The Secret Annex of Love
An office-lady romance in several acts of concealment
Alyx Beaumont was beloved by everyone in the office.
This was, from Alyx’s perspective, a terrible burden.
Her cheerful voice carried beautifully across cubicles. Her blue eyes made people feel that whatever they were saying was the most fascinating thing she had heard all day. Her long blonde hair fell in shining waves nearly to her waist, and when she hurried through the office it streamed behind her like the banner of some excessively approachable medieval princess.
Consequently, people approached her.
Constantly.
“Alyx, can I ask your opinion?”
“Alyx, you’ll come to karaoke, won’t you?”
“Alyx, could you look over this?”
“Alyx, settle an argument: which of us would survive longest on a desert island?”
“Alyx, you always know how to make everyone feel better!”
Alyx did like people. She simply did not like all of them at once, all day, from every direction.
Therefore, she had developed a network of secret places.
There was the narrow balcony behind the sixth-floor records room, where nobody went because the door bore a sign reading ALARM MAY SOUND. The alarm did not sound. Alyx had tested it.
There was the little alcove behind the obsolete printer on seven, concealed by three artificial palms.
There was the unused wellness room on four, although it had lately been invaded by someone who actually wished to pursue wellness.
Her favorite place, however, was the half-forgotten archive on the ninth floor.
It was cool, quiet, and filled with cardboard boxes bearing mysterious labels such as RETAIN UNTIL 2007 and MISC. STRATEGIC MATERIALS. Behind a metal cabinet, Alyx had constructed a nest consisting of a folding chair, a cushion, a contraband electric kettle, and a canvas bag full of yuri manga.
Every afternoon at three fifteen, Alyx slipped away there to read about women who spent twelve volumes misunderstanding each other before finally holding hands beneath cherry blossoms.
It restored her faith in civilization.
Unfortunately, the archive already belonged to someone else.
Isobel Hart was respected by everyone in the office.
This was, from Isobel’s perspective, nearly as exhausting as being beloved.
She had deep brown eyes, long straight black hair, and the grave, composed expression of a young scholar who had just discovered a chronological inconsistency in your dynasty. She rarely spoke in meetings unless she had something useful to say. Unfortunately, everything she said was useful.
If the accounts did not balance, Isobel found the discrepancy.
If a project had become hopelessly tangled, Isobel produced a flowchart.
If someone said, “I’m sure we’ve always done it this way,” Isobel quietly located a memorandum proving that they had begun doing it that way fourteen months ago because Darren misunderstood an email.
Her competence inspired awe. Her intelligence inspired panic.
People lowered their voices when she walked past.
They proofread messages three times before sending them to her.
One new employee, upon hearing that Isobel wished to speak with him, briefly believed he had been sentenced to death.
Isobel did not mean to frighten anyone. She was merely shy. Every social encounter required several minutes of internal preparation, and people had the unfortunate habit of beginning conversations before she had finished preparing for them.
Thus, she too had a network of secret places.
There was the stairwell between eight and nine, where the lights buzzed pleasantly.
There was a forgotten conference room called Antwerp, whose booking system had been broken since 2019.
And there was the ninth-floor archive, where Isobel kept a folding chair, a tartan blanket, a tin of good tea, and a rotating selection of ancient histories and nineteenth-century novels.
Every afternoon at three ten, Isobel went there to recover from the appalling modernity of corporate life.
For six months, Alyx and Isobel used the same hiding place without discovering each other.
This was possible because Isobel sat behind the shelving unit marked TAX DOCUMENTATION, while Alyx occupied the opposite side of the cabinet marked MISC. STRATEGIC MATERIALS. Each assumed the occasional rustling sound was caused by the building settling.
Then, one rainy Tuesday, Alyx reached the archive late.
She slipped inside, kicked off her shoes, crept behind the cabinet, and opened the newest volume of The Duchess and Her Extremely Loyal Lady-in-Waiting.
On the other side of the cabinet, Isobel was reading Tacitus.
For seven peaceful minutes, neither knew the other was there.
Then Alyx reached the chapter in which the lady-in-waiting fell on top of the duchess in the palace baths.
“Oh, come on,” she whispered passionately. “Just kiss her.”
A page stopped turning on the other side.
Alyx froze.
There was a small, scholarly cough.
Alyx slowly peered around the cabinet.
Isobel slowly peered around the shelving unit.
They stared at each other.
Alyx held up the manga.
