Tinsel In A Tangle

by Ainslie Paton

There was always an argument with marketing who wanted something more fun, and with the management team who wanted safe and not too expensive, and all Shelby wanted was for it to be over.

  Nothing in her six years of experience as a people manager had prepared her for seeing her boss out cold on the floor at the hand of her secret fantasy boyfriend.

  People got silly at parties, their guards came down and they said inappropriate things. They danced like they thought they were Beyoncé, when their moves where really more like The Wiggles. She’d repaired egos and mopped tears at Christmas parties. She’d sent people home to recover from imagined insults and counselled people over real ones, got people up to dance, and asked the disorderly ones to calm down, but she’d never had to clean up after a physical fight.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what the clean-up should be. As far as Christmas party behaviour was concerned, it was back of beyond naughty, a long, long way from nice.

  ‘Never thought I’d see a nativity with a colour-change-hair Barbie as Mary,’ she said to break the quiet they’d both sunk into.

  ‘Thought I was seeing things at first. The Porg is a nice touch,’ Adam replied.

  He’d seemed angry when she’d arrived, well not angry so much as embarrassed and maybe a little ashamed. He definitely wasn’t pleased to see her, but then he’d thought she’d come to make him more miserable.

  ‘I’ve sent Stella a message, but she might not get back to me tonight. I’ll stay with you until they fix you up and we’ll worry about everything else later.’ He didn’t respond so she slid into the seat she’d left between them and ducked her head to look at his poor smashed face. ‘Is that okay with you?’

  ‘I can’t stop you.’ He shook his head, scrunched his forehead making his cut reopen. ‘I’m sorry, that was rude and you’re being nothing but generous and kind and I don’t deserve it.’

  She took the tea towel out of his hand and dabbed it gently on his brow. She hoped it was clean when he nicked it from the staff kitchen. He flinched away at first, relenting only when she clucked her tongue at him. She could mop his head, but she couldn’t do anything to sort out what had happened especially if he wouldn’t tell her why he’d gone after Felix.

  ‘You want to know why I think you did it?’ she said.

  ‘Nope.’

  She drummed her heels on the floor. Stoic, that was Adam. Man of few words. Responsible. Focused. Dedicated. Excellent reader of people. Good with detail, never missed a deadline. But he also kept to himself and he’d forced her to use her super stealth HR ninja skills to get any personal information out of him at all. What she knew about him outside of his resume she could write in a tweet and still have characters to spare.

  Adam Tide. 29. Queensland born. Self-taught coder, UX wizard. Parents strict Catholics. Older brother recently married his male partner. All out family war. Escaped to Sydney. Ridiculously cute man bun. Deliciously lovely.

  She suspected the man bun, artfully messy and worn low at his neck was a protest, a middle finger to his parents in the same way as the move to Sydney was, and maybe the tattoos. She didn’t know if he had any, but it was a decent guess. What she really wanted to know was if she was right.

  She hadn’t asked him to be her orphan when she should have and now, now it was like hot cross buns appearing in Woolies right after New Year, all out of sync and just plain wrong.

  One of the pyjama kids was crying, outraged, wet, snotty sobs. It was the sound Shelby would make if she wasn’t on the job. HR professionals didn’t itch to scratch their nails over the meticulously clipped beard hairs of crushed-on colleagues to see if they were soft. And they had no business imagining that the owner of the beard had decked their dickhead boss just for them.

  A visit from the real Santa, not like the one waiting opposite who was sitting on a pillow that must once have been his additional tummy stuffing, was more on the cards.

  In lieu of a snotty sob, she sighed. ‘Felix can be a bit—’

  ‘Of an arse.’

  She poked Adam’s shoe with her own. ‘I was going to say, a bit difficult.’

  ‘He’s an arse.’

