Hate at First Sight: The UNMISSABLE enemies-to-lovers romcom of 2023
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Synopsis
THEY SAY IT'S A THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND . . . HATE AT FIRST SIGHT.
Kate hates feeling out of control. Her incessant need to overprepare has always served her well. Yet nothing could have prepared her for today.
Not only is she being evicted from her flat . . . by her best friend, but now her boss has announced cost-cutting measures that will put her job in jeopardy. She may not love the company she works for, but she's worked too hard for too long to just give up. So she's ready to prove herself.
The catch? If she wants to save her job, she'll have to work with creative, happy-go-lucky Harry. The one man she's spent the last five years trying to forget.
But what happens when that line you've drawn starts to blur?
This witty, dizzying, snort-with-laughter enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy is an instantly unputdownable and unmissable treat that will have you falling head over heels in love with its characters. Perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Emily Henry, Talia Hibbert, Mhairi McFarlane and Beth O'Leary.
(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
Release date: March 30, 2023
Publisher: Headline
Print pages: 352
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Hate at First Sight: The UNMISSABLE enemies-to-lovers romcom of 2023
Lizzie O'Hagan
Prologue
‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ I hiss into the dim room, which pulses with colour and chaos.
‘But this is my song.’
‘The last seven songs have been your song.’
I put my hands to my hips as my line-manager Amanda starts to shake hers in time to the monotonous bassline of the music. She’s so much cooler than me it hurts.
‘Come on, Kate. This is a party, not a prison.’
‘At least in prison I’d get three square meals.’
I look down at the minuscule canapé in my hand with disdain and Amanda laughs. No wonder most of my colleagues here are paper-thin. I study the narrow slice of meat laid atop an open lettuce leaf that is trying to pass itself off as some sort of burger. I opt for another glug of wine. I know you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach but believe me, I’ve been trying to fill it ever since I scurried into the office summer party four hours ago.
‘This is Poster. What did you expect?’
She grins, reaching for my rejected slider and gulfing it down in one. The truth is, I’m not sure. Ever since I got my job as a data analyst here, it’s been both everything and nothing like I expected. On the one hand, there are the creatives and fashionistas who have occupied the tenth floor for over a decade now, ever since this superior office with its outrageous views became available and the then-directors decided that, though it was floors apart from the company’s existing office downstairs, at least some of the Poster staff should level up somehow. These are the ones whose scarily symmetrical faces I found on the company’s website as soon as the recruitment agent told me there might be a suitable role for me at the ‘luxury e-tailer that professes to give Net-A-Porter a run for its money’. Then, there are the rest of us. The ones left downstairs in the basement, who make the dreams of the ‘creative’ types become a reality: the website developers, the financial forecasters, the technological support staff, the data analysts. The people like me.
‘Come on, Kate. I thought you wanted to see what tenth-floor life was all about.’
Amanda stumbles slightly as she thrusts her arms wide and spins around. The tenth floor would be decadent even without the forest of fresh flowers and temporary dance floor they’ve brought in for the annual summer bash, the one where everyone from the office is invited to drink more than is advisable with people responsible for their future promotions. I try to remind myself that Amanda is technically my boss, that three months is probably not enough time to be this playful or pugnacious towards her. And yet, her natural ease in who she is seems to have enticed her entire team into becoming scarily unfiltered around her.
‘No, you told me it was mandatory,’ I argue back. See: scarily unfiltered.
‘And it is . . .’
‘Everyone else from downstairs has left already.’
‘. . . for you.’
‘Why just for me?’
‘Because you’re the newbie. Everyone else has done their time at one of these.’
‘It’s sounding a lot like prison again.’
Amanda smiles, bridging the gap between us and the tenth floor in the way I’ve seen her do ever since I’ve been working here. ‘The people upstairs are honestly not as bad as the guys downstairs make out.’
‘One of the women made Toby cry last time he came to deliver reports up here.’
‘In her defence, he did offer to show her his latest aquascape.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘I think she thought it was some sort of manscaping situation.’
‘Poor Toby.’ I can’t help but smile, the expletives he relayed to us just last week finally starting to make sense.
‘But we digress . . .’ Amanda says, shaking away the thought. ‘All this to say, this is your first time to really mingle between departments. Get to know some people.’
She’s your boss, Kate. Your boss. I try to bite my tongue, to muster some professionalism. But then Amanda’s swinging hips shake it away, at least for this evening.
‘So, you can come dance to my song,’ she says. ‘Or you can stand in the corner and—’
‘Stand in the corner! Sold to the woman with two left feet.’
‘Kate!’
‘Well, you gave me the option.’
‘I know,’ she groans, trademark cheeky glint in her eye. ‘And I would order you to dance with me . . .’
‘You are the boss.’
‘But I think that could be outside my powers as your manager.’
‘Enforced dancing.’ I grin over my glass. ‘I could report you to HR.’
‘Oh, babe. They’re probably too busy processing Toby’s manscaping accusation.’
