Rival Worship

Addison Kell, twenty-eight, office manager at Brightwell & Grange, had been losing to Aris Jeffries for two years and could not tell you why.

That was a lie. She could tell you exactly why. She just hated the reason.

It started with the promotions cycle, back when they were twenty-six and twenty-seven. Same opening. Same practice group. Addison had the organizational chops. Aris had the billable hours and the jawline and the annoying habit of winning. The partners gave it to Aris, patted Addison on the shoulder, and told her she was "the backbone of this floor," which is a compliment people give you when they do not want to give you anything else.

Addison took it. She smiled. She went back to her desk and color-coded the supply reorder spreadsheet until her eyes burned.

But it never really stopped. It just moved to smaller arenas.

Who got the good conference room. Whose catering order the partners actually read. Who got credit for the Cummings file, which had been ninety percent Addison's grunt work and one hundred percent Aris's face at the partner meeting. Two years of tiny little wars, fought with calendar invites and passive-aggressive CC lines.

Addison won some. She was pretty sure she won some. It was hard to keep score when Aris acted as if the score did not exist, as if the whole thing was a friendly game Addison had invented and insisted on playing alone.

And that was the worst part, honestly. Not the losing. The suspicion that Aris did not even consider it a competition.

Thursday was the mandatory mediation session. The firm had brought in some outside consultant named Dr. Rao, who had everyone sit in a circle on the executive floor and breathe at each other for ninety minutes. "Workplace harmony," Dr. Rao called it. The partners called it a line item.

Addison sat through it with her spine straight and her jaw tight. Aris sat across the circle with her legs crossed, heels off, stockinged feet tucked under her, looking bored in a way that seemed expensive. Designer blouse. Designer boredom. At one point Dr. Rao asked them to visualize a conflict "dissolving like sugar in warm water," and Addison visualized Aris dissolving, which she counted as a breakthrough.

Six o'clock came. Everyone filed out. Addison stayed late, because the quarterly vendor invoices did not file themselves, and she looped back up to the executive floor around seven to grab her jacket from the break room hook.

She heard voices before she saw anyone.

The break room door was open a few inches. Aris was in there with Devon from tax law, laughing at something. Addison had her hand on the door and was one second from pushing it when she heard her own name.

"No, I'm serious," Aris was saying. "All bark, no bite. I'd swear to it."

Devon laughed. "You're terrible."

"She acts like she runs this place, and she does run this place, and that's exactly the problem. People who are actually wild don't become office managers. They become... I don't know. Drummers." Aris's voice had that lazy drawl it got when she was holding court. "I'd swear to it. That woman has never once done anything unplanned in her life, including in a bedroom."

"Maybe she's just private," Devon said.

"Everyone's private. That's not a personality." A chair scraped. "Look, I've spent two years watching her. She wants to win so bad she can taste it, and she wants someone to make her stop wanting it. I could do it in a weekend. She'd fold like a filing cabinet."

Addison stood in the hallway with her hand still on the door, and her face did something she could feel with her whole scalp. Hot. Prickly.

She should have walked away. Any reasonable adult, twenty-eight years old, salaried, with a cat and a 401k, would have walked away.

She pushed the door open.

Devon saw her first. His eyes went wide and he did the world's least convincing cough.

"Addison," Aris said. She did not even flinch. She was leaning back in her chair with a seltzer can balanced on her knee, and she just looked up like Addison had come to take her lunch order. "Hey."

"Hey," Addison said. Her voice came out flat and calm, which surprised her. "Devon, your ride's probably here."

Devon left at a speed that bordered on rude. The door swung shut behind him.

The break room was small and warm and smelled like the burnt coffee that lived on that counter no matter how many times Addison replaced the machine. This was her floor. She signed the invoices for that machine. She had earned the right to be terrifying in this room.

Aris took a sip of seltzer. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough."

"Okay." Aris set the can down. No apology coming. Of course no apology coming. "You want to swing at me, or should we skip to the part where you draft a memo about my tone?"

"You think I'm all bark."

"I think you're very good at spreadsheets," Aris said. "And that you've never once in your life let go of the wheel."

"You don't know a thing about what I do outside this building."

"I know you color-code your weekends."

Addison stepped closer. Close enough to see the tiny chip in Aris's nail polish, which was oddly satisfying. "You want to say that to my face?"

"I just did. I said it mostly for Devon's benefit. I don't need an audience."

"Then what do you need, Aris? What is it with you? Two years. You've been needling me for two years and I have never once figured out what would actually make you stop."

