Not Safe For Work: A Steamy Fake Dating Romance

Chapter 5

What is happening right now?

Staring daggers at Gavin wasn’t enough to get his attention so now I’m kicking his feet, trying to force him to look at me, all without waking Churro who’s still cozied up in my lap. This hedgehog might be the only thing keeping me from a full-on anxiety spiral right now. I may need to kidnap him. Hedge-nap?

Finally, Gavin turns to me and mouths “I’m sorry” with a shrug. That’s it? He just poured fuel all over the fire of my shit day and all I get is a shrug?

“We haven’t told anyone yet since it’s new and we didn’t know how people at work would react. Yes, it’s serious,” he continues on the phone. There’s a long pause and I am desperate to know what Mitch is saying on the other end. “Well, I’d say the second I found out she was single, actually.” Another long pause. “Look Mitch, the point is that I’m not okay with you asking her to do something she’s uncomfortable with, and it should have been enough when she told you herself. Now we’re gonna go to HR tomorrow and disclose our relationship. Is there anything else I should be talking to them about?”

Did Gavin just threaten Mitch? Gavin Scott is morphing into an entirely new person tonight. He went from the hot colleague who hates me to my panic attack savior and now he’s some sort of vigilante superhero. The longer he talks to Mitch the darker his eyes get, the more strain I can see in the set of his jaw. It’s hot, so hot I’m afraid I might start fanning myself if this goes on much longer.

If I didn’t want to throttle him right now I might be seriously turned on. Rage and lust aren’t a great combo. I feel like I’m about to combust.

We’re together. Why the hell would he say that?

“Yeah, screw you too. See you tomorrow, pal.” He hangs up.

“Oh my god, did you really just talk to him like that?” I guess when you’re best friends with the CEO you can do whatever you want, but still.

The anger on Gavin’s face starts to dissipate and he finally makes eye contact with me. “Shit. I’m so sorry, Liv. I was just really pissed and that was the first thing I could think of to get him to stop hassling you.” He really does look sorry. Not that his sorrow does me any good in this situation.

The fact that Gavin tried to stand up for me says a lot. It’s telling me he’s not at all who I thought he was. But as good as his intentions are, he hasn’t exactly helped to solve my problem. In fact, I’m positive he’s made it worse.

Would it have killed him to ask me before he called Mitch and went on that tirade? But he’s a man. Why would he ever need to worry about the consequences of his actions?

“It’s okay,” I lie. Because what’s done is done. “It’ll be pretty awkward when you tell him the truth though,” I say through gritted teeth. Mitch will probably think we slept together or something, but it fizzled out, or he got bored with me. It took months for people to believe I was actually dating Ian, that I wasn’t just some plaything.

I know what I look like. It’s the big hair and the big boobs and apparently my smile. Men have always found it appropriate to comment on my looks as though I’m hanging on a wall instead of an actual person.

And women…well, I’ve been called a gold digger and a slut around the office more times than I can count, hence why I’ve been so quiet about the break-up. At twenty-six I’m still the youngest person at our company, minus Gabby. Starting a romantic relationship two years ago with one of our board members who’s over a decade older than me created a lot of eye rolls, especially when I was so new. I try not to care about my reputation, but it still hurts when I hear what people say about me.

“We don’t have to,” Gavin offers, tilting his head to the side. “Tell him the truth I mean, if it’ll help him leave you alone for a bit, we could just…” He shrugs.

“We could just pretend to be a couple? Are you serious?” Pretending to be his girlfriend is ridiculous. We’re not even friends. I was pretty sure he hated me until this morning—when I determined the coffee wasn’t poisoned.

Though it doesn’t sound as horrible as I’m making it out to be, dating Gavin. I mean, he’s really nice to look at. It might even soften the blow as people start to find out about Ian…oh my god, Ian. I almost forgot about having to see him on Friday when he comes in for the board meeting. And then after the board meeting when we all?—

“Sorry, never mind. It was a stupid idea,” Gavin mutters. “Please don’t get upset. I’ll figure something out to tell Mitch.”

“Actually,” I start, but he cuts me off.

“It’s okay, Liv. I can see the horrified look on your face. I know what it looks like when you’re anxious.” He does? “You’ve been through enough today. I’m not trying to make you feel worse. You can relax.” He brushes a hand through his hair and falls back against the sofa. “I should never have told him that in the first place. I’ll take care of it.”