It’s only as I watch Amanda disappear onto the crowded dance floor that I realise how drunk I am. I wish I could tell you how many glasses I’ve had but it’s the kind of party where as soon as you get to a glass-half-empty situation, someone is already topping you up. There was the one as soon as I walked into the decked-out tenth floor, where my hands were shaking from the sight of no less than a hundred people who could have just climbed out of a catalogue. Then there was the drink fifteen minutes later when the company’s new CEO, Gareth Grey, waved across at me, only for me to realise as I raised my hand that he was signalling to someone else. And was it one or two glasses of champagne I grabbed from a passing waitress when my first attempt at interdepartmental small talk led to a five-foot-eight cold-hard stunner telling me she’d worn the exact same blouse I’m wearing to a family funeral fifteen years ago. I’m not usually a fan of work drinks. Of being overly chummy with ‘contacts’. But in this crowd, with this number of drinks flowing, there is no semblance of sensibleness left to hold on to.
I try to count the glasses and soon find that I need to use the fingers on both hands.
‘Working out when you can clock off?’
I look up to see a man standing in front of me, his square jaw set, his lips pursed into a nonchalant grin as the pulsing lights from the dance floor illuminate him more for a moment before fading once again.
‘Eh?’ I shout above the music.
‘The counting on your hands. Thought you were trying to work out when your shift ends. Either that, or you prefer children’s nursery rhymes to Jason bloody Derulo.’
‘Nursery rhymes?’
‘You know. One, two, three, four, five. Once I caught a fish alive . . .’
Is this beautiful man really standing in front of me singing nursery rhymes to a backdrop of Want to Want Me right now?
I look behind him to try and catch Amanda’s eye, to send her a silent SOS - Is this guy a model or a mirage? – but it’s futile; she’s already getting down and dirty to Derulo. I look back to the guy, tipsy and tantalising; I’m not entirely sure how a self-respecting twenty-four-year-old is supposed to reply to a midnight nursery rhyme.
‘My shift?’
‘Yeah, clearly you don’t want to be here.’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Which part of sitting in the corner and counting hours on your hands is meant to convince me of that?’
‘I wasn’t counting hours, I was counting . . .’
The stranger has taken a step closer, leaning on the wall beside me. He’s wearing a t-shirt, one of those strong, simple cuts that you can tell is expensive without needing to look at the price tag. Everyone else is wearing lightweight shirts, something a little smarter; like me in my family-funeral blouse.
‘Yes?’ He cocks an eyebrow, folding his thick, toned arms, intrigue suitably piqued.
‘I was counting drinks.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Yeah, I don’t like to drink too many and . . .’
I hate feeling out of control. Not that I’m going to tell nonchalant t-shirt guy that. Or the fact that this conversation, him approaching me from across the room, is making me feel like a fish out of water too. He could chat to any person at this party he wants to. So why me?
‘You’ve been drinking on the job?’
What is it with this guy and shifts and jobs?
‘Hasn’t everybody?’
‘Well, yeah, we have, but I didn’t think the . . .’
His unfinished sentence fades into the sultry sounds of Sisqó and I have a horrible suspicion he’s about to insinuate that the drinks budget doesn’t stretch to those from the basement, that he’s coming over to tell me that I’ve had more than my fair share.
‘Didn’t think the what?’
‘No, no, don’t worry, forget about it.’
He shakes his pretty head, struggling to hold my eye, and it’s at this moment that a waitress walks past us carrying a tray of drinks and wearing precisely the same outfit as I am: skinny black jeans, loose black blouse. The family-funeral favourites of circa fifteen years ago. Both of us see her. Both of us realise . . .
‘You thought I was a waitress?’
‘No, I . . .’ His confusion is palpable. ‘You’re erm . . . you’re not, are you?’
‘Do I look like a waitress?’
His eyes dart to the doppelganger-dressed woman who has just passed us.
‘Do you really want me to answer that?’
‘Your dick—’
‘Bit forward.’ Another cocked eyebrow, a cheeky smile.
‘I was going to say, “You’re a dickhead.”’ I struggle to be heard over Thong Song.
‘Bit forceful, then. What’s wrong with being a waitress?’
‘Absolutely nothing apart from the fact that I’m not one,’ I say, becoming hyperaware of my Northern twang clashing with his Southern accent. ‘I work here, for Poster.’
I gaze into his grey-blue eyes as he neatens his perfectly groomed hair. Toby and the others downstairs were right about the tenth-floor fashionistas. Clearly, if you aren’t wearing this season’s latest threads, you can forget about fitting in with them. I look around the room at the heels and the bags and the effortless way people are swanning around the space. It makes me feel precisely how I used to around the mean girls at secondary school. Except, years have passed since then and I don’t have to put up with it now.
‘Look, it’s okay. I’m going to get another drink. Have a nice night.’
‘Now, if only you knew someone who was serving them.’
I can tell from his tone that this is meant to be funny and maybe if I didn’t feel like such a joke, I could take it as one. Instead, I move past him, cheeks burning, biting my lip.
‘Wait—’
He reaches for my hand, electricity running through me as his fingertips touch mine.
‘It’s not my job to wait on anyone.’
‘I know, I made a mistake. It’s just someone . . . Please, can we start over?’
For a moment, he looks genuinely mortified. So much so, that against all my better judgement, I find myself nodding.
‘Let me buy you a drink to make up for it?’ He’s still holding his hand on mine.
‘It’s a free bar.’
‘You would know.’
‘You wanker,’ I mutter back to him, but between his hand on mine and his full and unreserved smile and the alcohol in my system, I can’t help but feel any anger in me bow to something like affection.
‘So, what do you actually do for Poster?’ he slurs over a freshly opened beer as soon as we’ve found a vacant desk to perch on, a little away from the drama of the dance floor. Amanda is a slave to it now; my other colleagues from the downstairs office are long gone.
‘I’m a data analyst.’
