The Trope Tag, Part Two: The Short Story

As promised, I have written a short story based on the tropes that I chose in the Trope Tag, part one! It was simultaneously harder and easier than I expected, and I really enjoyed writing it! I felt like a couple of the tropes could definitely have been developed further in the story, but what it turned out being was not so much a fully developed short story, with beginning, middle, and end (although it does somewhat have those things), but more of a snippet of time in what feels like it could be a much longer narrative. (I had to cut myself off at some point, or else people would be like 'yeah, not reading that'. XD)

This is, I think, my specialty. I excel at writing things-that-feel-like-they-should-be-parts-of-longer-things. This is why I end up with so many stories that spiral out of control. (I'm just waiting for someone to comment on this post like "SAM WRITE MORE ABOUT THESE PEOPLE." *side-eyes Megan*)

Anyway. Since I, um, totally forgot to post on Friday (my bad), even though I had a post to post, I am making up for that by posting my Trope Tag short story in tandem with The Grim Writer! Go check hers out, too! (I'm pretty sure it's better than mine.) It's going to be fun, because while some of our tropes overlapped, we had two that were entirely different. (She is, apparently, partial to elevators...)

As a reminder, the six tropes that I'm including are:
The Mentor
Friends-To-Lovers
Matchmaker Gone Wrong
Working With The Ex
Marriage Pact
The One That Got Away

Also: to those who read my blog who also know me in real life: yes, this short story is based on an alternate reality in which I start working in our parish office, and yes, some of the people in it are based on people who are real. I tried to fictionalize them enough that it's not weird. 

(And to those who know me very well: yes, there are two characters who are both at least semi-based on me.) 

And now without further ado...on to the story! 

Above And Beyond

Rachel pops into the doorway to the upstairs offices, skirt swirling. “Good morning!” she says brightly. “Anyone need anything before I head back downstairs?” I note that she has her hair up in a cute French twist. I need to ask her why she’s trying out new styles—this is the third new hairdo this week.
Our Director of Religious Education pops up from his desk. “Rachel!” he calls, spreading his arms wide. “What an unexpected pleasure. Let me see, let me see, I need a gift to commemorate this occasion…”
Rachel is laughing by now. Mr. Ed has done this every morning she’s been working here. Only two weeks so far, but he shows no sign of slowing down. He rummages through his desk.
“Aha!” he cries, pulling forth a single paperclip. “A fitting token for me to celebrate the visit of Lady Rachel to our humble workspace.”
He hands her the paperclip with an exaggerated bow, and she takes it with mock solemnity. “I will treasure it always," she says, as she’s said for every ridiculous thing—from wads of tape to an entire box of printer paper—he’s handed her for the past thirteen days. “And now, Sir Edward,” she continues, “is there anything that I can do for my humble subject today?”
“Only give me the opportunity to serve you,” he says.
She shakes her head. “Sit down, Mr. Ed.”
They both start laughing. She’s known him since she was born—her dad and Mr. Ed were roommates out of college. I’m guessing she’s had to deal with stuff like this since before she could walk. Mr. Ed sits back down at his desk, still chuckling.
“Is there anything I can actually do for anyone?” she asks the room at large, grinning.
Theodore, our music director, looks up and smiles. “Nope, I don’t think so, but thank you,” he says, and then returns to muttering something, while making small notes on a sheet of paper. He’s been ensconced doing something or other along those lines since I got here this morning.
Katie, our staff soprano, looks up at her and grins. “Hey Rachel! I need a couple of things printed off, if you don’t mind!” Katie almost always needs a few things printed off in the morning, and I’m guessing it’s her way of letting Rachel spend more time up here, which is sweet. I’m pretty sure the time she gets to spend up here is her favorite part of the day. And who’s to blame her—the receptionist’s office can get a little lonely, when everyone else’s offices are up at least one flight of stairs, and most of us are up two flights.
“Of course,” Rachel replies. “Anybody else?”
I smile at her, as she looks in my direction. “Good morning, Rachel. Could you find me a husband?” I’m joking, but the words also have a certain weight to them as they leave my mouth. I do want God to hurry up and send me one.
This pops Theodore’s head back up, but merely to join in a hearty round of laughter. “Do you really want to delegate that to Rachel?” he asks.
“Hey now,” Rachel says to him, and then turns back to me. “I don’t know if I can get that for you by end of day,” she says, in a mock-serious tone, “but I’ll see what I can do.”
And then she’s gone again. She’ll be back—with Katie’s papers, and a million other things throughout the day, to bring her upstairs to spend time with us.