“Actually,” I continue. “I was thinking maybe…maybe you could wait to come clean until next week?”

“What?” He swiftly straightens his spine, eyeing me like he’s trying to find the puzzle piece he’s missing.

“I was just thinking, since you already offered, it might help me out on Friday at our off-site, so I can avoid?—”

“Ian?”

“Mmhmm.” I squint at him, worried about how childish it might look that I’m desperate to avoid my ex. But I’m not too embarrassed to ask for Gavin’s help. I have no idea what people will say when they see I’m not with Ian anymore. I’ll gladly suck up my pride for a shield. “It’s just, I don’t know what to expect?—”

“Say no more, Sparkles. I’m in.” He grins back at me, and it’s so genuine I want to cry. I still don’t know what changed in the last twenty-four hours, but whatever made him go from hating me to becoming this fierce protector, I’m grateful for it. I’m so tired of feeling sorry for myself in the aftermath of this break-up.

Maybe Gavin’s exactly the kind of distraction I need.

From: Olivia Diamond [email protected] >

To: Tristan Cross [email protected] >

Subject: RE: RE: Nice Meeting You

Hi Tristan,

Thanks for the kind reply. I hope you’ll be able to join more meetings in the future and see all the capabilities Sizzl can offer you. I think you’ll be especially impressed with Davide, our Head of Product.

As for this weekend, I’m very flattered. Since I’m currently seeing someone, I’ll have to decline but very much appreciate the offer.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out for any other questions regarding Sizzl. I’m excited to work with your team and help you reach all your marketing goals.

Cheers,

Olivia Diamond

Sales Development @ Sizzl

I spent halfthe night crafting this email and after hitting send I want to rewrite it again. Unfortunately, I could not find a template for a message that conveyed utmost professionalism, while being friendly and positive and also turning a guy down. And I searched for one thoroughly. Even AI couldn’t help me this time around.

With the dreaded email finally sent, I walk out of Fog Foam with my half-drunk coffee in hand and bump into my new boyfriend.

“Hey, Sparkles. Had a feeling I’d catch you here.” Gavin’s in his usual hoodie and jeans, white sneakers and his hair still wet from the shower. While I try to look polished and professional each day, he’s my complete opposite. And yet, he pulls it off every time.

“You were…looking for me?” I realize now I did leave his apartment a little abruptly last night. I’m beyond grateful that he’s willing to fake-love me to alleviate some of the stress in my life, but once he started talking logistics, my anxiety got the best of me and I fake-yawned until he ordered me to go home and get some sleep.

“Thought it might be good to walk in together, show a united front.” He winks before threading his fingers through mine and holding them there. Yep, we are officially holding hands.

“This okay?” he asks in a quick murmur. And I’m frozen. When we talked about this last night, I never really thought about the actual pretending we’d be doing. It’s one thing to tell people we’re together, even my company, but showing people, how did I not consider what that meant?

My mind flashes back to him on the floor with me last night, when he pressed his palm to my chest, when he squeezed my fingers and gently unwrapped them from my fist. For someone who’s never liked me, he sure is making it a habit of touching me. I only wish I didn’t enjoy it so much.

Suddenly all I can think about is Gavin’s hands. His hands on mine. His hands in my hair. His hands all over?—

“Sparkles?”

“Sorry. Yeah. All good.” How the hell am I going to pull this off if I get this worked up over some simple hand holding? Maybe I’m not mature enough for this.

“Good. And I want Mitch to see us go to HR together, so he knows I was serious. As long as that’s still okay with you.”

“Yeah, it’s…” I’m actually dreading going to HR. I’ve already had to disclose and then un-disclose one relationship to the team. This is getting embarrassing. But on Friday everyone at the company is going to find out Ian left me. Having Gavin around will make things easier. I think. “Let’s do it.”

SLACK DIRECT MESSAGE

Andie Oh:

Were you and Gavin holding hands this morning?

HOLDING HANDS

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?

Olivia Diamond:

No need to panic. I’ll tell you everything at lunch

Andie Oh:

Stalking your calendar now

OK 12:45 at Yank Sing – we need dumplings! Accept my invite so no one can book over it

I click over to my calendar and find an invite for Strategy Session – DO NOT BOOK with a winking emoji in the description.

