Page 7 of All About Christmas

Charades lasted a lot longer than usual that night because the rules had to be checked every.

.. well... thirty seconds. Peter and I are competitive, which in our childhood led to a lot of squabbling during Monopoly when Peter would invest in Boardwalk with a string of hotels, while I meanwhile would have already been forced to take out a mortgage on Mediterranean Avenue.

Or to flying game pieces during Sorry! when Peter, to his great frustration, had his pawn knocked off the board when he only had three spaces to go until he was safely in his little “home” space.

I am still convinced that at birth Peter wrapped my umbilical cord around my neck like a lasso to prevent me from coming out through the birth canal first.

My fathers were always confident that this trait would diminish as we blew out more candles, but that hope was in vain.

And it’s that exact same rivalry I feel now whenever I look over the edge of my screen at Olivier.

Well, maybe not exactly the same. In this case, of course, there is more at stake than having to watch your brother form the capital L with his right thumb and index finger and stick it on his forehead when your father is not looking.

Olivier looks at his screen with concentration. There is a slight frown between his dark eyebrows. His hair is messy on his head from all the times he’s run his hand through it.

This frustration is a lot more pleasant to watch than the self-assurance with which he dropped names of famous tabloid stars on the phone in recent days, as if they were breadcrumbs that would help him find his way home.

I scroll through the All About Love inbox and select wishes that might be of interest.

My eye lingers on a florist who has received a few orders from a silent admirer. She writes that she is nevertheless very curious about the sender, and she asks us to help find out who it is. It’s just a little different than usual, and that’s what I need for my segment.

I save the email in my “contenders” folder and continue digging.

I lift my head when George from the facilities department stalks past, huffing and puffing, with a large duffel bag full of letters.

“Any luck?” I chuckle.

George looks up, his blond locks sticking to his sweaty forehead. With a groan, he puts the bag on the ground.

“Yes,” he wheezes, dabbing the moisture from his skin with his sleeve.

“I don’t understand why people think it’s still a good idea to send applications by mail.

Our website clearly states that we only take them by email.

And who has to dump everything in the trash?

” He pokes his thumb into his chest. “Exactly. George will have to lug it back down. It’s practically a day’s work for me. ”

Olivier looks up from his screen, his jaw tightening. “Jeez, are there even more people writing?” He sighs deeply. “It’s already taking me days to separate the wheat from the chaff. And there’s a lot more chaff than wheat.”

I bite my lip. He’s not wrong. In fact, there is so little wheat that I fear a famine.

“Since when can’t people write simple words?” continues Olivier sulkily. “This mail contains more errors than a grade three spelling test.” He turns back to his screen, and George trudges toward the elevator.

“She doesn’t ‘ want me’ ?” he reads as his eyes shoot across the screen. He shakes his head disapprovingly. “I can see why.”

I press my lips together and I look at Olivier again. Of course he’s a real language tyrant. Typical.

“You’re so prejudiced,” I mutter and click on the next email.

Olivier’s gaze hooks onto mine. “Why? Because bad grammar makes me cringe?”

“No, because you immediately pass judgment on someone based on bad grammar,” I say as I scan the message I now have in front of me. “Maybe the person has dyslexia.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Then why wouldn’t you let someone else look over it first?”

I shake my head pityingly. “Not if it’s very personal. I think you have to look through the spelling mistakes a bit and pay attention to the story someone is writing.”

“The story’s nothing to write home about either,” Olivier huffs.

“Here, this guy has been chasing his ex for six months, who has said very clearly that she doesn’t want anything more to do with him.

” He looks at me in consternation for a moment.

“He sent a thousand red roses to her work, declared his love to her through a singing quartet, and rented a plane with a banner saying ‘I WANT YOU BACK’. And he suspects she has a new boyfriend because he sometimes cycles behind her. Nevertheless, he thinks one more grand gesture could change her mind.” He looks at me in dismay.

“What do you think, should I forward this email to the police?”

Just as I’m about to respond, a whiff of spicy aftershave reaches my olfactory system, and I know who has come to stand next to our desks before I’ve even seen him. Pippin plants his hip against the edge of the tabletop, and I look at him.