  It wasn’t easy to dispute that. She’d spent four years disputing it in her head because that’s the only way she could keep working for Felix at LuxLife. It was the forgiveness problem in glorious flashing neon lights. Plus, she loved her job every day of the year except the day of the Christmas party, and she loved all the people she was responsible for, except Felix, because there was no more dodging it—Felix was an arse of the first order. If she kept on working for a man she had no respect for, who she made allowances for and apologised for, who she had to charm, placate and outmanoeuvre, one who she knew was an arse, what did that make her?

  An arse whisperer?

  Oh shit, no!

  Adam took the tea towel out of her limp hand. ‘I know you can’t admit he’s an arse. It’s in the handbook. Don’t speak evil of another LuxLife employee.’

  It wasn’t, but that was a good idea.

  ‘I don’t believe you don’t know he’s an arse,’ he said.

  A nurse came, and the crying kid and his family went with her to another room. The silence was holy, it prompted the truth. Kind of. ‘He is what he is.’

  ‘An arse.’

  ‘My boss and there’s nothing I can do about that. Did you hit him because he’s an arse? That’s not a great reason. Almost everyone wants to hit him for that.’

  Adam groaned. ‘Wish somebody else had.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She shoulder-bumped him gently, her bare forearm touching the soft cotton of his shirt, skin meeting skin where their sleeves ended. She did it without thinking. They’d never touched before, not deliberately for no reason. Back in January, there’d been a handshake. Their fingers had grazed passing a folder once, and she’d just mopped his head and poked his foot, but that was all business.

  There was one occasion when her skirt had brushed across his knee and it’d done something to both of their breathing, and there was that time they almost collided outside the print room. She’d thought about that every time she’d printed a document for weeks. And then that moment in the lift where she almost trod on him, almost stumbled into him and he’d touched her shoulder to steady her.

  She’d made up a whole fantasy about that incident was all about them being alone and stranded between level five and six and not minding at all, instead of squeezed in with a good half of the office including the volleyball team who stank of cold sweat and the lamb kebabs they’d brought back for lunch.

  But this, it was like the time with the skirt, both of them stopped breathing. Adam didn’t twitch away. If she wasn’t imagining it, he leaned in a little, moved his forearm so that more of her arm aligned along his. There was a line of muscle and veiny cords on his arm, a light smattering of dark hair, and he wore a thin rubber bracelet at his wrist. How was it she’d never realised men’s forearms could be so mesmerising? She simply couldn’t take her eyes off his arm or believe he was a violent man.

  He’d been filling her water jug for weeks before she’d realised it was him doing it. And he’d never admitted to staying behind so she didn’t need to be alone on nights she worked back, and she didn’t think it was a coincidence, but then she couldn’t get enough oxygen to her brain, so she couldn’t exactly trust her thinking. Plus, there was the forgiveness problem.

  ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t. Sorry,’ he said and oh, freaking Father Christmas, he moved his arm.

  She really had screwed up by not asking him to lunch. She’d had all damn year to do it. When she took stock, she’d screwed up all round. She’d spent another year enabling a man who was an arse, and she’d been too much of a chicken shit to ask a man she liked so much she’d almost passed out from the press of his forearm to Christmas lunch.

  It was just lunch. It didn’t say anything about the almighty inappropriate and unrequited crush she had on him. It wasn’t even a hot roast. It was all cold: chicken and turkey
, ham and prawns and scallops with five different types of salad with mango, cranberries and pomegranates, and yes, probably kale, and certainly avocado, but also soft rolls and nice wine and the frostiest beer. After that there’d be pavlova and fruit cake and maybe a trifle and a definite serving of having eaten too much and vowing never to eat again but still backing up for leftovers at dinner time.

  She’d known she’d wanted to ask Adam to lunch way back in June when he made a comment in the staff room about how you didn’t get to choose your family. With her Mom gone, Shelby and her sister Cassie did exactly that, chose their Christmas family, so Adam wouldn’t be the only orphan.

  ‘I hit him because he’s an arse. That’s all Stella needs to know.’