‘Working in the basement?’
‘Would you not have noticed me before now if I wasn’t?’ I flirt, regretting it instantly. This is why I don’t drink wine. Why I rarely go to parties. Especially parties like this one.
‘Oh, I definitely would have noticed you.’ He shuffles a little closer to me, until the sides of our thighs are almost touching. ‘It’s my second week. Still finding my way around. Hey, the basement office is pretty big too. How did you know I’d be working up here?’
‘Because you’re stun—’
I stop the rest of my sentence; I cannot tell a man I’ve just met that he’s stunning, especially one that has managed to get under my skin already.
‘Because I’m stun?’
‘I was going to say stunted . . .’
‘I’m six foot two.’
I get up from the desk to stand before him, all five foot three of me.
‘ . . . emotionally,’ I add, for want of anything better to say.
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘You managed to insult me within three minutes of me meeting you.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘And that’s the last thing I wanted to do.’
He reaches for my hand again, and I take a step closer toward him.
‘Oh yeah?’ I whisper.
‘Yeah,’ he echoes, taking a slightly stumbly step to close the sliver of space between us, my breath catching in my mouth; I can’t believe this is the turn tonight is taking.
‘Why?’ I cast my blurry eyes to his, which are set firmly on my own.
‘Because the first thing I wanted to do was . . .’
He allows the rest of his sentence to fade away as he leans in closer, reaching a hand to my face and gently pulling me towards him. I linger there, my lips inches from him, the model or mirage who has managed to approach me, serenade me with nursery rhymes, mistake me for a waitress and somehow still make me want to kiss him, all before telling me his name. Of course, I blame the booze but, in this moment, I’m not mad about it. In this moment, I want to be out of control, to lose myself in kissing someone I don’t know for the first time in my carefully calculated life. I move to close the remaining gap between us, his lips grazing mine ever so softly as my mind drifts away from my body completely.
Then, someone turns the office lights on, and the room is filled with a collective groan as it dawns on people that this midsummer night’s party is about to be murdered. His eyes are still on mine, my face held in his hands, until a voice hurtles through our moment.
‘Hey, H. After-party at mine.’
Suddenly, he stiffens, inches from my face, jolting back so that my already puckered lips are kissing the canyon of air between us. I follow his unsteady gaze to the gaggle of women behind me, some looking down at me, others giggling to one another, some simply confused by my presence and particularly my proximity to him. Behind them, Amanda is standing there, staring in our direction, expression caught somewhere between shock and concern. And though I can’t work out why exactly, the sinking stone in my stomach tells me that this is one of those rare occasions where the employer-employee strand of our dynamic is straining to be heard. Sadly, the young woman who has just caught his attention – who must be a model – is stepping forward from the fashionable fray to drown any silent warnings out.
‘Come on, H. You coming with us, or have you got better things to do?’
I watch as his cheeks turn the colour of her plunging red dress, her blazing green eyes fixed on him as he stands, stepping forward, stalling for a second even though we all know her question is rhetorical. I sit there next to his discarded beer can, my stomach flipping over as the back of my neck starts to prickle with sweat.
If I thought being mistaken for a waitress or a funeral attendee was bad, this is a thousand times worse. Because this time I’m unmistakably me and I’m unmistakably hearing that I really don’t belong here. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amanda walking towards me, but then she is cornered by Poster’s CEO, his broad frame eclipsing her from my gaze.
‘There’s taxis downstairs for the eight of us,’ the woman in the red dress continues.
I don’t need to count on my fingers to see that I’m unlucky number nine, that any after-party invites are clearly not for me. I look at my mystery man, morphing into a little boy right before my eyes. One that doesn’t want to miss the after-party, and especially not for me. He holds my gaze for a moment longer, the same intensity I felt when he touched me still seeming to spark between us, but it’s no power for the seven perfect Poster People who are laughing a little louder behind him now.
‘Told you he wouldn’t go through with it.’
I hear a whisper somewhere from the crowd of colleagues. Wouldn’t go through with what? With kissing me? Like it was some sort of bet?
I force my legs to leave, to head towards the lifts, all the while hating the fact that tears are starting to prickle in my eyes and make their way down my burning hot cheeks. I don’t even know him, I don’t even know them, but they are looking at me like they’ve got my number down and it turns out, it’s not a number worth knowing.
One, two, three, four, five. I rush towards the lifts, hitting the down button at least ten times in quick succession. Once I caught a fish alive. Stumbling inside, head still hazy from drink, I see the shape of someone approaching and from where I’m standing, it looks a whole lot like him. But if he thinks I’m going to give him another chance to embarrass me, he’s got another think coming. I hit the button again, his broad frame gaining ground, his grey-blue eyes catching mine for the briefest of moments as the tall, silver doors close in front of me, the lift mirrors reflecting the shame on my face. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I watch the floor numbers descend, trying to forget the faces of the women looking back at me as the stranger left me suspended mid-kiss.
Then I let it go again. The doors open into the lobby, and I run out of Poster House, circling the grandiose building until I come to the shabby-looking stone stairs down to the back door into the basement office, all the while vowing never to go swimming with the tenth-floor sharks again.
