9. Rachel
9
RACHEL
N ate didn’t say a word about teaching me anything for a couple of days. He didn’t talk to me much at all. They were busy days, preventing us from saying more than a hello in passing.
He was in meeting after meeting, plus he had some other appointments and things to handle. Likewise, it was chaotic in the office. Julie seemed extra frazzled, so I stepped up to help her. And the silly, petty things that popped up in my workload seemed that much more laborious.
Maybe it’s the holidays. No one is thinking straight with all the fanfare and excitement about being off at the end of the month.
More employees seemed to be off as it was, requesting PTO for family things and such. Each time it was explained that I needed to play gopher or do a little something for another department, it was because someone was off or sick.
Like now, with the request that I run copies for another supervisor. Instead of using the machine on the floor where Julie ran things, I was down a couple of floors, covering for someone who had to be off to watch her kid perform for thirty seconds of their hour-long school recital.
At least the holiday décor wasn’t as bad down here. Just the usual trees on counters and a few streamers of red and green strung from door frames and arches. “Jingle Bells” quietly played on the music channel, but it was a newer, more modern version that didn’t grate on my nerves like the classic ones did. The ones Mom played nonstop.
I rolled my eyes at the thought of her. She had to be so mad by now that I wasn’t coming home. While she and Dad understood my desire and need to work, they could not understand why I’d jump at a temp position like this at this particular time of the year.
It wasn’t like I was trying to be obtuse. I flat-out told Mom that she was suffocating in this season, too much with every little extra that could be done to commemorate another Christmas coming. There was a fine line between celebratory spirit and going overkill.
She continued to turn a deaf ear to my comments, though, and she didn’t take a hint when I failed to reply to her many texts and calls.
Another one of which I received as I counted the packets of papers that had to be color-coordinated and collated with and without staples. I swore, sometimes it felt like a math riddle running copiers for specialty requests.
I grabbed my phone, pausing in counting, to read the incoming message.
Two had come in at once.
Mom: Wasn’t this so much fun? If you drive home after work tonight, you can stay for the weekend and we’ll do it again.
She attached a Time Hop photo of us at Rockton’s hot cocoa stand. There I was, faking a smile over a mug of watered down chocolate that burned my tongue.
My brother had sent the other message.
Brandon: You’re making me regret telling you to work for Nate. He seems to keep you busy all the time!
I winced, uneasy about his comment. He’d said that because our schedules hadn’t worked for us to hang out much since I came to the city. Even though I was renting a studio apartment in his building, a favor done for someone he knew who was traveling for a few months, we didn’t cross paths. The few times he wanted to hang out, I was still working or just hanging out with Julie at the office for dinners. That woman was hilarious. Then, when I suggested a time to go out, at a later hour, he was already at work bartending.
The idea of his not liking the concept of Nate keeping me “busy” made me uncomfortable.
What would he say if he knew Nate had offered to be my mentor?
What would he think if he was aware that Nate and I were sort of, kinda, not really but maybe flirting with each other? A sense of mutual attraction was building between us, or at least I thought something was there. Yet, Brandon would remain a factor we hadn’t considered.
Rachel: It’s more like you have a night shift and I have a day shift. We’ll figure something out next week.
I set my phone down and resumed paying attention to the copying. It had turned into a bit of a fiasco with my distraction, and now I had to recoup for the mistake and redo a fair amount of it all.
“I’m surprised Nate even comes to the party anymore,” a woman said to another as they breezed into the workroom. Both had piles of papers to sort through at another counter. Working side by side, they stood near enough that I could overhear them. The whir of the copiers wasn’t overly loud, and I was instantly intrigued.
“Oh, my God. Remember a couple of years ago? When someone cracked a joke about him ever getting back together with Yasmin.” The taller woman laughed and laughed.
I frowned, scowling at the copier I stood at. I didn’t see why this had to be a joke. At his expense. Didn’t they have any respect? What business was it of theirs? Nate’s personal life was his business alone. Of course, I’d feel this strongly about it when everyone wanted to be in my face about why Kyle dumped me.
