Chapter Text
Ah yes, there it is.
The adrenaline rush. The productivity-fuelled dopamine of crossing yet another item off of her to-do list. Nelly thinks she might just cum from the satisfaction. Well, not cum in an earth-shattering, leg-shaking orgasm per se. Truthfully, what she feels is more of a trickle. A slow seep. A stimulative drip through her body as her ballpoint pen scratches across the grey-lined notepaper, the idea she’d jotted down in her earlier meeting now neatly paragraphed into the latest draft for her next article.
Hit save, hit save, hit save.
With a lip bite, she moves her hand to her mouse and clicks on the small floppy disk icon at the top left of her screen. Oh, yeah. Maybe she’ll even indulge herself in the thrill of a cheeky CTRL+S. Just to be safe. Oh God, right there, she thinks as her fingers move expertly over the keys, the little Saved! confirmation popping up along the top ribbon of her document.
“Is it just me or are anyone else’s nipples getting a little hard?”
Nelly’s voice breaks the dense silence. She turns instinctively to her right, where an empty desk with dark monitors sits in quiet defiance of her joke. Chair pushed in, untouched for hours. Looking to her left, she finds another vacant station, equally lifeless. A half-drunk lipstick-stained coffee cup the only sign someone had once occupied it.
Straightening to pop her head over the desk divider, Nelly feels like a mole that’s about to be whacked as she takes in the empty office stretching around her. Rows upon rows of desks, chairs, and monitors standing in silent formation beneath the rude humming of fluorescent lights. They’re motion-detectors, meaning every fifteen minutes or so they’d click off, plunging her into darkness as she kept typing long after her colleagues had left. Illuminated only by the cold blue glow of her screens. Eventually, eyes strained enough to notice the change, she’d swivel in her chair or push herself away from her desk to trigger the sensors and bring the lights flickering back to life.
Leaning back in her chair, swivelling slightly on the ball of one foot, her eyes lift to the floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the far wall. The night sky hangs beyond the glass, heavy and black, a velvet backdrop to the twinkle of the London skyline. She feels small seeing it like this. She always does. The sheer immensity of the sky and the universe beyond it reminding her how little any of this truly matters. In the grand scheme of things, nothing she does, nothing she writes, nothing she contributes actually makes a difference. It’s beautiful, Nelly thinks, in a lonely sort of way.
If she focuses her eyes, further risking a migraine, she can make out figures moving behind the windows of nearby buildings. Pulling on coats and swinging handbags onto shoulders. Maybe they’re heading home to children, to partners, to relatives in need of care. Planning to change into pyjamas before curling up on the sofa to watch the latest episode of their favourite show. Perhaps they’re stuck late in the office because a meeting ran long and now they’re hurrying to meet friends for drinks. Maybe there’s a date waiting for them. Excitement bubbling in their veins with the anticipation. A night of dimly lit flirtation ahead.
Sometimes Nelly imagines herself among them. Slipping into the scenes she creates in her head, as if she has a life to live outside the glass fortress of Greer Publications. In those moments, she reminds herself sharply that as Courting Magazines leading society and cultural commentator, she writes from the window, not the room. Clarity comes easier from the tower than it ever did among the crowd that kept shutting her out. She uses the viewpoint to her advantage, turning her ostracisation into article after article in the most renowned women’s magazines in the world. Scathing think pieces on the latest influencer trends, celebrity take-downs, and culture columns calling out the lack of awareness and sheer hypocrisy of people she can’t believe have the same voting rights as she does. Although her most popular pieces are usually simple ones, such as her ponderments on the nominative determinism of Chris Pratt.
One would think there isn’t much of an audience for Nelly’s work, however, the opposite is true. The narcissism of society means they enjoy the mirror she holds up, at least in cases where they can twist it on its hinges, missing their own reflection in favour of pointing it towards others. The website traffic proves it. Her name and minuscule profile picture regularly appearing top of the engagement graph in the weekly analytics email. Unfortunately, the attention economy doesn’t convert her clicks to actual cash. A staff writer in London salary erring on the side of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” economic theory, meaning once she does get home tonight, she’ll be logging on to her Fiverr account for any freelance copy-editing she can do over the weekend.