Isobel held up The Annals of Imperial Rome.
“I can explain,” Alyx said.
“I cannot,” Isobel replied. “Tacitus is frequently inexplicable.”
Alyx blinked.
Then she laughed so suddenly that she had to clap both hands over her mouth.
Isobel’s ears turned pink.
That was the precise moment Alyx fell a very small amount in love with her.
They negotiated a territorial settlement.
Isobel retained the northern half of the archive, including the electrical outlet and the least unstable chair. Alyx retained the southern half, including the cushion and the superior hiding angle. Tea-making facilities became common property.
Their first joint afternoon was awkward.
Isobel read George Eliot.
Alyx read a manga entitled My Terrifying Senior Is Secretly Adorable.
Neither looked at the other.
After twelve minutes, Alyx said, “My terrifying senior is secretly adorable.”
Isobel looked up sharply.
“The manga,” Alyx added.
“Of course.”
“Although,” Alyx continued, “I suppose the title could apply to certain real-life situations.”
Isobel turned a page with unnecessary precision.
“The heroine has black hair,” Alyx said. “And she’s incredibly clever. Everyone at work is scared of her, but actually she just wants to be left alone with her books.”
“I see.”
“She also rescues an injured pigeon.”
“I have never rescued a pigeon.”
“No. But you fixed Nadine’s quarterly forecast.”
“That was considerably less pleasant than handling a pigeon.”
Alyx laughed again.
Isobel lowered her book, and Alyx caught the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth.
That was the moment Isobel fell a very small amount in love with Alyx.
Their archive meetings became routine.
Alyx brought sweet pastries. Isobel brought proper sandwiches because, as she eventually discovered, Alyx considered three macarons an adequate lunch.
Isobel explained why the late Roman Republic had not collapsed simply because everybody was insufficiently nice.
Alyx summarized the plots of increasingly elaborate yuri series.
“This one,” she said, “is about two office ladies who secretly meet in an unused storage room.”
Isobel stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“The dark-haired one is very reserved.”
“A coincidence.”
“And the blonde one is—oh dear—described as ‘a human golden retriever.’”
“A grotesque coincidence.”
“She keeps bringing the dark-haired one pastries.”
“Alyx.”
“Yes?”
“Is this manga about us?”
Alyx examined the cover.
“Well, unless you are secretly its thirty-eight-year-old author, I don’t see how it could be.”
Isobel returned to her book, though she spent ten minutes on the same page.
Soon they began exchanging reading material.
Alyx gave Isobel the gentlest, slowest romance she owned. Isobel read it with the solemn attention she normally reserved for primary sources.
“Well?” Alyx asked the next day.
“The central misunderstanding could have been resolved by a three-minute conversation.”
“That’s the genre.”
“The secondary characters are plainly in love as well.”
Alyx’s eyes widened. “You noticed!”
“They shared an umbrella for forty-seven pages.”
Meanwhile, Isobel gave Alyx Pride and Prejudice.
Alyx returned it covered in little paper flags.
“Why,” Isobel asked, “have you marked every appearance of Charlotte Lucas?”
“I have a theory.”
“I feared you might.”
“They should all abandon Mr. Collins and live together at Rosings.”
“That is not remotely what the novel suggests.”
“It is what the novel yearns for in its secret heart.”
Despite herself, Isobel began looking forward to these arguments more than anything else in her day.
Alyx, meanwhile, began turning down afternoon invitations with suspicious firmness.
“Sorry,” she told her coworkers. “I have a strategic meeting.”
This was technically true. Her strategy was to sit beside Isobel until Isobel smiled.
The crisis came when Facilities announced that the ninth-floor archive would be cleared out.
Alyx read the email and appeared at Isobel’s desk with the expression of a woman bringing news of an approaching barbarian invasion.
“They’re destroying our home.”
Isobel looked up. “It is not our home.”
“It has tea.”
“So does my actual home.”
“It has our chairs.”
“My chair causes numbness in my left leg.”
“It has history.”
“It has invoices from 2003.”
Alyx leaned across the desk and whispered, “It has us.”
Isobel became very still.
Alyx seemed to realize what she had said. Her face turned pink.
Three coworkers nearby abruptly became fascinated by their screens.
“I mean,” Alyx stammered, “our arrangement. Our special—our private—our shared—”
“Archive,” Isobel supplied faintly.
“Yes. That.”
Facilities gave them until Friday.
They attempted to relocate.