At the end of the day, as I’m finishing up the last of my work—a poster for a choral Mass; Photoshop is not being cooperative—Rachel pops back in, swinging her car keys around her finger. “Do you want a ride home?”
“Sure!” I can take the bus home, but it’s usually a forty-five-minute commute, if not more, and if she’s willing to take me at the end of the day, I have no reason to say no.
“So,” she says, as we get into her car, a small Subaru that nevertheless has space in the trunk for hive boxes, which was something she made very sure to check before buying the car. “I have a quandary for you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah…” she starts the car and pulls out of the staff lot. “So, you know I’ve talked to you about James?”
“Yes?” I ask, with an edge of anticipation to my voice. James is one of her best friends from college, and she speaks so well of him that I’ve been wondering if something’s going to happen between the two of them. But she has a lot of guy friends from college, all of whom she calls her brothers, and most of whom she speaks very well of, so I’ve never been sure.
“So…we had a conversation a couple of years ago, our sophomore year,” she says, “and we did something kind of stupid.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Is this something I’m going to want to tell your parents?” I ask.
“Mari!” she says, exasperated. “I’m an adult! You’re my friend!”
I laugh and raise my hands in a gesture of powerlessness. “I’m also friends with your parents!”
She shakes her head. “No, no, no. You were my friend first.”
“This is true.” And I’m still better friends with her than her parents. The ‘am I going to want to tell your parents’ thing was more of a bluff. “I would never,” I say.
“I know. Anyway, so we did something kind of stupid.” She pauses, turns on her blinker, and turns onto the freeway on-ramp.
“Which was?”
“We, um, agreed that if neither of us had found someone else to get married to by five years after graduation, we’d get married.”
I sink my face into my hands. “Rachel…”
“Calm down, calm down!” she says, as she cranes her neck to check her blind spot to merge into traffic. “It’s only been a month since graduation.”
“But still!” I protest. “Rachel, that’s not how you discern something!”
“I told you it was stupid,” she says, turning her head for a second to look at me.
“Watch the road,” I say, coming up blank on anything else. This is like something you’d read about, not something that real people do in real life. “I…have you told him that this is clearly ridiculous, and you need to forget about the whole thing?”
“But we pinkie swore,” she says, looking at me so seriously that for a moment I think she’s in earnest. Then her face dissolves into a guilty grin, and I shake my head. “Rachel…”
She laughs. “No,” she says, “the reason this has become a problem—”
“Like it wasn’t a problem in the first place?”
“Okay, the reason this has come up now—” she changes lanes again, back towards the right side of the freeway, to get off “—is that, um, five years is starting to feel like a long time. And…I don’t really feel like sabotaging every long-term relationship he finds himself in between now and then.”
I grin. So that’s the name of the game. I try not to feel a little jealous that my six-years-younger-than-me friend has a romantic prospect and I definitely do not. “You wouldn’t really do that, would you?”
A sigh escapes her lips, as she gets into the exit lane. “No, probably not. That seems kind of stalker-esque. Not to mention being a quick way to lose his friendship.”
“So…” I say, curious where she’s going with this.
“So, I wanted to know what you would do in this sort of situation.”
I laugh. “Believe me, Rachel, I have never found myself in this sort of situation.”
“But surely there’s been a time where you’ve wanted a guy to ask you out!”
“Of course.” Far too many, actually, not all of which were successful. In fact, none of which were successful, if you’re looking at the bottom line, i.e. marriage.
We get off the freeway, and she makes a couple of quick turns, and we’re driving down my street.
“So, what did you do?”
“Hung out with them a lot, and flirted with them a little, and hoped they’d take the hint,” I say. “I’m sure there’s a better way, but that’s all I could come up with.”
She throws a hand up, thankfully leaving the other on the steering wheel. She can be a bit of a loose cannon behind the wheel, but she’s not wantonly reckless. “I do that anyway!” she protests. “Well, not the flirting part, but we hang out all the time!”
“Well, maybe you should get on the flirting part,” I say. “Or drop a few hints. But really, I don’t feel qualified to give advice about this whole…” mess. “Situation,” I finish.
We pull up in front of my house, and I unbuckle. “You need to keep me updated, though!” I admonish, as I open the door, step out, and start to close it.
“Of course,” she says, and the tone of suppressed mischief in her voice makes me pause. “What are you up to now, Rachel?”
“You’re meeting your blind date at Murphy’s Tavern at seven,” she says. “He’ll be waiting out front.”
I gape, as I reflexively shut the door. “My…what?”
“Blind date!” she says, through the window, then throws the car back into gear. “You asked me to find you a husband,” she said. “I don’t know if this is the guy, but you don’t know until you try.”
She pulls away, and the last thing I hear is her calling out the window, “Don’t be late!”
I stand outside my house for a moment, in shock, then slowly start up the walk. My roommates are not going to believe this.