That thought is just bleak enough to rid Nelly of the semi-aroused state she’d managed to get herself into while checking items off her to-do list. A shame, she reckons, considering that after the day she’s had, she could do with a good masturbatory release.
Yawning, she glances at the time on her screen, the small digits blinking back at her. 8:54pm. Nelly rationalises as she attempts to rub the tiredness from her eyes, that she has two more points in her notebook for her next article. If she can spit them out onto her draft within the next hour, she might be able to work her way back up to listlessly horny. If she manages to leave the office by at least 11pm, she’ll be able to stop by the late-night Tesco before it closes and pick up a bottle of wine. A glass or two when she’s home, bra removed, she may even be back to viably horny and can treat herself to a proper Wine & Wank session once she gets to ba—
Oh.
It’s a Thursday, she remembers. Meaning the Sauvignon Socialist Substack should have a new article released.
Yes. The plan is starting to come together. That Jo Malone candle and Nelly will be getting lit this evening whilst she reads the latest cultural musings from one of her favourite, if anonymous, writers. But first, she needs some form of caffeination to get her through this final leg of work.
Getting up, Nelly badges her way out of the desk area to head down to The Atrium, the vast glass-roofed expanse stitched between two of the sky-scraping buildings that now serves as the beating social heart of the Greer co-working collective. Feeling the need to stretch her legs and get some blood flowing again, she takes the black-painted steel staircase down through the floors, each dedicated to its own publication under the Greer umbrella. As she passes the other offices, twisting her hair up into a loose bun on the top of her head as she goes, her eyes briefly take in the few other late-night silhouettes of deadline chasers through the windows.
Once she reaches The Atrium, cavernous this late and this empty, with echoing footsteps Nelly makes her way to the large marble-topped counter where coffee machines hum, hitting the Frappuccino option showing on the touchscreen.
She has always liked The Atrium aesthetically, with its tables and seating clusters arranged with purposeful randomness. Plush armchairs pulled close for tête-à-têtes between shelves filled with books and magazines. Communal low-backed tan leather sofas placed specifically to encourage collaboration between writers and editors. Large plants potted around strategically tricking you into thinking you’ve recently left the office to touch grass. A corporate terrarium with nap pods and a yoga studio, perfectly designed for productivity disguised as lifestyle, because why go home when your office has everything you need?
Her favourite design choice is the string lights above her head. Large Edison bulbs arcing gently from one end of the space to the other, casting golden flecks across the tabletops and tiled flooring. Eyes lifting to the glass ceiling that stretches high overhead, Nelly marvels at her new view of that velvet-black sky, the absence of clouds making the string lights look celestial as they hang, reminding her again that her existence is no more meaningful than a breath of air held in vast lungs. Forgotten the moment it’s exhaled.
It’s here in The Atrium where staff from the various publications gather for regular mixers, the occasional themed party. Christmas, Halloween and the likes. She used to enjoy attending them despite the often performatively intellectual atmosphere created by the patchwork of writers who rarely left their own assigned corners unless nudged into debating Oxford Commas. Nelly doesn’t really attend many of them anymore. Not since… Well, not for a while. Those are the days she makes a point of leaving the office early—if you can call 6pm early. She speed-walks to the nearest Tube station without so much as a glance behind her, spending the night curled up with Evening. Eve for short.
She’d never intended to get a dog. Realistically, she couldn’t afford one. Plus not since her dad’s misguided attempt at fatherhood led to her having a small terrier for only weeks as a child before she came home from school to discover he’d “gone to live on a farm” had she wanted one. But despite her childhood cynicism around pets and the lack of disposable income she possesses, Nelly believes that Evening had come into her life for a reason.