The Antwerp conference room was too visible. The wellness room contained a man doing vigorous lunges. The sixth-floor balcony was windy enough to turn Tacitus into confetti. Behind the obsolete printer, Alyx and Isobel were discovered by an intern who assumed they were trapped and summoned Security.
By Thursday evening, both women were despondent.
At five thirty, Isobel went to the archive one last time. Alyx was already there, sitting cross-legged on the floor amid half-packed books.
“I saved your blanket,” Alyx said.
“Thank you.”
“And your tea.”
“Thank you.”
“And this.”
She held out Isobel’s copy of Middlemarch.
A little paper flag protruded from it.
Isobel opened to the marked page. Alyx had underlined a passage about finding delight in another person’s happiness. Beneath it, in pencil, she had written:
This is how I feel when I make you smile.
Isobel read it twice.
Alyx’s usual brightness had vanished. Without it, she looked unexpectedly vulnerable.
“I know I’m a lot,” Alyx said. “Everybody likes the cheerful version of me, so I keep performing her even when I’m tired. But I never have to perform for you. I can sit here and say nothing. I can complain. I can be ridiculous. And you never demand that I light up the room.”
“You do light up the room,” Isobel said.
“That’s very sweet, but—”
“No. You literally do. You always switch on all three lamps.”
“Oh.”
“I prefer it,” Isobel added.
Alyx looked at her.
Isobel gathered every fragment of courage she possessed. It was not much. Courage had never accumulated naturally in her; she had always needed to construct it carefully, like a complicated spreadsheet.
“People believe I want to be left alone,” she said. “Usually, they are correct. But lately, when I am alone, I find myself waiting for you.”
Alyx’s blue eyes grew very wide.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“To come bother you?”
“To come be with me.”
Alyx stood. Isobel stood too.
They remained several feet apart, because both had read enough romance to know that this was the moment when one of them ought to cross the room, but neither had received procedural guidance.
At last Alyx said, “If this were one of my manga, the shelving unit would collapse and throw us into each other’s arms.”
“I would prefer not to rely upon a workplace accident.”
“Very sensible.”
“We could simply move closer.”
“Oh! Yes. We could.”
They each took one step.
Then another.
Then Isobel, whose terrifying intelligence had deserted her entirely, asked, “Would you like to hold hands?”
Alyx made a tiny sound, somewhere between a squeak and a sob.
“Yes.”
Their fingers met.
Alyx’s hand was warm. Isobel’s was trembling.
For a little while they simply stood there, smiling helplessly at one another in the doomed archive.
Then Alyx whispered, “The readership is going to be furious if this chapter ends with hand-holding.”
“What readership?”
“The imaginary women following our office romance.”
“I see.”
“They’ve endured a very slow burn.”
“Have they?”
“Excruciatingly slow.”
Isobel considered this.
Then she leaned forward and kissed Alyx.
It was a small, careful kiss, sweet with tea and pastry sugar.
When they parted, Alyx’s whole face had become pink.
Isobel looked scarcely less overwhelmed.
“The readership,” Isobel said, “may consider that an adequate installment.”
Alyx flung both arms around her.
On Friday morning, Isobel submitted a twelve-page operational case for retaining a portion of the ninth-floor archive as an employee quiet room.
It contained utilization estimates, wellness research, cost projections, and three graphs.
The proposal was approved before lunch. Nobody wished to argue with it.
Facilities removed the old boxes, repaired the lights, added two comfortable chairs, and placed a sign on the door:
THE QUIET ROOM
Conversation Discouraged
Alyx and Isobel sat there every afternoon.
Sometimes they read.
Sometimes they shared tea.
Sometimes Alyx rested her blonde head on Isobel’s shoulder while Isobel pretended to concentrate on Thucydides.
Their coworkers soon discovered the romance, principally because Alyx was incapable of concealing happiness and Isobel had begun looking at her as though she were the one surviving manuscript of some beautiful lost work.
One afternoon, Alyx opened a newly released manga and gasped.
“What is it?” Isobel asked.
“The blonde office lady has confessed to the quiet dark-haired one!”
“How derivative.”
“They’re kissing in the archive!”
“Scandalous.”
“She says the archive is their special place.”
“Clearly the author lacks imagination.”
Alyx closed the book and nestled closer.
“You’re right. Ours is better.”
Isobel kissed the crown of her golden head.
“Yes,” she said, with quiet and absolute confidence. “It is.”
