My Intern Is A Walking HR Violation, And I'm Falling For Her Hard

At nine o’clock, the block of time on Sarah’s schedule designated for the intern’s arrival turned from pale yellow to a slightly anxious orange in her mind. It was a theoretical color change, of course; the schedule printed on her desk was static, the yellow block simply existing. But in Sarah’s internal, more accurate version of the day, time was a fluid thing, and its colors shifted with proximity and perceived threat. The intern was now ten minutes late. The yellow was deepening.

Sarah took a sip of her Earl Grey. The office was quiet, as it should be. The only sounds were the gentle hum of the servers from the IT closet and the rhythmic, reassuring click of Mark from accounting’s ten-key calculator. Everything was in its place. Her pens were aligned in a neat row, her monitor was at the ergonomically correct height, and the quarterly analytics report, printed on expensive, heavy-stock paper, sat pristine at the edge of her desk, ready for the afternoon meeting. It was a good, productive morning. The intern was now fifteen minutes late.

At 9:21, the heavy glass doors to the office swung open with a percussive whoosh that made Mark’s calculator stutter. A figure stood silhouetted against the bright morning light, a riot of color that seemed to suck all the muted grey out of the room. The figure strode forward, and the color resolved itself into a pantsuit. It was a truly astonishing pantsuit, covered in what appeared to be giant, screaming fuchsia peonies and electric-blue palm fronds, all set against a background of violent lime green.

The pantsuit came to a halt directly in front of Sarah’s desk. A young woman with a wide, confident smile and hair pulled into a high, swinging ponytail looked down at her. This had to be Stacy.

“Sarah?” the woman said. Her voice was not merely loud; it was resonant, filling the office’s carefully curated silence.

Sarah managed a small nod, her hand frozen around her teacup.

“I knew it,” Stacy said, beaming. She leaned forward, planting her hands on Sarah’s desk and invading her airspace with a scent of coconut and something vaguely floral, which felt redundant given the suit. “You have this incredible aura of quiet authority. It’s very powerful. I saw it from the door.”

The phrase “aura of quiet authority” was so unexpected, so absurdly intimate, that a jolt went through Sarah’s body. Her hand spasmed. The white ceramic mug tipped, and hot, brown tea flooded across the desk, swamping the quarterly analytics report. The ink began to blur instantly. A dark, ugly stain spread across the projected revenue chart.

Stacy straightened up, her expression unchanged. “Oh,” she said, her voice still booming. “Well. Now it’s an aura of quiet, damp authority.” She looked at the ruined report, then back at Sarah’s stunned face, and gave her a slow, deliberate wink.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of frantic reprinting and damage control. Sarah managed to produce a new, slightly damp copy of the analytics report just minutes before the ten-thirty team meeting. She sat in her usual chair in the conference room, her spine rigid, trying to radiate an aura of anything other than “quiet, damp authority.” The room was a study in beige and muted blue. Mark was there, along with two junior designers, Chloe and Ben, and the senior director, Mr. Henderson, a man whose personality was as grey as his suit. And then there was Stacy, a supernova in a floral pantsuit, sitting directly across from Sarah, looking entirely unbothered.

Mr. Henderson cleared his throat, a sound like gravel being gently stirred. “Alright, let’s get started. Before we dive into the quarterly numbers, I’d like to welcome our new summer intern.” He gestured with an open palm toward Stacy. “This is Stacy. Stacy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you hope to get out of your time with us?”

Sarah braced herself. She expected a few sentences about being a marketing major, maybe a mention of her university.

Stacy did not say a few sentences. She stood up. No one ever stood up for introductions. She placed her hands on the back of her chair as if it were a lectern and took a deep, theatrical breath.

“Thank you, Mr. Henderson,” she began, her voice projecting to the back wall. “Some people see marketing as just… data. As clicks and conversions, as demographic targeting and ROI. And that’s the skeleton, I agree. It’s the bones.” She paused, letting the anatomical metaphor hang in the air. Sarah felt a muscle in her jaw begin to twitch.

“But what,” Stacy continued, her eyes sweeping the room, “is a skeleton without a soul? What is a brand without a story, a beating heart, a narrative that connects with people on a primal, human level?” She took a step away from her chair, beginning a slow pace along her side of the table. “I am not here merely to collate spreadsheets or fetch coffee—though I do make a phenomenal oat milk latte. I am here on a quest. A quest to find the soul of modern marketing. To peel back the layers of consumer apathy and find the raw, emotional truth that makes a person not just buy a product, but believe in it.”