Something moved through Aris's face. Fast. There and gone, like a file closing.

"You really want to know?"

"I've got nowhere to be. The invoices can wait."

Aris stood up. She was taller without the advantage of the chair, and she used it, coming around the little table until there was maybe a foot of air between them. Her perfume was expensive and sharp. Addison hated that she noticed.

"You want to know why it's always been you," Aris said. "Fine. You're the only person in this building who pushes back. Everyone else nods. You fight me on every stupid thing, and it's the most interesting thing in my week." She tilted her head. "That's it. The entire tragic answer is that. You're my favorite part of a job I don't even like."

Addison blinked. "That's insane."

"Probably."

"So instead of just, I don't know, getting a drink like a normal person, you've spent two years calling me a robot in break rooms."

"You never asked for a drink."

"Because you're insufferable!"

"And yet," Aris said, "you're still standing here."

Addison opened her mouth. Closed it. The terrible thing was that Aris was right, and the even more terrible thing was that some hot little coal in Addison's chest had been lit by that phrase, all bark no bite, and it was still burning.

"Here's the deal," Aris said. "You heard me. I'll stand behind it. I think you've never surrendered to anybody in your life, and I think you're dying to, and I think I could make you."

"You could not."

"Prove me wrong." Aris shrugged, easy as anything. "Or better. Prove me right and I'll admit it to your face. Either way, one of us finally wins something."

Addison's heart was doing something stupid. "You're serious right now?"

"Completely. And we're both adults, sober, and it's after hours. Say the word and we stop anytime. That's the ground rule. I'm not a monster, Addison, I'm just better than you. And this is separate from work. Nothing that happens tonight touches the promotions cycle, your files, or my billables, and tomorrow we're two coworkers who may or may not still hate each other."

God, that voice. That smug, low, infuriating voice.

Addison should say no. She should file a nice little internal complaint and go home to her cat.

"If I hate it," Addison said, "we stop, and you never bring this up again."

"Deal. If you hate it." Aris smiled like she had already won. "Now. Sit me down somewhere, or get on your knees. Your pick. That's the last choice I'm giving you."

The meditation alcove next door had a leather couch, the one the partners used for their power naps. Addison nodded at it. Her voice had gone somewhere small. "The couch."

"Good girl. Couch it is."

Aris walked ahead of her like she owned the deed to the floor, sat down on the leather, and crossed her legs. The couch creaked. The city glittered sideways through the tall windows, forty stories down, all traffic and noise that suddenly felt very far away.

"Knees," Aris said. Not loud. Just certain. "Right there, between my feet."

Addison looked up at her for a second, the woman she'd fought with for two years, and knelt on the carpet. It was softer than she expected. That felt like a cheat, somehow.

"There we go," Aris murmured. She reached down and undid the little strap at her ankle, slow, watching Addison the whole time. "You know what worship is, Addison? Real worship? It's not groveling. It's attention. Total, undivided attention." She slid the first heel off and set it aside with a click. "I don't think you've ever given anyone that. Not once."

The shoe hit the floor. Then her fingers went to the seam of her stocking at the calf, rolling it down slow, an inch at a time.

"Watch," she said.

The stocking came down over the calf, then the knee, then off. Aris folded it once and tucked it into her pocket like a receipt. Her bare foot rested on the carpet, toes painted the same dark red as her nails, that one chip on the second toe.

"Go on," Aris said. "You've been staring since the break room."

"I have not."

"You absolutely have. Every time I crossed my legs in a meeting you did that little twitch. Blink twice as fast. I notice things, Addison. It's why I win."

Addison's face was hot. Her hands were actually trembling, which was humiliating, and she looked down at them to make it worse. Anger and want all mixed up in the same pot, no lid, no label. Two years of losing and here was the finish line, drawn at her own knees.

"Touch them," Aris said. "Or don't. Say the word and we stop. You remember."

"I remember."

"Then decide."

Addison reached out. Stopped. Started again. Her fingertips landed on the arch of Aris's foot, warm, the skin impossibly smooth. Aris made a small satisfied sound and leaned back into the leather.

"Both hands. Yes. Like that."

It wasn't groveling. That was the weird part. It was just contact, careful contact, thumb tracing the arch while her other hand wrapped the heel. Aris had high arches. Dancer's feet, maybe, or just feet that belonged to a woman who spent money on pedicures and knew it.

"You're shaking," Aris observed.

"I'm angry."

"You're something." She wiggled her toes under Addison's palms. "Angry doesn't shake."

Addison bent her head without deciding to. It just happened. Her lips touched the top of that foot, right over the