“She’d never get back with him,” the first one gossiped. “I mean, it’s been years. But still. I heard he’s got a really tiny dick.”
I stared at the wall, pissed.
“Hmm, I don’t know. He’s such a tall guy. He can’t have a small one.”
“Hey,” the first one said. “That’s just what I heard…”
“ I heard that he just doesn’t know how to use it,” her coworker said.
“Maybe,” the first one said. “All I know is that he’s got to be faking this happy-go-lucky act. No one’s that laidback. Especially if he’s not getting laid.”
“And especially with how Yasmin humiliated him. It’s got to take a lot of courage to even show his face at those parties.”
“Well, he only does until he’s so drunk that he falls asleep.”
They both laughed.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. That is enough. Thanksgiving night was a blur for me, too. When Kyle dumped me in front of our families, at dinner, it wasn’t only awkward. It stung. A few shots of my dad’s whiskey dulled that night. No one could blame Nate for drinking for a distraction on the repeat party of where his ex-wife ruined his happiness. It was only human nature to want to distract from that.
The urge to stand up for Nate hit me hard. Anger fueled me. Annoyance had me readying to turn around and defend him. They didn’t know him. They were ignorant, making up stuff about him.
I didn’t know everything about him, not this mature, adult version of the guy I crushed on when I was a kid. But I was confident they were all wrong about him.
I was a second away from defending him from this behind-the-back attack. But then I hesitated. It didn’t seem like I should. It wasn’t my place to say anything. Nate, according to them and everyone else here at Malley, Inc., was just my boss for a month or two.
Not a friend. Or a man who wanted to tease me to the point that I was blushing uncontrollably. Definitely not a man I had started to think about far too often, particularly at night when I lay in bed and couldn’t sleep.
I shook my head slightly, chastising myself for not even knowing what my place should be with him. All at once, doubts surfaced about this deal we’d struck. Maybe it was for the best that it never started or happened. Because somehow, over the last couple of weeks while I hid from home and tried to avoid the mess of my love life, Nate had snuck into mattering. A lot.
“Hey.” And there he was, startling me until I flinched. He’d popped in, leaning past the door frame to smile at me. The other two gossiping women shut up really fast and looked busy.
“I was looking all over for you,” he said.
One of those easy, slow smiles covered his face. The real ones, the sweet ones like he was unaware that we were at the office and that he was focusing solely on me. He’d treated me to a naughtier version of this smile when we were at lunch, when he was listening to me and striking up that mentor deal. If a woman ever wanted to know what it felt like for a man to look at her like she was all that mattered in the world, it was this look right here. His, for me.
And it was not fake at all.
A warm glow spread through me at receiving his uninhibited attention like this. I caught myself from getting too giddy, though.
We were at work. And nothing, other than this supposed deal, connected us.
“Julie said you’d be down here. I was hoping to get lunch with you.”
“With me?” I asked. He’d been so busy, yet he had me on his mind?
Me? Or this deal?
Now that I’d caught a snippet of the gossip about how humiliating that holiday party had to be for him, it was understandable that he’d want a plus-one to avoid the embarrassment of going through another one on his own.
“Yeah, you and me. Lunch.” He upped the wattage of his grin.
While it should’ve sounded like a date, I knew better. He was only doing this for a lesson. To be my mentor.
The other two women didn’t say a single word. I felt good about their silence. But as they left the room, perhaps to gossip about him some more, I wished that Nate could be asking me out for real.
Not for a lesson or as part of our deal, but just because he wanted to spend time with me. So he could use me to move on from the six-year-old pain of Yasmin leaving him.
“Sure.” I smiled the best I could and headed out with him.
“Want to drop all those off first?” he asked.
“Nah. I have to double-check them all again. I’ll set them down in my office first.”
“Waste of paper, if you ask me. Those could all be attachments. Digital files.”
“You wouldn’t hear an argument from me.” I huffed a laugh. “I bet no one keeps these ‘handy’ for reference. Everything is digital.”
“Some things are better on paper, though.”
I glanced at him as we got into the elevator to go up to my—our—floor. “Like what?”
He shrugged, pushing the button to close the doors. “Books?”
