‘All right, boss?’ Dexter greeted me with a devilish grin, halfway through making a chain out of paperclips from the stationery cupboard. The garland almost spanned the entirety of his desk. ‘How’s the dating going?’
One of the designers on the other side of the room tried and failed to hide a snicker.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Clearly a lot better than your work ethic.’
Dexter was probably the only member of our staff that I could talk to like that, bar Rory. Our lead programmer had come out of the womb a sarky bastard.
Ella strolled out of the office now, immediately flushing when she spotted me. ‘Oh, hey Penny.’
She too kept her eyes on me. I felt like an exhibit at London Zoo.
‘Is someone going to tell me which office joke I’m the butt of this time?’
No one spoke, although there were a few more titters. I ran through the possibilities in my head. It was possible that I was about to walk into my office and see my desk covered in wrapping paper. I couldn’t rule out a stupid prank, and it had been known to happen. Usually only on the first of April, though. Another thought occurred to me.
‘Did you hack my Level profile?’ I played it cool, refusing to give Dexter the satisfaction and trying not to let on how humiliating it would be if that was the case. I didn’t want anyone in this office to have access to my poor flirting attempts.
‘As tempting as that obviously is,’ Dexter said, adding the final paperclip to his garland, ‘we were actually listening when we had the GDPR training.’
I snorted. Likely story. These people heard the words ‘training’ and translated it into ‘an excuse to completely zone out of work’. Last time we’d given them a course, they’d ordered pizza to the office and taken it as permission to put their feet up for an afternoon. I’d been slated for weeks for requesting a ham and pineapple.
‘Okay, so what is it, then?’ I zeroed in on Ella, who I knew for a fact would be the easiest to crack. It took a previous teacher’s pet to know another, and I hadn’t pestered my high school teachers about missed homework for nothing. There was no way someone who lined up their pencils every morning, and who baked cupcakes for the office ‘just because’, wouldn’t break under the pressure. ‘Ella?’
It took literally seconds to fluster her. ‘I think you should probably just speak to Rory. He’s in your office.’
I could see him behind the glass wall, leaning over his laptop and studying something on the screen. Dexter heckled me on my way over there. ‘Leave the door open, would you?’
I flipped him the finger and closed the door behind me, hearing a series of groans as the rest of the office became background noise.
‘What on earth has got into them?’ I dumped my bag on the floor, walking over to my desk that sat opposite Rory’s on the other side of the room.
He looked tired, his shirt crumpled. The man didn’t own an iron and wouldn’t have known how to use one even if he did. ‘They’re being ridiculous. It’s nothing.’
I took a swig of my coffee, wincing. Why did they make travel cups so effective? What was the point if it never reached a drinkable temperature? ‘Okay. Well, it’s obviously something. Dexter is literally unable to wipe that grin off his face.’
Rory didn’t look up from his screen. ‘This random lifestyle magazine wrote a piece about “the creators behind a hot new dating app”.’ He said the last part in air quotes, his feelings towards the piece evident through his tone.
I had never quite understood people’s obsession with app creators. Particularly dating app creators. No one was queuing up to hear the life story of the creator of the latest viral game about birds, but for some reason, the personal lives of those associated with dating apps were fair game. It didn’t help that Michael Broadhurst, the founder of Link, had milked the PR opportunity for all it was worth. A two-part Netflix documentary had aired a few years ago, focusing on his rise to success, and how it had all started when he’d met his wife. From then on, he’d set out on a mission to help people in the masses have their own romantic encounters. Blah blah blah. I just didn’t get the obsession.
‘What’s the angle? Have they exposed my permanent singledom?’
This, I could deal with. It wasn’t a secret that I’d devoted my early twenties to Level. If anything, it could make our users trust us more, to know how far our dedication stretched.
Rory laughed, but it fell a bit flat. He still hadn’t made eye contact. ‘Not quite. It’s Influence magazine, if you want to read it. They’ve tagged us on Twitter.’
I’d never been an avid Twitter user, not quite sure why the general population would want to hear my opinions on pointless topics. But I did have an account, which I saved for the post-midnight brain rot scroll before bed. I’d never even tweeted, and my username was @PennyW3B97. How had they found me? I scrolled through my mentions – of which there were quite a few more than the usual zero – locating the tweet and clicking on the relevant article.
When Penny Met Rory: On the Same Level All Along
I skimmed the paragraphs, groaning. ‘Where do they get this bullshit from?’
One of the comments named our university halls, and how we’d met when we were 18 and fresh out of sixth form. Where did they get this kind of information? I ran through my mind, trying to think of anyone who might have snaked us out for a quick fix of cash.
Finally, Rory glanced up from his screen, closing the lid on his laptop and coming over to my side of the room. ‘It’s annoying, you’re right. But I mean it’s not a ridiculous theory to draw, is it?’
A thump on the glass outside made us both jump. Dexter was on the other side, holding a printout of the article.
‘I’m going to frame this and put it next to the fridge. We’re all so proud of you two.’
Unfortunately, our office was not Dexter-proof. The sad reality of setting up a new office with a small budget.
‘You’re not funny.’ I scolded him.
‘Will you sign it for me?’ He faked an angelic expression.
I added it to my to-do list to send round another batch of dull mandatory training especially for him.
‘What do you mean?’ I turned back to Rory, who was ignoring Dexter.
‘Well’ – he ran his hands through his hair, picking up my coffee and taking a sip, not even flinching at the temperature – ‘firstly, this is disgusting. That’s a hot milkshake, not a coffee. And second, it’s not the most ridiculous theory in the world, that we might be dating. Or at least be a little more than friendly. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the years.’
I thought of the other day at the pub, and became suddenly aware of our proximity right now. Our faces were centimetres apart, and the rest of the office was only on the other side of a glass wall.
‘Right. It makes sense.’ I was reassuring myself more than anything, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. ‘It’s good to be realistic about the conclusions people might draw. Even if they’re false.’
Because they were false. I was almost definitely sure. I’d spent more time with Rory than I had with anyone else for the best part of a decade. I’d slept in his bed at university, and I’d used his toothbrush on countless occasions when I didn’t have mine to hand (even if I’d never told him about it – he was weird about dental hygiene). And nothing had ever happened. Ever.
‘Yeah. Completely false.’ Rory hadn’t broken our eye contact.