She’d been clearing out the narrowboat she’d inherited from aforementioned misguided father. A narrowboat he’d purchased during what could only be described as a poor mans mid-life crisis. She and her sisters armoured with old sweatshirts, leggings, and in Nelly’s case a pair of rubber gloves earned by losing a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The punishment of which was stripping the gaudy, questionably-stained zebra print sheets from the bed. She was mid-hurl, tossing the bin bag stuffed with those sheets onto the growing pile of rubbish bags lining the mooring walkway when she and the skinny dog, nose-deep in the trash, startled each other. Both froze, equally surprised, until Nelly found herself greeting the dog with a low, “Evening.” An odd show of politeness on her part. The dog tilted her head, and for a moment, Nelly was convinced she’d understood her. But then came the sharp voices of her sisters echoing from inside the boat, loudly wondering how their father had ever managed to wedge two Lay-Z-Boy armchairs into such a cramped space, and how the fuck they were supposed to get them back out again. Startled by the commotion, the dog bolted, retreating beneath the bench along the walkway.
Initially, Nelly had planned to sell the 48 foot narrowboat after her fathers early death, but through the probate process, she discovered he had a rare permanent residential mooring on the algae covered Regents Canal. With insurance, maintenance and septic fees, the monthly cost to live abroad The Abandon Ship (a nickname the daughters gave the boat after their parents divorce), was only 653 pounds per month. Half of the price she was paying to share a house with four other people over an hour commute from the office.
The decision was an easy one to make, despite her horrific awareness that her life would resemble a Hollywood caricature of the whimsical poor. The type of bohemian artist written by a privileged Stanford dropout whose father knew someone who knew someone in the film industry who was happy to produce a tax write-off project. The romanticised version of a life lived barely above the poverty line, idealised by a well-connected collective who would never have to experience it, but was all too real for Nelly.
In the weeks after giving her rental notice, she continued clearing out her father’s junk, scrubbing the place until it was liveable by someone other than a middle-aged gambling addict. The interiors were still outdated. Heavy wood kitchen and panelling covering the walls and ceiling. A design style which wouldn’t be out of place in an octogenarians house. Although without all the heavy furniture which had colonised any usable floor space, plus all the light coloured linens and gauzy fabrics Nelly hung over the porthole windows for privacy, the kitchen and living area, despite its measly 6-foot width, now felt open and airy.
The dog was there every step of the way. Glowing amber eyes watching her from under the refuge of the bench. Nelly leaving a small dish of whatever she’d picked up for dinner on the way home from work out on the bow, continuing to greet the dog with a pleasant “Evening” whenever she was brave enough to venture close to Nelly. She was an unbearably skinny little thing. Obviously not getting enough food from scavenging through the surrounding overgrowth. Ribs and hip bones protruding dangerously through her skin. Her patchy black coat doing little to hide her undernourishment.
It was over a year ago now when Nelly was walking home from the last office party she’d attended, the frosty November night contrasting with her hot embarrassed cheeks, she’d spotted the dog asleep under the bench. Breath visible in quick, shallow puffs of crystallised air. The sight of the small creature unconscious and struggling, left out on the cold just like she had been that night, snapped the last thread of strength Nelly had. Ripping off her leather jacket as she ran, she wrapped the poor thing in a swaddle once she reached her. Her body shuck with sobs as she pleaded for the dog to wake up. Repeating “Evening. Wake up, Eve,” through desperate gasps. The dog’s eyes fluttered occasionally, but she gave no other reaction.
The commotion was enough for her elderly neighbour to step out of her boat, investigating, wrapping her cardigan tighter around her body before she turned back inside. Nelly had never spoken with the stern, stand-offish looking woman. Not since her father lived there or since she’d moved in. However, a few minutes later, the woman was crouched down beside her, wrapping a knitted blanket around her shoulders, swaddling her in the same way Nelly was the dog. It was only then she noticed how much she was shaking. Unsure whether from the shock or the cold wind whipping through her dress. Her neighbour’s phone was pressed between her ear and her shoulder as she told whoever was on the other end of the line what the situation was.
“We have to get her inside,” her neighbour coaxed, gently encouraging Nelly to stand once she’d hung up. “Warm her up, but not too quickly.”
Nelly followed blindly as her neighbour guided her onto her boat, Evening wrapped in her arms, tears streaming down her face. She doesn’t know how long she sat on her neighbour’s vintage green sofa, ignoring the cup of tea on the side table next to her, when Doctor Sharma arrived. The young vet prying the dog slowly from Nelly’s arms to examine her. The word “hypothermia” making it through the ringing in her ears. Followed by “ticks”, and “treatment”, and “probably bred for more breeding”, as Doctor Sharma put on surgical gloves and pulled a pair of tweezers out of her bag. An hour later, Evening was clean, still breathing and Nelly was typing the address of a veterinary surgery into her phone with shaking fingers, promising to bring her first thing in the morning for an appointment.