The one thing Gavin and I did discuss last night was who we would and wouldn’t be lying to. At first, he said I shouldn’t tell Andie the truth because of her penchant for gossip, but then I reminded him that she was the only person besides Mitch and HR who I’d confided in about my break-up and he came around. She’s also his sister’s boss, and there’s no way we could lie to Gabby. She’s his family.

Andie’s sort of mine too. She’s been my work-wife, as she likes to say, for more than a year now. She closed the deal the first time she invited me over for a homemade Korean dinner. Her sugary-sweet personality also hooked me hard, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go to her place once a week for the tteokbokki alone. That, and the fact that she is one of the least judgmental people I’ve ever met in my life. She was never anything but supportive of my relationship with Ian, at least in the beginning, before pleasing him became so tedious.

She was even more supportive about the breakup.

“How many ordersof har gow do we need? Or should we just get extra soup dumplings? It’s sort of chilly today,” Andie says, rubbing her arms over her cream sweater. She’s right. It’s a very brisk fifty-four-degree day. Basically freezing for February in San Francisco.

“Let’s do both. And get egg tarts. Before they sell out.”

I’ve barely torn into the pork bun when Andie starts. “Okay, it’s time to talk about the hand holding.” She emphasizes the last two words like they’re explicit. What is this, Regency England?

There’s no great way to ease into this conversation so I just go for it. “It was just for show. We’re fake-dating.”

She squints back in response, her mouth full of shrimp. And then barely audible, says, “Like in a romcom? You know that’s not a thing people do in real life, right?”

“It’s kind of a long story, but Mitch was being an ass, and before I could stop him, Gavin told him we’re dating.” My words tumble out at lightning speed. “So now we have to keep up the ruse for a little while.”

She eyes me suspiciously while demolishing a few more dumplings. The restaurant is completely full and listening to the sounds of everyone around us has me momentarily distracted while I wait for her opinion on all this. “You sure this has nothing to do with seeing Ian on Friday? Are you trying to make him jealous?”

I almost spit out my green tea. If there is one singular thing I’m sure of, it’s that I don’t want Ian back. If a genie miraculously came out of this teapot, I’d use all three wishes on erasing him from my life completely.

“No. Definitely not. I mean, yeah, it’ll make avoiding Ian a lot easier, but I couldn’t care less about making him jealous. You know that.”

“You’re right. I do,” she says after studying me for a moment. “This has been one of the healthiest breakups I’ve ever witnessed. You’ve never even mentioned texting him or trying to bump into him somewhere randomly. Hell, you’ve even avoided the gym and I guarantee if that man saw you in spandex he’d be begging for another chance.”

I roll my eyes at her comment, but I’m also flattered. Not about the spandex but that I’ve handled it well. After two years with a boyfriend constantly reminding me how immature I am, it’s nice to hear the opposite from someone I admire as much as Andie.

I used to think love was like a ladder. It was aspirational, something to achieve when you reached the precipice. From a birds-eye view, I always thought Ian was better than me, so being with him meant I was better too. Like if someone like him loved me, I’d go up another rung.

Now I think it’s more like a house, or at least that’s what I’d like it to be if I ever fall in love. Something we can build together over time.

The thing I’ve been working on with my therapist is pursuing what makes me happy. This might sound intuitive, but I’ve realized that I tend to focus on what others want from me instead of what I want for myself. That I give way too much power to those around me, to their opinions of me.

Now that I’ve put in the work, it’s so clear that Ian never made me happy. I don’t think I ever even loved him. I was just so thrilled when he said it, that I immediately reciprocated. I never actually asked myself what I felt for him.

From the very beginning, he made me feel less than, and instead of building a relationship together, I spent two years constantly trying to mold myself to fit his expectations.

“This really isn’t about Ian, I swear. Just an added bonus.”

“So what did the mighty Mitch do now?” she asks.

“Well, I told you about that prospect, Tristan. How he asked me out?” She nods in response. “Mitch saw the email. I guess Tristan had replied all and I didn’t notice. And Mitch told me to go out with him.”

“Told you? Like ordered you?”

“Pretty much. And when I said that wasn’t going to happen, he got really worked up about it and made it clear my promotion was on the line with this deal. It just sort of spiraled.”

I show Andie the texts from Mitch and give her the bullet points from last night at Gavin’s apartment. She whisper-yells several expletives and I see her cheeks burn pink.