Chapter One
Five Years Later
My stomach sinks as soon as I see Poster House coming into view. Well, the back of it. I’ve made a point of walking the extra twelve minutes from Tottenham Court Road, even on a cool March morning like this one, just to avoid the melee of models flocking into the glamourous front entrance. But then I remind myself of what lies at the bottom of it: a job I love, with colleagues I adore who are physically ten floors and ideologically worlds apart from our upstairs counterparts. Sure, after five years of working here some might say I’ve outstayed my welcome, but my time here feels a bit like running a large report: I’ve waited too long for the outcome to refresh the page now.
‘Kate. Kate. Kate!’
I hear my name getting increasingly louder, cutting through the husky sound of Meatloaf telling me that he would do anything for love that is blasting through my headphones. I fumble to find my phone, longing to switch the track to something more age-appropriate and, well, cooler than the classic rock that me and my dad used to sing in the car together when I was young, but then I look up to see Blair beaming back at me.
‘Meatloaf again?’ She grins. The tinny music is still echoing through my earpieces, now hanging around my neck. If only I could justify buying AirPods.
‘I’m going through a phase.’
‘Two decades and counting.’
‘I didn’t say it was a short phase.’
Blair throws an arm around my shoulder, which at several inches below her own causes her hand to hit my backpack and almost knock my battered KeepCup out of my clutches. Even so, we manage to fall into step beside each other, one hand on our coffees, the others stashed in coat pockets and both of us chatting about the sheer number of reports we need to produce for the senior management team upstairs by the ‘end of play’ today.
‘I hate that phrase,’ she says, as we descend the spiral stone steps down to the basement office entrance, the ‘Enter at your own risk’ sign a semi-ironic relic of a departmental pirate-themed party we held shortly after the annual office mixer; we should probably begin planning the next one for in a few months’ time.
‘Which phrase?’
Blair loves the word hate, adding a good dose of dramatics to absolutely everything. Deep down, under the long, black hair and dark, gothic trench coat, she’s a complete softie.
‘End of play. Like, what part of work feels like a game to them?’
‘As someone who has seen their monthly expenses, I can assure you they’re winning.’
‘But all work and no play for us?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I grin as she rolls her eyes. Poster might personify everything I hate about the corporate world, capitalising on the latest ‘trends’ of cultural angst and social media induced comparison. But my actual job, the thing I do down here every day, taking seemingly random data and turning it into something useful, something that makes sense? That part I love; that part is play for me.
Blair pushes the door into the basement open and no fewer than ten faces glance at us from computer screens scattered around the back entrance, colleagues further afield already sat behind their monitors, headphones on and plugged into the task at hand. Some will have been here since seven this morning. Charlie lifts his messy, blond mop to look up to us with dark circles around his eyes that make me wonder whether he even went home last night. Still, he waves a hand, eyes reorienting to his screen before him as he does.
‘Good morning, ladies!’ He beams.
‘Good morning, Charlie,’ we echo back in perfect Charlie’s Angels unison. It’s the same greeting we’ve given each other almost every day for the three years since he started working here. Like everything else down in the basement, it’s routine, orderly, comfortable, like a pair of worn slippers waiting for you to sink your feet into as soon as you arrive home.
‘Whatsauppppp?’ Toby asks as soon as I sit down at my usual desk next to him, ditching my phone face-up on the tabletop and proceeding to pull my laptop out of my bag. I feel his comfortable presence next to me; the bold orange hue of his shirt seeming even brighter next to his dark-chocolate skin.
‘Hello. The nineties called. They want their greeting back.’
‘That’s a coincidence. The seventies called for you. They’re really missing Meatloaf.’
I look down at my phone, my Spotify page still trying its best to expose me. Somehow being exposed here doesn’t lead to embarrassment like it does upstairs.
‘Good weekend?’
‘Great weekend. I discovered fly fishing . . .’ Toby hums with enthusiasm; he always does. Only, his enthusiasm flits between different hobbies quicker than his callused fingertips are writing code on his laptop keyboard as he speaks right now.
‘Yeah?’ I say, only half-listening, firing up the wizard I was working on before the weekend. ‘Didn’t have you down as the outdoors type.’
‘I’m not.’
‘But you said—’
‘Fishing Sim World. It’s a game on the Xbox.’
He says this as if I know nothing, when before this weekend he wouldn’t have known the game existed. And once he moves on to the next thing, he’ll forget that it does.
I smile back at my screen, reading over my latest report, still open from the last time I looked at it: the one that is meant to show the conversion rates between social media click-throughs and real-life purchases. I’ve tried not to work over the weekends ever since I realised, early on in my London life, that this city will never slow down for you, so you have to pace things yourself. Still, with my housemate Lucy working remotely for a digital start-up, it’s hard for the hustle mentality not to spill out at home; especially when she’s working for the employer I want, the very employer I foolishly turned down just over five years ago.
‘Got much on this week?’ Toby asks absent-mindedly. He’s probably googling expansion packs or fan memorabilia for his latest fad.
‘The usual. Need to get my annual review in the diary with Amanda though.’
‘Has it been four years since you started here already?’
‘Try five.’
When I first turned down the next-to-unpaid start-up position alongside Lucy in favour of the well-paid graduate package at Poster, I promised myself I’d stick it out for a year, hone those all-important ‘transferable skills’, and then move on to something more meaningful. And, despite the two years between graduation and finally securing my first salaried position seeming to unfold in a slow-motion montage of zero-hour contracts, unpaid internships and mounting insecurity, the years I have spent at Poster have racked up far quicker than I would have liked. But every time I’ve tried to leave, they’ve found another way to make me stay. It’s a bit like trying to switch from EE: you only get the good deals once you start flirting with Vodaphone.