That’s how Nelly came to have a dog she never intended to. A dog which once was too scared and skittish to approach the boat, but who can now be regularly found lying in roach position on her small two-seater tube sofa, tongue lagging out of her mouth in contentment. Side-eyeing any guests who dare enter her domain. Not that that happened very often. Evening is still skinny, but has much more muscle on her small frame after weeks of careful portion monitoring, slowly increasing to allow her stomach to adjust to regular feedings. A year later, she happily munches on her kibble between safe snoozes. During the summer, she’ll sunbathe up on the small deck Nelly’s neighbour helped her to build on the roof of her boat.
Agatha had become a friend of Nelly’s since that cold night. Probably her best friend, if she was being honest with herself. A retired upper echelon English & Literature teacher, which explained her sternness and perpetually arched brow. Doctor Sharma, a former student of hers, had mentioned the woman didn’t even like dogs. “Flea ridden dependants,” she apparently called them. Although Nelly thinks Evening has managed to worm her way into her heart.
The older woman owns not one, but two narrowboats along the canal. One she lives in, the other, a floating library where Nelly and Evening spend the majority of their Saturdays. Nelly manning the desk while she does her freelance work. Agatha sitting in her sunken armchair, reading over Nelly’s printed out drafts with a smirk. Her glasses low on her nose, their beaded chain looped around her neck. Red pen at the ready for corrections. She had truly helped make Nelly a better writer over the past year. No doubt directly contributing to her current profitless success.
The coffee machine finishes its whirring behind her, pulling Nelly from her trance. She pulls her phone out of her skirt pocket, seeing she does in fact have an unread message from Agatha, confirming Evening had been walked and fed and is back on Nelly’s boat. The text included a picture of Evening wrapped up in blankets on her dog bed, pushed under the electric heater Nelly had invested in for the boat. If she ever saved up enough money, she promised herself that she’d use it to strip the interior back to metal and get it properly insulated. Recladding it with a modern Scandinavian and low lighting design, similar to the wealth of narrowboat inspiration pictures she has saved on her phone, using up a majority of her storage space. She’d love to save up enough to take the boat on a canal-trip. Leasing out her mooring for a few weeks so they can slowly motor through Wales, then Birmingham, up to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Maybe even to the Lake District, if she can make it that far. Take some time off from Courting to start writing that book she’d always wanted to write. But to do that, she needs to have money. And to get money, she needs to get back to her desk.
Grabbing her coffee, adding a copious amount of milk, sugar, and as many flavoured syrups she can see on offer along the counter-top, Nelly heads over to the elevators and presses the button. It’s thankfully already on this floor, the doors swooshing open quickly to allow her to step into its wood-panelled and brass embrace. As she waits for the doors to slide shut behind her, she takes in her appearance in the large tinted mirror that expands the width of the elevator. Her dark copper hair is frizzy, sticking out of her rushed bun at odd angles. Blunt fringe across her forehead somehow both flat and kinked. The black hem of her turtle-neck sweater is rubbed with her make-up, meaning she’ll definitely not get another wear out of it and will need to throw it into Agatha’s washing machine over the weekend. Her eyeliner, deep black and usually meticulously sharp enough to cut glass is smudged from tiredly rubbing her sore eyes. Small flecks of mascara that broke away from her lashes sitting high on her cheekbones. It’s when she’s attempting to wipe them away, fingertips nudging under her glasses and noticing how truly exhausted she looks, that the doors begin closing behind her to the panic of someone running quickly through the Atrium.
“Wait— Hold the lift!”
Instinctively, Nelly turns, punching a finger into the metal Open Doors button just as a large hand wraps around one of the doors in an attempt to stop them closing. The incredibly—annoyingly—attractive bespectacled face of Colin Bridgerton appears as they start sliding back. His eyebrows shooting up in surprise at the sight of her.
“Oh. It’s you.”