“Hi, Pippin,” I say. “How are you?”

“Hello,” he replies. He grabs a paper clip from my desk and fidgets with it a bit. “Good. It’s my birthday today, so I brought cake for everyone. It’s in the fridge, grab some if you feel like it.”

“Oh, how nice! Happy Birthday! How old are you now?” My gaze, meanwhile, turns toward the kitchenette, as if there were magnets in my eyes and the cake was made of strong metal.

“Thirty-two.” Pippin pulls a glum face. “Forty is getting closer and closer.”

“Ah, well,” I wave away his remark. “That’ll take another eight years. Do you know what can happen in eight years?”

“Well, at least a drink,” he replies dryly. “We’re going for a drink after work. Do you...” his gaze flashes to Olivier after which he briefly coughs and quickly corrects himself, “… you guys feel like joining us?”

Olivier looks up. “For a drink? But it’s Tuesday.”

I frown. Olivier strikes me as someone who, whenever he gets the chance, takes every opportunity to “have a glass of wine’ while enjoying a good conversation with a frolicky tall blonde and casually dropping the name of a country “where I’ve been once” into every sentence.

You can almost picture it: “Nice wine, isn’t it?

Yes, indeed. It reminds me a bit of the wine I had while looking out over the C?te d’Azur from my Jacuzzi.

It really helped me philosophize about my purpose in life.

” Then he would take the girl home, after which he could boast to his friends the next day that he had bagged a “nice deer.”

I shudder at the thought; I hate those types. Those fraternity guys who sound like they have ten golf balls down their throats and already pretend to know how the world works during their college days.

“Tuesday is actually the perfect day,” Pippin replies, his gaze fixed on Olivier. “All the part-time workers are never in the office on Friday. Besides, a lot of people work from home then too, so right now we have a good-sized group of people.”

“Nice,” I chuckle. “I’d love to come along.”

Olivier mumbles something unintelligible to me, which Pippin registers as “yes, good idea.”

He apparently has better ears than I do.

“Well, great!” Pippin clasps his hands together enthusiastically. “Then I’ll see you guys later.”

“Hm,” is all Olivier manages to get out, and he looks over his shoulder at Pippin.

I snort softly. “Think of it as a chance to get to know your colleagues better. I think so far, you’ve only been flirting with Tina at the copy machine.”

Olivier smiles smugly. “And how do you know that?”

My cheeks turn red, and I shrug. “I was walking by.” I grab a stack of papers and tap them on the tabletop until the bottom is straight and then place them back on the desk.

“She’s the HR manager and it’s strongly discouraged in the rules of conduct to start anything with a colleague.

A colleague with a higher position is even more prohibited. ”

I conveniently leave out that Tina sometimes condones transgressions and may occasionally ask inappropriate questions of her own.

“Okay... So?”

I click on the next email. “Well, I just think it’s good to remember that.”

“So, Olivier...” Noor leans forward slightly to grab a bitterbal from the plate, her fourth glass of wine hanging crookedly in her hand. “How do you like it so far—Holy shit!” She flings the snack on the table and waves some cool air toward her open mouth. “Happens every time.”

When she has extinguished the fire with a sip of wine, she turns to Olivier again.

He sits diagonally on his chair, his arm hanging loosely over the backrest, a specialty beer set in front of him. He looks at her with slight concern.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Oh, sure,” Noor waves away his question. “I can never show restraint. Anyway. How do you like it so far?”

Olivier continues to look at her with concern for a moment, but when he seems satisfied that she’s not going to spontaneously catch fire, he opens his mouth. “Very interesting and challenging.”

Noor smiles and takes another sip of wine. “Oh, yes? So does love suit you?” She doesn’t hide her curiosity.

Tina, sitting a few seats away, turns her face our way with interest.

Olivier chuckles and tilts his head slightly to the right.

“Yes, Olivier, tell me,” Tina grins. “What about love? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you in love?” Her eyes twinkle. “Maybe even engaged?”

Tina is one of those people that any man could fall for.