  It was less than Shelby wanted to know. Adam wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t a natural with his fists unless they were hovering over a keyboard, and truly at some time, everyone wanted to slap, kick, shove or punch Felix. She wanted to do it at least weekly. It was rumoured the only reason Stella kept him on was because his family had helped her raise the money to start LuxLife when no one else would.

  ‘You’re sure that’s what you want to say?’ she asked.

  He studied the floor as if it had the answer written on it in fading blood.

  She was here for all the wrong reasons and her heart was hopelessly dislocated over Adam. She really wanted to ask him to lunch. It was now, or her New Year’s resolution would need to be something about chasing her dreams or personal courage, or maybe getting a new job herself so this didn’t feel like it was wrong anymore.

  ‘Can I—’ she said, trying to push the words out over a tongue that’d gone soft and sticky like hot caramel sauce on pudding. Adam angled his face to look at her with his good eye and her back teeth stuck together. Neither of them saw the nurse.

  ‘Adam Tide,’ she said. ‘You can come through now.’

  Santa and the women in the reindeer antlers weren’t the only ones who found that jolly annoying.

  Adam: Before

  The day Adam started at LuxLife was the day he hoped his own lacklustre life would kick up a gear. New city, a job he’d never expected to get, a company he was excited to contribute to, a chance to be his own person far from the stifling expectations of his family.

  He almost got his hair chopped and shaved off his beard to celebrate. He almost got a new tattoo.

  He almost lost his head before he even made it out of reception.

  ‘Hi Adam. I’m Shelby Yule. Welcome to LuxLife. I’ll introduce you around and take you through orientation. You can ask me anything.’

  It wasn’t the slam of introductions, he was good with names and faces, and it wasn’t the whole LuxLife culture, a zero bullshit, truth and honesty, doona days, holiday on your birthday approach to work that spun him out, it was dark brown eyes, a boy haircut, a radiant smile, and that ask me anything that made him think about radically off limits non-work topics before he’d even sat at his own desk.

  That shouldn’t have been a shock, cute was his jam, but there was more to Shelby than tiny starfish earrings and an aqua dress with a swirly skirt that looked like something out of a costume box, and he knew that the moment he met her.

  By the end of the day he was shockingly disappointed that his desk was at the other end of the open plan floor to hers, but since this was a new job and the start of a new life away from his feuding, take sides or die lonely family, he needed to have his head in the game. And the game wasn’t an office romance.

  ‘I hope you’ll be happy here,’ Shelby said, as she showed him how to use the electric standing desk. It was completely adjustable, with settings that could be personalised for his height and it was a revelation. At his last job his chair had been wedged on one setting and no amount of asking for it to be fixed had made a difference. He’d gone home most nights with a neck ache, but at this desk he’d be invincible. It was almost a metaphor for his life.

  They were both peering under the plank of ergonomic wonderment at the attached wire basket designated for cords and cables when Felix arrived.

  ‘I see Shelby is pressing your buttons, Adam.’

  He straightened up to greet Felix, confused by the guy’s greeting and Shelby’s snort, unsure if it was a sound of amusement or frustration. Either way it was unwanted sexual innuendo and it made the hair on his arms spring to attention.

  He’d met Felix during his final interview, but since that was online and he’d been more focused on trying to impress tech tycoon extraordinaire, Stella Wong, he’d logged only one fact about Felix. Bad cop. He’d figured that was all part of the interview rigmarole, but maybe it went beyond trying to fake out job candidates.

  ‘Welcome aboard. Hope you enjoyed your orientation. Shelby has a knack for making people feel at home. That’s why we keep her around,’ Felix said with a laugh.

  It was another confusing statement. It sounded like a compliment except for the part where it sounded like a threat and made Shelby wince. Yes, that was absolutely a wince, a flicker of distaste that quirked her shoulders and narrowed her eyes.

  They exchanged a few banal pleasantries, Felix moved off and Shelby talked him through the employee reporting systems and gave him a lesson in the afterhours security access.