‘Surely due another promotion?’
‘Toby, I’ve been due another promotion ever since I became a senior analyst two years ago. It’s the carrot they’ve been dangling that never quite comes.’
This time last year I swore I’d leave Poster if I hadn’t become a director by my next annual review. After all, I wanted to get into data to help people, not just help them become better dressed. And yet, here I am, twenty-nine, stuck in the same role and too cowardly to remind Amanda that my review was due two weeks ago, because then I’ll have to finally admit to myse. . .
‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ I hiss into the dim room, which pulses with colour and chaos.
‘But this is my song.’
‘The last seven songs have been your song.’
I put my hands to my hips as my line-manager Amanda starts to shake hers in time to the monotonous bassline of the music. She’s so much cooler than me it hurts.
‘Come on, Kate. This is a party, not a prison.’
‘At least in prison I’d get three square meals.’
I look down at the minuscule canapé in my hand with disdain and Amanda laughs. No wonder most of my colleagues here are paper-thin. I study the narrow slice of meat laid atop an open lettuce leaf that is trying to pass itself off as some sort of burger. I opt for another glug of wine. I know you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach but believe me, I’ve been trying to fill it ever since I scurried into the office summer party four hours ago.
‘This is Poster. What did you expect?’
She grins, reaching for my rejected slider and gulfing it down in one. The truth is, I’m not sure. Ever since I got my job as a data analyst here, it’s been both everything and nothing like I expected. On the one hand, there are the creatives and fashionistas who have occupied the tenth floor for over a decade now, ever since this superior office with its outrageous views became available and the then-directors decided that, though it was floors apart from the company’s existing office downstairs, at least some of the Poster staff should level up somehow. These are the ones whose scarily symmetrical faces I found on the company’s website as soon as the recruitment agent told me there might be a suitable role for me at the ‘luxury e-tailer that professes to give Net-A-Porter a run for its money’. Then, there are the rest of us. The ones left downstairs in the basement, who make the dreams of the ‘creative’ types become a reality: the website developers, the financial forecasters, the technological support staff, the data analysts. The people like me.
‘Come on, Kate. I thought you wanted to see what tenth-floor life was all about.’
Amanda stumbles slightly as she thrusts her arms wide and spins around. The tenth floor would be decadent even without the forest of fresh flowers and temporary dance floor they’ve brought in for the annual summer bash, the one where everyone from the office is invited to drink more than is advisable with people responsible for their future promotions. I try to remind myself that Amanda is technically my boss, that three months is probably not enough time to be this playful or pugnacious towards her. And yet, her natural ease in who she is seems to have enticed her entire team into becoming scarily unfiltered around her.
‘No, you told me it was mandatory,’ I argue back. See: scarily unfiltered.
‘And it is . . .’
‘Everyone else from downstairs has left already.’
‘. . . for you.’
‘Why just for me?’
‘Because you’re the newbie. Everyone else has done their time at one of these.’
‘It’s sounding a lot like prison again.’
Amanda smiles, bridging the gap between us and the tenth floor in the way I’ve seen her do ever since I’ve been working here. ‘The people upstairs are honestly not as bad as the guys downstairs make out.’
‘One of the women made Toby cry last time he came to deliver reports up here.’
‘In her defence, he did offer to show her his latest aquascape.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘I think she thought it was some sort of manscaping situation.’
‘Poor Toby.’ I can’t help but smile, the expletives he relayed to us just last week finally starting to make sense.
‘But we digress . . .’ Amanda says, shaking away the thought. ‘All this to say, this is your first time to really mingle between departments. Get to know some people.’
She’s your boss, Kate. Your boss. I try to bite my tongue, to muster some professionalism. But then Amanda’s swinging hips shake it away, at least for this evening.
‘So, you can come dance to my song,’ she says. ‘Or you can stand in the corner and—’
‘Stand in the corner! Sold to the woman with two left feet.’
‘Kate!’
‘Well, you gave me the option.’
‘I know,’ she groans, trademark cheeky glint in her eye. ‘And I would order you to dance with me . . .’
‘You are the boss.’
‘But I think that could be outside my powers as your manager.’
‘Enforced dancing.’ I grin over my glass. ‘I could report you to HR.’
‘Oh, babe. They’re probably too busy processing Toby’s manscaping accusation.’
It’s only as I watch Amanda disappear onto the crowded dance floor that I realise how drunk I am. I wish I could tell you how many glasses I’ve had but it’s the kind of party where as soon as you get to a glass-half-empty situation, someone is already topping you up. There was the one as soon as I walked into the decked-out tenth floor, where my hands were shaking from the sight of no less than a hundred people who could have just climbed out of a catalogue. Then there was the drink fifteen minutes later when the company’s new CEO, Gareth Grey, waved across at me, only for me to realise as I raised my hand that he was signalling to someone else. And was it one or two glasses of champagne I grabbed from a passing waitress when my first attempt at interdepartmental small talk led to a five-foot-eight cold-hard stunner telling me she’d worn the exact same blouse I’m wearing to a family funeral fifteen years ago. I’m not usually a fan of work drinks. Of being overly chummy with ‘contacts’. But in this crowd, with this number of drinks flowing, there is no semblance of sensibleness left to hold on to.
I try to count the glasses and soon find that I need to use the fingers on both hands.
‘Working out when you can clock off?’