She is such a “one size fits all” sweater: everyone can get along with her.

She will never make you feel bad about yourself because you might be a different size.

She is kind and committed to her colleagues, sometimes even a little too much.

But she can also be strict, when necessary, which is a perfect trait for an HR manager.

A few more heads—those of the ladies—turn in our direction, and Pippin also looks at him expectantly.

Probably hoping to find out if he’s potential prey that he can later drag into the elevator.

Indeed, Pippin is responsible for the office’s frequent use of the stairwells whenever he stops the elevator to have a rendezvous with his latest flame.

However, though he regularly balances on the edge of the rules of conduct and has probably even violated them on occasion, I don’t think Pippin has ever been reprimanded.

As far as I know, he has never been caught in the act, and no one has ever filed a complaint against him.

Olivier begins to blush under all of the attention and quickly grabs a cube of cheese from the snack board.

He eats it as slowly as he can, probably hoping someone else will be subjected to Tina’s fire of questions if his answer takes too long.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

When he has swallowed the last of the snack, all eyes are still on him. He coughs.

“Um, no,” he says then. “There’s no one in particular right now.”

“Hm.” Tina shifts a little more in his direction. “And in the past?”

“Tina,” Noor says reprovingly. “That’s none of our business, is it?”

Tina waves away her protest and smiles flirtatiously at Olivier. “Well, the show is called All About Love . If you can’t stand such questions, you should go work somewhere else.”

I chuckle, and I feel Olivier’s gaze burning a hole in my cheek. I look up, his eyes bore into mine, and he looks at me questioningly.

“Well, she’s right,” I agree and nibble innocently on my mini cheese soufflé. “Maybe you’d be better off working on another show.”

“That would suit you, wouldn’t it?” he says, shaking his head.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tina hastens to say. She gives me a reprimanding look. “Of course I don’t think you should work somewhere else. I’m just curious.”

Olivier brings his beer to his mouth agonizingly slow. “No,” he finally says. “I’ve never been in love.”

It takes me a while to process that information. I find it hard to believe.

“Never?” I repeat after a few seconds in astonishment.

Olivier looks straight at me with the glass still on his lips. “Nope.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Have you been walking around this earth for thirty-three years without your heart ever skipping a beat when you looked at someone? Without feeling like you were floating? Like there were twenty butterflies fluttering in your stomach? Like you could take on the whole world just because you thought of that person?”

“Nope,” is his simple reply again.

“But that’s not possible, is it? Everyone falls in love sometimes, right?”

“I don’t.” He looks at me dryly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Too bad for you.”

Tina’s eyes shoot from me to Olivier and back again. A disappointed twitch appears around her mouth. I lean back a little and cross my arms as I study Olivier intently. “Don’t you believe in love?”

“Honestly? No. Not in the way you mean, anyway.”

“And which way is that?”

“The idea that there is a one true love. That there is someone for everyone and that you can stay together forever. The fairy tale where you get kissed awake by the prince. Where you are engulfed by heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates and roses.”

I frown. “First of all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates. And second, I don’t believe in that at all.” I get so absorbed in the conversation that I almost forget where we are. I barely notice the others at the table anymore.

“Oh, no?”

“No. I find it a rather depressing thought that there could be only one person to share your life. I mean if I really believed that, I’d probably never meet him.

I personally think that there are several people with whom you could be very happy.

I may have been completely convinced in the past that the prince on the white horse existed, but not anymore.

” I sit up for a moment. “I find it hard to fathom that you’ve never felt anything like that before.

But maybe someday, it will happen for you. ”

Olivier shakes his head, chuckling. “If that ever happens, I’ll get you a heart-shaped box full of chocolates.”

I look at him calculatingly, wondering if there isn’t a supermarket open because I suddenly have a serious chocolate craving. Then I turn my head in the direction of my colleagues, who look at us a tad bewildered.

“Well, good,” I mutter sarcastically and take a sip of my iced tea. I haven’t touched alcohol since Maud and Steven’s reception. “Did I mention that I think you’re a fantastic asset to a show called All About Love ?”