I stop wondering how I’m going to figure out who my blind date is as soon as I get within sight distance of Murphy’s. Crap, crap, crap. How did Rachel know? Did Rachel know, or was it just an honest accident? It occurs to me to wonder how on earth she found me a blind date in the first place. That girl is too smart for her own good. Or maybe she just has a talent for chaos?
I consider for a moment turning back and pretending that I got sick. Maybe I have the Bubonic Plague. But by then, Max has seen me, and I can’t turn around without looking like a coward, and a rude one, at that. I continue forward. Forth, Eorlingas, I suppose.
“Um, hi,” he says, having the grace to look embarrassed.
“Hi,” I say. “Are you…” I trail off. I’m not sure what my question is. Are you in league with my young friend? Are you the victim of her well-meaning machinations just as much as I am?
“Here for a blind date?” he finishes my question. “Yes, and I assume you are…somehow my blind date?”
I squinch my nose. “I think so? Rachel…”
“Oh, so she’s the one who set all of this up?”
I look at him, confused, and cross my arms. “Yes? Was she not the one who set things up with you?”
He runs a hand through his blonde, curly hair. “She is, but I figured there had to be someone else behind her, pulling all the strings. She can’t possibly be devious enough to arrange this.”
“How did she contact you?”
“She called me.”
I nod. “She absolutely can be devious enough to arrange this.” And this was on purpose. No accident.
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe she’s even old enough to pull something like this off.” He’s known Rachel’s family, the Bernards, since he was quite small. Rachel’s parents came into the Church when she was five, and Max’s parents were their sponsors.
Both families seem to be the salt of the earth. It’s a shame, then, that when Max and I dated for a brief period in college, it ended with him accusing me of ‘cheating on him’—whatever that means in a chaste Catholic dating relationship—with one of his friends, which I was assuredly not doing. I had merely gotten coffee with said friend to discuss a ministry that the two of us were working in together.
Well, okay, to be fair, the end was when I broke up with him nearly instantaneously upon said accusation, and never looked back. I couldn’t deal with that kind of drama at the time. My drama threshold has not gotten higher since then.
“She just graduated college,” I remind him.
“I know,” he says. “But I don’t believe it. In my head, she’s still five, and jumping onto my bed to wake me up in the morning, the night they all stayed with us when Vincent was born.”
I laugh, despite myself. “Some days, she still acts five.”
He snorts. “That, I believe.” He looks at me for a moment, then takes a breath. “Shall we? As long as we’ve both come all this way, I might as well buy you dinner.”
I purse my lips, and nod. “We’ll never hear the end of it, if we don’t at least pretend to go along with this blind date thing.”
Rachel, I’m going to kill you.

I manage to hold it together through the workday, although I think everyone in the office notices that I have something going on. It might be the fact that I misdirect two emails and spill the contents of my desk all over the floor at least three times.
Or it might be the fact that Rachel and I barely exchange two words, although I can see the knowing grin on her face all day.
By the time she appears in the doorway, spinning her car keys, after everyone else has headed out for the day, I’m exhausted, embarrassed, and exasperated.
“So?” she asks, drawing the single syllable out to considerable length, and conveying more pent-up curiosity and hidden meaning than I would have thought possible.
I indulge myself in putting my elbows on my desk and sinking my head into them with a tired sigh, as I’ve wanted to do all day. “Rachel,” I complain, trying to put all of my frustration into that single word.
“How did it go?” she asks, bubbly. “Hasn’t he improved quite a bit in eight years?”
And the worst part is, he has. He's improved quite a lot, so as to be nearly unrecognizable as the rather narcissistic, selfish man I knew in college. Although, strictly speaking, the last time I talked to him was six years ago, not eight, because we somehow ended up in the same class, and in a project group together. 
Which was awful.
This was…quite a bit less awful. “Yeah,” I mumble.
“Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, even more softly. I lift my head from my desk. “But dangit, Rachel, you could have at least warned me!”
“Would you have gone, if I had warned you?”
“No, but—”
“And you did have a good time?”
That’s the galling part. “Yes, but—”
“And does he have your phone number?”
Not that he ever got rid of it. “Yes, but—”
“And has he texted you?”
Indeed, a very kind text a couple of hours after the date. “Yes, but—”
“And asked you back out again?”
That was in the text. And I said yes. “Yes—but Rachel!”
She spreads her hands, in a ‘see, it’s all good’ gesture. “There you are,” she says. “One point to Rachel, for successfully going above and beyond the call of duty.”
Turning toward the staircase, she looks back over her shoulder, and winks.

So! Did you like it, did you like it, did you like it? (I always get a bit nervous sharing my stories.) Further thoughts? Who was your favorite character?