  ‘So that’s it,’ she said. ‘You’re all set.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I think your boss is a dick. It would be bad karma on day one to say that. ‘Today was great.’ Also, it wasn’t his business. He didn’t know Shelby or Felix, and getting involved in office politics he didn’t understand was like refusing to get involved in family politics he did; bound to be a pit of sorrow and a no-win situation. He’d had so much of that he’d moved states and changed his phone number.

  This job was a huge step up and for the first time he was working for a CEO he respected and admired. He settled in to his routine at LuxLife far easier than he’d expected to. It wasn’t hard to trace that back to the quality of his orientation. After a month, he actually did feel at home, though he was teased for being the new guy at every occasion possible and most of those included Shelby.

  In February, she asked him to pick a glittery heart out of a bowl and send an anonymous card to the person whose name was written on it. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

  She laughed at him. ‘I forget this sounds weird to new folk. It’s not a love letter. You just say something nice about the person. On Valentine’s Day everyone gets a card that makes them feel special.’

  It was a little hokey. ‘What if I don’t know the person well enough?’ He might be able to wiggle out of this on a technicality.

  She shook the glass bowl. ‘That’s why you’re going to pick a heart that’s folded in half lengthwise. They’re for people you work most closely with.’

  ‘Isn’t that cheating?’ Was Shelby’s name still in there, had she folded her heart in half for him for find?

  She smiled. She had hearts in her ears. ‘What’s a little cheating between colleagues, huh?’

  ‘I thought LuxLife was all straight talk, truth and honesty.’

  She sagged, her chin dropping towards her chest and her shoulders slumping, making him almost gasp. He’d meant that as a joke, but it came out like a complaint, like he was grumpy with her when she’d gone to the trouble of making this easy for him. He liked her so much he couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Sprung,’ she said, grinning. Cheeky kitten. ‘You’re the first to pick.’

  He looked in the top of the bowl, near overflowing with red paper hearts some folded in half to look like sail boats and others to look like they were waiting for their mate to be complete. Shelby’s heart was in there, but you never won anything decent in a lucky dip and it’s not like there was a strategy that would change that.

  Unless it was rigged.

  He plucked one off the top, the first lengthwise folded heart he saw, as if it had been strategically placed there for him.

  It wasn’t rigged. And why th
e heck had he thought it would be? He’d scored Dave Wilson in marketing. So much for wishful thinking. Dave had a loud laugh, a kiwi accent and liked to cook. He often brought delicious brownies into the office. It would be easy to say something positive about Dave, but instead of feeling relieved, he was oddly disappointed.

  ‘Drop your card into the mail room and we do the rest,’ she said.

  It was hokey, but he went with it. He bought a card for Dave that had the words I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and the whole world would fall in love printed on the front. Inside he’d written simply, for the brownies, man. Adding the man because he was vaguely bothered by the idea of sending a love note to another bloke he worked closely with, even though he’d been best man at his brother’s wedding, and Scott and his husband Louie would take him out the back and pummel him for feeling awkward about that.

  In his defence, he’d rather have bought a card for Shelby.

  On Valentine’s Day, Dave made a loud announcement standing on his desk. ‘To the bro who bought my V Day card. You’re all good, eh.’

  Adam figured it was the man that earned him the ‘bro’ even though he intended on keeping that a secret. The card that had been left for him had a rustic hipster look with the words I would shave my beard for you written in big fat letters that were decorated with hairs on the front. Inside, his office Valentine had written: I really like the fact that you never speak over the top of anyone and you’re always polite and courteous, but if I had a beard, I’d only shave it for money. You win some, you lose some.

  He’d laughed out loud. He had no clue who’d sent it, even eliminating all bearded colleagues, and it wasn’t Shelby’s handwriting. It put him in a good mood all day, good enough not to regret he wasn’t the one who sent the roses he saw in reception with Shelby’s name on the little envelope.

  She deserved roses, dozens of them because the whole office had fun that day and nobody felt left out and there was nothing hokey about that.

  The next company-wide fun day that rolled around was Easter. Chocolate and hot cross buns weren’t unexpected, the hat parade was.