I look up to see a man standing in front of me, his square jaw set, his lips pursed into a nonchalant grin as the pulsing lights from the dance floor illuminate him more for a moment before fading once again.
‘Eh?’ I shout above the music.
‘The counting on your hands. Thought you were trying to work out when your shift ends. Either that, or you prefer children’s nursery rhymes to Jason bloody Derulo.’
‘Nursery rhymes?’
‘You know. One, two, three, four, five. Once I caught a fish alive . . .’
Is this beautiful man really standing in front of me singing nursery rhymes to a backdrop of Want to Want Me right now?
I look behind him to try and catch Amanda’s eye, to send her a silent SOS - Is this guy a model or a mirage? – but it’s futile; she’s already getting down and dirty to Derulo. I look back to the guy, tipsy and tantalising; I’m not entirely sure how a self-respecting twenty-four-year-old is supposed to reply to a midnight nursery rhyme.
‘My shift?’
‘Yeah, clearly you don’t want to be here.’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Which part of sitting in the corner and counting hours on your hands is meant to convince me of that?’
‘I wasn’t counting hours, I was counting . . .’
The stranger has taken a step closer, leaning on the wall beside me. He’s wearing a t-shirt, one of those strong, simple cuts that you can tell is expensive without needing to look at the price tag. Everyone else is wearing lightweight shirts, something a little smarter; like me in my family-funeral blouse.
‘Yes?’ He cocks an eyebrow, folding his thick, toned arms, intrigue suitably piqued.
‘I was counting drinks.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Yeah, I don’t like to drink too many and . . .’
I hate feeling out of control. Not that I’m going to tell nonchalant t-shirt guy that. Or the fact that this conversation, him approaching me from across the room, is making me feel like a fish out of water too. He could chat to any person at this party he wants to. So why me?
‘You’ve been drinking on the job?’
What is it with this guy and shifts and jobs?
‘Hasn’t everybody?’
‘Well, yeah, we have, but I didn’t think the . . .’
His unfinished sentence fades into the sultry sounds of Sisqó and I have a horrible suspicion he’s about to insinuate that the drinks budget doesn’t stretch to those from the basement, that he’s coming over to tell me that I’ve had more than my fair share.
‘Didn’t think the what?’
‘No, no, don’t worry, forget about it.’
He shakes his pretty head, struggling to hold my eye, and it’s at this moment that a waitress walks past us carrying a tray of drinks and wearing precisely the same outfit as I am: skinny black jeans, loose black blouse. The family-funeral favourites of circa fifteen years ago. Both of us see her. Both of us realise . . .
‘You thought I was a waitress?’
‘No, I . . .’ His confusion is palpable. ‘You’re erm . . . you’re not, are you?’
‘Do I look like a waitress?’
His eyes dart to the doppelganger-dressed woman who has just passed us.
‘Do you really want me to answer that?’
‘Your dick—’
‘Bit forward.’ Another cocked eyebrow, a cheeky smile.
‘I was going to say, “You’re a dickhead.”’ I struggle to be heard over Thong Song.
‘Bit forceful, then. What’s wrong with being a waitress?’
‘Absolutely nothing apart from the fact that I’m not one,’ I say, becoming hyperaware of my Northern twang clashing with his Southern accent. ‘I work here, for Poster.’
I gaze into his grey-blue eyes as he neatens his perfectly groomed hair. Toby and the others downstairs were right about the tenth-floor fashionistas. Clearly, if you aren’t wearing this season’s latest threads, you can forget about fitting in with them. I look around the room at the heels and the bags and the effortless way people are swanning around the space. It makes me feel precisely how I used to around the mean girls at secondary school. Except, years have passed since then and I don’t have to put up with it now.
‘Look, it’s okay. I’m going to get another drink. Have a nice night.’
‘Now, if only you knew someone who was serving them.’
I can tell from his tone that this is meant to be funny and maybe if I didn’t feel like such a joke, I could take it as one. Instead, I move past him, cheeks burning, biting my lip.
‘Wait—’
He reaches for my hand, electricity running through me as his fingertips touch mine.
‘It’s not my job to wait on anyone.’
‘I know, I made a mistake. It’s just someone . . . Please, can we start over?’
For a moment, he looks genuinely mortified. So much so, that against all my better judgement, I find myself nodding.
‘Let me buy you a drink to make up for it?’ He’s still holding his hand on mine.
‘It’s a free bar.’
‘You would know.’
‘You wanker,’ I mutter back to him, but between his hand on mine and his full and unreserved smile and the alcohol in my system, I can’t help but feel any anger in me bow to something like affection.
‘So, what do you actually do for Poster?’ he slurs over a freshly opened beer as soon as we’ve found a vacant desk to perch on, a little away from the drama of the dance floor. Amanda is a slave to it now; my other colleagues from the downstairs office are long gone.
‘I’m a data analyst.’
‘Working in the basement?’
‘Would you not have noticed me before now if I wasn’t?’ I flirt, regretting it instantly. This is why I don’t drink wine. Why I rarely go to parties. Especially parties like this one.
‘Oh, I definitely would have noticed you.’ He shuffles a little closer to me, until the sides of our thighs are almost touching. ‘It’s my second week. Still finding my way around. Hey, the basement office is pretty big too. How did you know I’d be working up here?’
‘Because you’re stun—’
I stop the rest of my sentence; I cannot tell a man I’ve just met that he’s stunning, especially one that has managed to get under my skin already.
‘Because I’m stun?’
