped by a man in a black suit, black-rimmed glasses, dusty blondish brown hair and a smile that looked like it actually hurt because it was so fake. I mean, even his eyebrows, though really groomed, looked like they were in pain as he kept his eyes as open as humanely possible.

  “Hi!”

  He didn’t have to yell. I jerked back a bit, not sure if I should hold out my hand, wave, run, or call security.

  I tilted my head, was he lost? “Um, yeah hi.”

  I tried to politely sidestep him.

  He moved with me, then chuckled, his hands held out a bit, was his thumb shaking? He quickly shoved them into the pockets of his black trousers and flashed me another fully white-toothed painful grin, then awkwardly shoved his black glasses up his nose at least twice before clearing his throat like he was catching a cold or was seconds away from pulling out a hanky most likely with his initials on it. “So.”

  I almost said: How ‘bout those Mariners?

  Because really, other than the weather, what did this odd man want? My kidneys?

  “I’m Dustin.” He nodded emphatically, like I should know who he was. “From HR and Marketing at Emory Hotels and well I wear a lot of hats, beanies, socks…” He laughed at his own joke, I simply stared in disbelief. “In the er… company, and I’m here to give you your employee badge, go over everything HR sent and introduce you to the team.” He jerked at the badge around his neck and tapped it. “See? Laminated. We’re fancy.”

  Wow, maybe this would be poor life choice number five hundred and seventy billion because if this was the guy that they sent down for orientation…

  He lifted his arm partially into the air before I stopped him by saying. “Please, if there’s a company cheer, I don’t think this is the place to shout it.”

  He looked around. “Right and yeah, we change it every season based on the boss’s mood, real great company to work for though, not stressful at all.”

  I frowned. “Did both your eyes just twitch at the same time?”

  “Never!” He blinked and turned around. “So we’ll just hop onto the elevator and go to floor number thirteen.” He shuddered. “We use it for the interns, so you get the unlucky number and future of knowing that you can only go up from there, but sitting in cursed silence is the only way to obtain it.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Sorry.” He coughed into his hand. “I tend to overshare, probably why I can’t make it past forty-seven, I mean, son of a bitch, is it too much to ask to just make it past forty-seven?”

  The elevator doors closed as he hit number thirteen like he wanted the button to break.

  I took a few steps away from him and leaned against the wall. “What’s past forty-seven?”

  He gawked at me, his glasses slid down his nose again. “What’s past forty-seven? That’s like what’s asking what happens when you die, my friend. Anything past forty-seven is like getting handed a brand-new car, a million dollar bonus, a free puppy, food for life, and the best of all—“

  I waited for it.

  He nodded his head, his light eyes misting. “Validation.”

  “From God?” I guessed, okay who was this guy, for real, was this a test?

  He visibly paled. “Almost, almost.”

  Maybe in the end I’d think back and go hmm, red flag or green?

  Chapter Three

  Ace

  I would like to think there was a natural order to things, or that at least that should be the expectation, but what I was looking at said otherwise.

  I had nine.

  Nine interns, most of whom looked so scared to even be standing that they continuously shifted between each foot or rubbed their noses like they brought the plague into the office.

  My eyes narrowed.

  Dustin wasn’t helping. He was late. Again. And I needed him in order to continue with training the new interns, two of which were currently… I tilted my head, was one dude crying?

  Oh, no, false alarm, sweat, only sweat, no big deal.

  All nine of them lowered their heads when a door slammed behind them like they were afraid to make eye contact. Good.

  Everyone was wearing the typical black and white uniform that Emory Hotels gave them. And I already hated them.

  I hated this job.

  I hated everything.

  I’d been the last intern to go through the program and did so well that they moved me up to VP within a year, but nobody warned me that I’d be the boss to the sniveling idiots who showed up with stars in their eyes, multiple degrees, the desire to change the world but the inability to actually execute said change.

  I sighed and prayed for more patience, knowing that no matter how many prayers I sent—I’d still have none.

  I’d been like that for a while.

  Angry.

  Bitter.

  Grumpy.

  Whatever you want to call it, it wasn’t good.

  And I want to blame it on her walking away, my past, just the situation I was put in but then I would end up resenting every single person I work with all because…

  Of.

  Her.

  I took a deep breath and faced the interns, only to have the elevator open, revealing Dustin and someone short behind him.

  Someone familiar.

  Her hair was dark on the edges, lighter on the top, she had dark lipstick on and zero eye makeup.