She tosses my phone back to me like a hot potato and takes a deep, centering breath. “We should discuss how to murder Mitch later, but I still don’t understand how Gavin’s involved. Why didn’t you go to HR? Or Daanesh even? Why resort to a fake boyfriend?”

“It’s just for a few days. It got Mitch to stop harassing me and it’ll be nice to have a buffer on Friday when the whole office finds out Ian and I are over.” I don’t mention how good it felt to have Gavin stand up for me, or the butterflies I felt this morning as we walked into the office together.

“Still. I just hate letting Mitch get away with treating you like that. Isn’t there something we can do?”

“You know exactly what happens to women who complain about these things. I mean, what would I even say?”

“You wouldn’t have to say anything. The texts speak for themselves. You know this is sexual harassment, right?” Andie argues. “Just because he’s not the one hitting on you doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”

“Sure, I know that. But I also know I’ll end up being the one who gets blamed. You saw what happened to Megan after everything with Davide blew up. I can handle Mitch being Mitch if it means I get to keep my job. I’ve worked too hard for this promotion to just throw all that work away and start over.”

Andie sighs. I can tell she’s frustrated with me, but I also know she gets it. Even as a team lead, she knows what it’s like being a woman in tech. Companies in the Bay Area love to tout how forward thinking and feminist they are, but it’s always still men who are running the show. Women are celebrated, just as long as we play by their rules.

She pulls up the texts on my phone and reads through them again. “So, Gavin saw these and just suddenly agreed to pretend you’re a couple?”

“He didn’t agree to anything. I never asked. He just did it.” I shrug, not really knowing how else to explain why he jumped in like that. I still don’t understand it myself.

“Good for him. You need a man like that. Someone as righteous as you are.”

I do need someone like that, and for a split second I forget that this is all a fa?ade. That no man who was actually mine has ever defended me so gallantly.

“We’re not really dating, you know. He’s not my man.”

Andie twists her lips, giving me a thoughtful once over. “He got you ramen, Liv.” She says the word like it’s the equivalent of organ donation. “I’d give it a real shot.” She pops another soup dumpling in her mouth and grins at me.

SLACK DIRECT MESSAGE

Gavin Scott:

How’d it go with Andie?

Olivia Diamond:

Fine. I’m glad I had a chance to explain things before the rumors started.

Did you get a chance to tell Gabby?

Gavin Scott:

Yep. All good

Gavin has been checking in on me all day. Not in an annoying way, but how an actual boyfriend might act. And not just about our arrangement. After our chat with HR he told me to come to him if Mitch ever made me feel uncomfortable again. He promised he wouldn’t insert himself into the situation like last night unless I asked him, but that he wanted to make sure I had someone to talk to. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Gavin Scott might care about me.

Which is the thought I’m trying to erase from my head when Mitch heads to our desk pod and asks, “How are the love birds?”

Mitch and I haven’t actually spoken yet today. Just minimal eye-contact across the office. He has a good excuse, prepping for his board meeting in two days, but it’s still weird.

“Mitch, should we chat for a sec?” I know it’s the end of the day, and I can see he’s about to head out, but I don’t want this awkwardness to linger any further.

“It’s fine, Livy,” he says, ruffling my hair. Seriously? “So, are you gonna take the ferry with us on Friday or will you be going with your boyfriend?” He nudges his head at Gavin when he says the b-word. And I’m…lost.

I look to Gavin, wondering what Mitch is talking about but he just scowls. “Scottie?” I ask.

“You know I don’t do boats.” I try to school my features when he says it because apparently, I’m supposed to know this. Mitch laughs, loving our first Newlywed Game fail.

Trying for a save, I respond, “Oh, I thought it was just smaller boats. No ferries? Really?” Why would he not be okay with ferries?

“Goodnight, guys. Have fun getting to know each other.” Mitch winks back before he walks out. Shit.

“Sorry, Liv. That’s my bad. I should have told you considering the event on Friday.”

I can’t exactly fault him for this, but I am curious. “You really don’t do ferries? Ever?”

“No boats.” I raise my brows, urging him to explain and he sighs, resignation coating his features. “You hungry?” He swiftly changes the subject.

“A little. You wanna tell me about the boats?”

“Let’s grab dinner,” he says, standing and packing up his laptop. “I’ll tell you all my deepest, darkest secrets.”