‘I was going to say stunted . . .’
‘I’m six foot two.’
I get up from the desk to stand before him, all five foot three of me.
‘ . . . emotionally,’ I add, for want of anything better to say.
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘You managed to insult me within three minutes of me meeting you.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘And that’s the last thing I wanted to do.’
He reaches for my hand again, and I take a step closer toward him.
‘Oh yeah?’ I whisper.
‘Yeah,’ he echoes, taking a slightly stumbly step to close the sliver of space between us, my breath catching in my mouth; I can’t believe this is the turn tonight is taking.
‘Why?’ I cast my blurry eyes to his, which are set firmly on my own.
‘Because the first thing I wanted to do was . . .’
He allows the rest of his sentence to fade away as he leans in closer, reaching a hand to my face and gently pulling me towards him. I linger there, my lips inches from him, the model or mirage who has managed to approach me, serenade me with nursery rhymes, mistake me for a waitress and somehow still make me want to kiss him, all before telling me his name. Of course, I blame the booze but, in this moment, I’m not mad about it. In this moment, I want to be out of control, to lose myself in kissing someone I don’t know for the first time in my carefully calculated life. I move to close the remaining gap between us, his lips grazing mine ever so softly as my mind drifts away from my body completely.
Then, someone turns the office lights on, and the room is filled with a collective groan as it dawns on people that this midsummer night’s party is about to be murdered. His eyes are still on mine, my face held in his hands, until a voice hurtles through our moment.
‘Hey, H. After-party at mine.’
Suddenly, he stiffens, inches from my face, jolting back so that my already puckered lips are kissing the canyon of air between us. I follow his unsteady gaze to the gaggle of women behind me, some looking down at me, others giggling to one another, some simply confused by my presence and particularly my proximity to him. Behind them, Amanda is standing there, staring in our direction, expression caught somewhere between shock and concern. And though I can’t work out why exactly, the sinking stone in my stomach tells me that this is one of those rare occasions where the employer-employee strand of our dynamic is straining to be heard. Sadly, the young woman who has just caught his attention – who must be a model – is stepping forward from the fashionable fray to drown any silent warnings out.
‘Come on, H. You coming with us, or have you got better things to do?’
I watch as his cheeks turn the colour of her plunging red dress, her blazing green eyes fixed on him as he stands, stepping forward, stalling for a second even though we all know her question is rhetorical. I sit there next to his discarded beer can, my stomach flipping over as the back of my neck starts to prickle with sweat.
If I thought being mistaken for a waitress or a funeral attendee was bad, this is a thousand times worse. Because this time I’m unmistakably me and I’m unmistakably hearing that I really don’t belong here. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amanda walking towards me, but then she is cornered by Poster’s CEO, his broad frame eclipsing her from my gaze.
‘There’s taxis downstairs for the eight of us,’ the woman in the red dress continues.
I don’t need to count on my fingers to see that I’m unlucky number nine, that any after-party invites are clearly not for me. I look at my mystery man, morphing into a little boy right before my eyes. One that doesn’t want to miss the after-party, and especially not for me. He holds my gaze for a moment longer, the same intensity I felt when he touched me still seeming to spark between us, but it’s no power for the seven perfect Poster People who are laughing a little louder behind him now.
‘Told you he wouldn’t go through with it.’
I hear a whisper somewhere from the crowd of colleagues. Wouldn’t go through with what? With kissing me? Like it was some sort of bet?
I force my legs to leave, to head towards the lifts, all the while hating the fact that tears are starting to prickle in my eyes and make their way down my burning hot cheeks. I don’t even know him, I don’t even know them, but they are looking at me like they’ve got my number down and it turns out, it’s not a number worth knowing.
One, two, three, four, five. I rush towards the lifts, hitting the down button at least ten times in quick succession. Once I caught a fish alive. Stumbling inside, head still hazy from drink, I see the shape of someone approaching and from where I’m standing, it looks a whole lot like him. But if he thinks I’m going to give him another chance to embarrass me, he’s got another think coming. I hit the button again, his broad frame gaining ground, his grey-blue eyes catching mine for the briefest of moments as the tall, silver doors close in front of me, the lift mirrors reflecting the shame on my face. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I watch the floor numbers descend, trying to forget the faces of the women looking back at me as the stranger left me suspended mid-kiss.
Then I let it go again. The doors open into the lobby, and I run out of Poster House, circling the grandiose building until I come to the shabby-looking stone stairs down to the back door into the basement office, all the while vowing never to go swimming with the tenth-floor sharks again.
Chapter One
Five Years Later
My stomach sinks as soon as I see Poster House coming into view. Well, the back of it. I’ve made a point of walking the extra twelve minutes from Tottenham Court Road, even on a cool March morning like this one, just to avoid the melee of models flocking into the glamourous front entrance. But then I remind myself of what lies at the bottom of it: a job I love, with colleagues I adore who are physically ten floors and ideologically worlds apart from our upstairs counterparts. Sure, after five years of working here some might say I’ve outstayed my welcome, but my time here feels a bit like running a large report: I’ve waited too long for the outcome to refresh the page now.
‘Kate. Kate. Kate!’
I hear my name getting increasingly louder, cutting through the husky sound of Meatloaf telling me that he would do anything for love that is blasting through my headphones. I fumble to find my phone, longing to switch the track to something more age-appropriate and, well, cooler than the classic rock that me and my dad used to sing in the car together when I was young, but then I look up to see Blair beaming back at me.