I made a face. “No thanks.”
He furrowed his brow. “I kind of recall you being a bookworm when you weren’t trying to tag along with me and Brandon back home.”
“I was. I am. I do love to read, but paperbacks take up too much space.” I stepped off the elevator, and he followed me to set the papers on my desk. All the way through the office and back out, we kept up this slight bickering about books.
“I didn’t say paperbacks. Hardbacks.”
“Why?” I snorted a laugh. “Those are even heavier.”
“Then you need to strength train,” he teased, pretending to feel my bicep.
“Reading is exercising this,” I said, tapping his temple.
“Damn, you are short,” he joked as I reached up to touch the side of his head.
“You’re only now noticing?”
“How do you get things down at a store?”
I rolled my eyes as I wrapped my coat around me tighter. Snow had yet to come, but the temps weren’t fooling around. “I don’t—unless I ask a stranger if they can give me a boost.”
He chuckled, showing me on his phone where he wanted to get lunch. “I think you’ll like this place.”
I glanced at the screen, smiling when I saw that it was a BBQ place. How can he remember that I love BBQs? “Looks good.”
“What if a stranger isn’t around to give you a boost to get something off a high shelf?”
“Then I climb up and get it.”
“Oh, my God. Remember that one time when someone’s kids climbed the shelves at the market back home?”
I nodded, amused that the story was known by all in Rockton, regardless of age. It was like an urban legend—or proof that everyone knew everyone else and some things were never forgotten. “I think it was those twins who lived by the school.”
“They tore the whole shelving unit off the wall,” he added with laughter.
“And it was about this time of the year, wasn’t it?”
“It was. Because the market’s owner always dressed up as Santa for the holiday night fair and he was an asshole to them, telling them they wouldn’t get anything for Christmas.”
“See, I’m not a fan of all this,” I said, flicking my hand at a trail of red- and white-striped ribbon fluttering from a door decoration as we walked, “but even I wouldn’t stoop that low.”
“Why aren’t you a fan?” Without missing a step, he leaned over and ran his hand through the low-hanging bells strung from another kitschy Christmas decoration. “Everyone loves Christmas.”
“Not me.”
“How?” He smiled as he said it, keeping this all lighthearted and not mean.
“My mom has always shoved it down our throats. Too pushy about it.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“You remember now? Coming over to hang out with Brandon and how she took it to the extremes?”
“No, not really. But I’ve known people like that. Making it too cheery, obsessively so, and it’s suffocating.”
“Yes! Suffocating.”
“I think having some festivity is mandatory, but only go all out every few years or so.”
That sounded more manageable, but I doubted my mother would ever understand toning it down.
“I just enjoy the chance to be with my family. To relax for a bit. Christmases were always the highlight of the year when I was younger.”
“That’s fine. But count me out.” I shook my head. “If I can help it, I’ll stay here in the city and avoid going home to deal with it.”
“Really? You mean that?” He held the door open to the restaurant, letting me enter first.
“Yeah. A nice break from all the pressure at home.”
“Eh, I don’t know about that… I’m not a fan of anyone being alone on Christmas.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as he told the hostess he wanted a table for two. “But that’s what you do,” I said as we were led back. “Brandon goes to your cabin sometimes, but it’s just you up there in the mountain, isn’t it?”
Sulking and licking your wounds from having to go through the holiday party every year…
“Usually.” He grinned as we sat. “It’s peaceful. Relaxing.” A long sigh left him as he leaned back in his seat. “Just like this.”
Being with me was peaceful? That sounded nice. After hearing that nasty gossip about him and getting an idea of just how much he loathed the holiday party while loving this season, I was glad to be able to put him at ease.
“Yeah.” I nodded, checking out the rustic décor of this place. No gaudy decorations and trees everywhere here. It was simple and basic, more my style while paying clear homage to the BBQ theme. “Peaceful.”
It wasn’t so clear what “lesson” he wanted to show me here, but I was interested in having this time with him, anyway. He was a distraction, all right, and as I settled in to peruse the menu, I realized how glad I was to get away with him.
No matter the purpose.