Red Hot Rivalry

"By the way, who's Audrey? Your boss mentioned her name a few times." Luck asks as we walk through the office together.

"She's our best salesperson. No one else even comes close, which also makes her Carmen's favorite. Today she has a big meeting with one of our more important clients to renew their contract. The meeting's across town, so she probably won't be back in the office until tomorrow," I explain.

"Dang. I was hoping to get a chance to meet her," Luck muses.

Given what I know about Audrey, the thought of her and Luck meeting doesn't exactly excite me, but something tells me it's going to happen eventually, so I should probably just try to put it out of my mind for the time being. With that in mind, the two of us continue making our way to the storage room to start the long process of reorganizing everything. However, we're quickly stopped dead in our tracks tracks as a figure rounds a nearby corner and stands directly in our path. And as soon as I lay eyes on the fiery color steaking down from our obstruction's head, I instantly start to feel myself get irritated.

"Hey there, Kyle. Where are you headed in such a hurry?" The redhead asks with an off-putting smirk.

"What do you want, Rae?" I respond bluntly.

Where to begin with Rae McKinley? Well, how about the fact that she's a pain in the neck? The two of us were hired at the same time as assistants for the sales team, which means that she's the person in the office that I end up seeing the most on a day-to-day basis. And yet, despite us starting on the exact same day and being about the same age, Rae has somehow managed to get multiple raises and has recently been talking with Carmen about potentially being promoted. So here I am barely able to scrap by, still earning my starting salary, while she's sitting more than comfortably. Talk about unfair treatment. There's no doubt in anyone's mind who the boss likes more. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Rae loves to try and mess with me however she can. Whether it be pointing out my mistakes, pulling pranks on me, or just generally bragging about how much better she is than me. If there's one word I would use to sum this girl up, it would be "brat."

Now, you may be wondering if Rae is an assistant here just like me, why wasn't she helping me sort through the filing cabinet last night? Well, that's a pretty damn good question. I'd kind of like to know that myself. Somehow, it always feels like Rae manages to worm her way out of doing any real work. Sure, she'll fetch a report for someone or make a copy of something or fix a pot of coffee, but when it comes time for someone to do data entry or respond to emails or something like that, she always convinces everyone that I should do it. I swear, I easily have to put in twice as much work into this job as she does. And what's the end result of that? Her getting rewarded from the rest of the office while I get scolded for even the tiniest mistake. So yeah. I'm not Rae's biggest fan.

"I just wanted to know what you were up to," Rae explains, clearly trying to push my buttons in some way. "You know, I heard about you screwing up that filing job. Bet Carmen really chewed you out for that one, huh?"

In that moment, everything suddenly makes sense. I should have known...

"YOU! You were the one who messed up the storage room! I bet you came in early just to undo all of that work I did yesterday! What the hell, Rae?!" I yell at her.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she feigns ignorance. "I was just making conversation."

This has got to be a new low, even for her. Sure, she's tried to sabotage me in the past, but never something on this scale. I mean, like Carmen said, it would have been incredibly bad for everyone if Audrey had missed that meeting. And for what? Just so Rae would know that she was the one who ruined my life? Does she really revel in my misery that much?

"Seriously, that's not cool! I could have lost my job because of you!" I tell her.

"So what? That's not my problem," Rae shrugs. "And like I said, it wasn't me. Besides, getting all mad isn't going to change anything. Better just make sure you don't mess up like that again..."

"You do realize that if Kyle lost his job, that would mean you'd have to actually start doing work around here, right?"

I glance over my shoulder to see Luck standing just a step behind me, looking at Rae with an eyebrow raised. Can't say I expected her to step in and defend me there. Though she does bring up a good point. I can't imagine Rae would enjoy having to put in any real effort around here. I'm impressed Luck was able to so accurately pick up on Rae's bratty nature from just that short interaction. Not that she tries to hide it.

"Uh, and who exactly are you?" Rae asks as she scrunches up her face.

"I'm Luck," she responds, the smile returning to her face, "and I'm Kyle's-"

"Stop. I don't actually care," the petite redhead interrupts her. She then begins to walk around us, taking large, exaggerated steps as she does so. "While I would love to keep chatting with you and your new friend, I have more important stuff to be doing. And if your little meeting with Carmen went anything like I assume it did, you probably do too. So you should probably get started fixing that mess you made before you really get in trouble."

And with that, Rae takes off down the hall, somehow making even her walk look pompous as she does so. Once the two of us are completely alone again, Luck turns to look at me.

"She seems... fun..." Luck says sarcastically. "Let me guess: spoiled princess who always gets her way. Sucks up to superiors while looking down on and belittling anyone she sees as beneath her."

"You pretty much hit the nail on the head," I confirm.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing: I'm looking forward to fixing her up for you," Luck smirks.

"Don't bother. She's not worth it. I just try my best to ignore her and move on with my life. But unfortunately, in this case, she's right. We need to get to work if we want to clean up whatever trouble she ended up causing."

I continue on toward the storage room, but quickly notice that Luck is still stopped in the hallway, quietly thinking to herself. The look in her eyes is a little concerning, but she eventually follows behind me, so I try to not worry about it for now. As we walk, I fill Luck in on any details she was missing about Rae, though none of it seems to really surprise her. Just as we wrap up our discussion, we make it to the storage room. And thankfully, the trip over did manage to help us both cool down from the previous interactions we've had to deal with today.

Actually stepping into the room doesn't reveal much information. The walls are lined with filling cabinets placed neatly in a row that stretches across the room. The area is pretty small, so there aren't even that many of them. Looking around, everything seem to be exactly how I left it last night.

"Well, this doesn't seem so bad," Luck notes. "I was expecting the place to be completely trashed."

Unlike her, I'm not so optimistic. Rae wouldn't be dumb enough to yank papers out of these things and throw them on the ground. That would make it way too obvious that someone was intentionally trying to make a mess. I'm willing to bet she did something arguably even worse. I approach the nearest cabinet and open the top drawer. All of our files are labelled alphabetically, with the more recent files closer toward the front for ease of access. So when I pull out the folder closest to me and see that it's labelled "Peterson, 1998," I realize just how much work we have ahead of us.

If papers had just been pulled out and thrown across the room, all we would have to do is find out where they belong and put them back. But this... this level of sabotage takes effort. Effort that I imagine someone could put to much better use by actually doing their job.

"You wouldn't happen to have some kind of special power that could just put all of these in their proper place, do you?" I ask Luck.

"Uh... hehe... " Luck chuckles nervously, which is an immediate red flag. "Yeah, I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to organizing things, so there's not much I can do here. I think we're going to have to do this by hand."

"Great. That means we're going to have to go through ever single one of these things and put them in the right spot individually..."

Luck and I both groan at the thought given how many files are crammed in these things. This really is going to take all day. In that moment of realization at just how daunting this task is, there is the slightest part of me that does kind of want Luck to use her powers on Rae. You know, to put her in her place. However, I quickly quell that thought, reminding myself that despite how annoying she and the other women in my life are, that doesn't mean I want to break their brains or whatever it is Luck does. That would make me just as bad as them. And besides, my life is chaotic enough as is without reality being bent all the time.

Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I take one last look around the room as I mentally prepare myself. I look at Luck who nods, indicating that she's ready. Without anything else to distract us, we begin the slow, arduous process of putting the storage room back together.