‘Meatloaf again?’ She grins. The tinny music is still echoing through my earpieces, now hanging around my neck. If only I could justify buying AirPods.
‘I’m going through a phase.’
‘Two decades and counting.’
‘I didn’t say it was a short phase.’
Blair throws an arm around my shoulder, which at several inches below her own causes her hand to hit my backpack and almost knock my battered KeepCup out of my clutches. Even so, we manage to fall into step beside each other, one hand on our coffees, the others stashed in coat pockets and both of us chatting about the sheer number of reports we need to produce for the senior management team upstairs by the ‘end of play’ today.
‘I hate that phrase,’ she says, as we descend the spiral stone steps down to the basement office entrance, the ‘Enter at your own risk’ sign a semi-ironic relic of a departmental pirate-themed party we held shortly after the annual office mixer; we should probably begin planning the next one for in a few months’ time.
‘Which phrase?’
Blair loves the word hate, adding a good dose of dramatics to absolutely everything. Deep down, under the long, black hair and dark, gothic trench coat, she’s a complete softie.
‘End of play. Like, what part of work feels like a game to them?’
‘As someone who has seen their monthly expenses, I can assure you they’re winning.’
‘But all work and no play for us?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I grin as she rolls her eyes. Poster might personify everything I hate about the corporate world, capitalising on the latest ‘trends’ of cultural angst and social media induced comparison. But my actual job, the thing I do down here every day, taking seemingly random data and turning it into something useful, something that makes sense? That part I love; that part is play for me.
Blair pushes the door into the basement open and no fewer than ten faces glance at us from computer screens scattered around the back entrance, colleagues further afield already sat behind their monitors, headphones on and plugged into the task at hand. Some will have been here since seven this morning. Charlie lifts his messy, blond mop to look up to us with dark circles around his eyes that make me wonder whether he even went home last night. Still, he waves a hand, eyes reorienting to his screen before him as he does.
‘Good morning, ladies!’ He beams.
‘Good morning, Charlie,’ we echo back in perfect Charlie’s Angels unison. It’s the same greeting we’ve given each other almost every day for the three years since he started working here. Like everything else down in the basement, it’s routine, orderly, comfortable, like a pair of worn slippers waiting for you to sink your feet into as soon as you arrive home.
‘Whatsauppppp?’ Toby asks as soon as I sit down at my usual desk next to him, ditching my phone face-up on the tabletop and proceeding to pull my laptop out of my bag. I feel his comfortable presence next to me; the bold orange hue of his shirt seeming even brighter next to his dark-chocolate skin.
‘Hello. The nineties called. They want their greeting back.’
‘That’s a coincidence. The seventies called for you. They’re really missing Meatloaf.’
I look down at my phone, my Spotify page still trying its best to expose me. Somehow being exposed here doesn’t lead to embarrassment like it does upstairs.
‘Good weekend?’
‘Great weekend. I discovered fly fishing . . .’ Toby hums with enthusiasm; he always does. Only, his enthusiasm flits between different hobbies quicker than his callused fingertips are writing code on his laptop keyboard as he speaks right now.
‘Yeah?’ I say, only half-listening, firing up the wizard I was working on before the weekend. ‘Didn’t have you down as the outdoors type.’
‘I’m not.’
‘But you said—’
‘Fishing Sim World. It’s a game on the Xbox.’
He says this as if I know nothing, when before this weekend he wouldn’t have known the game existed. And once he moves on to the next thing, he’ll forget that it does.
I smile back at my screen, reading over my latest report, still open from the last time I looked at it: the one that is meant to show the conversion rates between social media click-throughs and real-life purchases. I’ve tried not to work over the weekends ever since I realised, early on in my London life, that this city will never slow down for you, so you have to pace things yourself. Still, with my housemate Lucy working remotely for a digital start-up, it’s hard for the hustle mentality not to spill out at home; especially when she’s working for the employer I want, the very employer I foolishly turned down just over five years ago.
‘Got much on this week?’ Toby asks absent-mindedly. He’s probably googling expansion packs or fan memorabilia for his latest fad.
‘The usual. Need to get my annual review in the diary with Amanda though.’
‘Has it been four years since you started here already?’
‘Try five.’
When I first turned down the next-to-unpaid start-up position alongside Lucy in favour of the well-paid graduate package at Poster, I promised myself I’d stick it out for a year, hone those all-important ‘transferable skills’, and then move on to something more meaningful. And, despite the two years between graduation and finally securing my first salaried position seeming to unfold in a slow-motion montage of zero-hour contracts, unpaid internships and mounting insecurity, the years I have spent at Poster have racked up far quicker than I would have liked. But every time I’ve tried to leave, they’ve found another way to make me stay. It’s a bit like trying to switch from EE: you only get the good deals once you start flirting with Vodaphone.
‘Surely due another promotion?’
‘Toby, I’ve been due another promotion ever since I became a senior analyst two years ago. It’s the carrot they’ve been dangling that never quite comes.’
This time last year I swore I’d leave Poster if I hadn’t become a director by my next annual review. After all, I wanted to get into data to help people, not just help them become better dressed. And yet, here I am, twenty-nine, stuck in the same role and too cowardly to remind Amanda that my review was due two weeks ago, because then I’ll have to finally admit to myse. . .
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Hate at First Sight: The UNMISSABLE enemies-to-lovers romcom of 2023
Lizzie O'Hagan
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