Page 37 of The Backup Groom

Once a jerk, always a jerk.

Or in his case, a schmuck is a schmuck is a schmuck.

I stopped by Stella’s desk with the tube of posters and the box. “You busy?”

“For you, never.” She swiveled around in her chair to face me and lost her smile. “Oh, God, what is Schmuck making you do now?”

I set the box and poster tube on the edge of her desk and sighed. “It’s not worth getting into, but, yippee, I can add Errand Girl to my résumé.”

Stella shook her head in disgust. “I miss you as Creative Director.”

I frowned. “That was my dream job.”

“And you worked your butt off to get it.”

As an intern, I’d worked my way up through the ranks. I led a team of designers, strategists, and copywriters to come up with unique concepts for our clients to stand out among the crowd. I constantly used the right side of my brain, the creative side, and I rarely had a day that wasn’t fun.

My current job as media buyer was the complete opposite: left side brain, numbers, dollars, contracts, boring for me because there was no challenge. My goal was to find the most suitable media platform to market a product or service for our clients, whether it be radio, TV, social networks, search engines, orblah, blah, blah, as Uncle G would say.

Wow—I almost fell asleep describing my new job.

That shows you just how much I was enjoying it.

“Okay—forget about him,” Stella said. “We will not let Schmuck ruin your day. Let’s stay focused and move on to the next Ryan Scott.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Radio Ryan?”

“Hey, this one should be fun!” Stella said, trying to motivate me. “You have a lot in common since he’s voiced some fantastic radio commercials, and you have written so many. He’s going to be the one. You just wait and see.”

“What worries me more than anything is Mercedes,” I said. “Twice she told me she was watching me. Do you think she’s actually following me everywhere I go? She knows what I’m up to, no doubt about it.”

“You know Maggoty Mercedes is much too lazy for that,” Stella said. “I’m certain she hired a private investigator to follow you around. That person passes along info to her, along with your coordinates, then she shows up to scare the Ryan-of-the-day away. Don’t worry, I know how to keep her out of your fantastic hair.”

I bowed. “Thankyou. Tell me your idea.”

Stella rolled her chair closer to me. “Oh, it’sway morethan an idea. The plan is already set in place for your date with Radio Ryan. I never had a chance to fill you in since you were slammed today.” She paused, a nervous look on her face. “Okay, first, please don’t be mad at me.”

“You’re scaring me,” I said. “What did you do this time?”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” she said.

“Let me be the judge of that.”

Stella winced. “You’re going to have a fake date with Danny before your real date with Radio Ryan.”

“What?! No! Why would I want to do that? No, uh-uh,nothappening.”

“Keep it down,” she whispered. “Conference room—now.” She dragged me down the hallway.

Danny is our coworker in the copywriting department. He worked directly under me when I was Creative Director.

That was the problem.

Danny would love nothing more than to work directly under me again, on top of me, and from every other angle he could imagine. He has had a well-known crush on me for the last two years. The entire company knew it long before I did. I guess my crush radar had been broken because I thought he was being friendly to me, like he was to everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong; he’s super nice, smart, attractive, funny. He’s got the complete package, really. The only reason I would never, ever, ever consider going out with him is because he looks like my dad. The entire company knows that as well.

In fact, the day before my dad moved away to Alaska, he came to see me at work and the employees were beside themselves. They still joke about that day they had Danny and my dad pose together for countless photos.