The monologue went on. She used the phrases “paradigm of connection,” “symphony of synergy,” and “the authentic self of the corporate identity.” Sarah watched, horrified, as Chloe’s pen stopped moving and Ben’s mouth fell slightly open. She could feel the heat rising in her own face, a furious, helpless blush. She wanted to slide under the table and cease to exist.

Finally, after what felt like an hour but was probably only three minutes, Stacy arrived at her conclusion. She stopped pacing and spread her arms wide, the floral sleeves creating a great, garish wingspan. “And that is why I’m here. To help you—to help us—find that soul.”

She dropped her arms, brought her heels together with a soft click, and executed a small, sharp bow. Then, as she straightened up, her eyes found Sarah’s. She held her gaze for a single, excruciating second and gave her another one of those slow, deliberate winks.

A profound silence descended upon the room. Sarah stared at the grain of the conference table, praying for a sudden, localized earthquake. Then, from the head of the table, a low sound rumbled. It was a chuckle. Sarah looked up. Mr. Henderson was smiling, a genuine, crinkle-eyed smile.

“Well,” he said, still chuckling. “A little weird, but sharp. I like it. Sarah, looks like you’ve got your hands full.”

The afternoon crawled by under the weight of Sarah’s residual mortification. Every time she looked up from her screen, she saw a flash of fuchsia and lime green moving somewhere in her periphery. Stacy was given a stack of market research reports to read, a task Sarah had assumed would keep her quiet for at least a few hours. Instead, Stacy read them with audible reactions. A thoughtful “hmm,” a sharp intake of breath followed by a muttered “fascinating,” and, at one point, a quiet but distinct gasp. Each sound was a small, sharp poke to Sarah’s already frayed composure.

By five o’clock, Sarah felt hollowed out. She waited until Stacy had packed her bag, said a cheerful “See you tomorrow!” to the office at large, and disappeared through the glass doors before she allowed the tension in her shoulders to release. The office emptied out quickly after that. Mark powered down his calculator, Chloe and Ben left together, laughing about something. Finally, only Sarah remained, the quiet hum of the servers returning to its rightful place as the dominant sound.

She stood and stretched, her back aching. All she wanted was to go home, pour a glass of wine, and arrange her spice rack, an activity she found deeply soothing. She gathered her own things, sliding her laptop into its grey felt sleeve. When she turned back to her desk to grab her keys, she saw it.

Lying diagonally across her keyboard was a single, long-stemmed red rose.

Sarah stopped. She stared at the flower. It was absurdly perfect, the kind of rose you saw in cheap romance movies, with a deep red head and a stem stripped of all but a few artfully placed leaves. Tucked under its head was a small, folded piece of paper. Her first instinct was to look around the empty office, as if someone might be watching her, a witness to this new violation of professional conduct. The space was empty, cast in the long, soft shadows of the evening.

With a sense of deep reluctance, she picked up the note. It was written on paper torn from a notepad, but the ink was a thick, shimmering purple gel. The handwriting was a series of large, loopy curls.

For a successful first day, it read. I think we made a real connection. I felt it, anyway.

–S.

Sarah read the words twice. I felt it, anyway. The addendum was somehow both arrogant and insecure. It was pure Stacy. She thought of the spilled tea, the grand monologue, the winks. This was the punctuation mark on a day of utter chaos. She should have been furious. She should have marched to the nearest bin and thrown the rose away, note and all. It was inappropriate, presumptuous, and utterly ridiculous.

She looked from the glittery note to the rose in her other hand. She thought of Mr. Henderson chuckling. A little weird, but sharp. She thought of the absolute, unshakeable confidence with which Stacy had declared she was on a quest to find the soul of marketing.

Her cheeks were hot. She could feel the blush creeping up her neck, the same helpless heat she’d felt in the conference room. She opened her top desk drawer—the one filled with spare staples, paper clips, and dried-out highlighters—and placed the rose inside, laying it carefully on top of a jumble of old USB drives. She folded the note and tucked it in beside the flower’s stem. As she slid the drawer shut, a strange flutter started in her chest. It was an unfamiliar sensation, a bubble of pressure building behind her ribs. It took her a moment to identify it. It was a laugh. It was a laugh, and she was trying very hard to swallow it.

The rose remained in Sarah’s desk drawer, a secret splash of color in a world of grey metal and plastic. For two days, an uneasy truce held. Stacy arrived on time, her outfits were merely bright rather than structurally unsound, and her contributions in meetings were limited to concise, alarmingly insightful comments. Sarah found herself in a state of constant, low-grade suspense, like a person living on a geological fault line. The quiet was more unsettling than the chaos. She’d catch herself watching Stacy file documents with an intense focus, her brow furrowed, and feel a strange pang of something like disappointment.

On Wednesday morning, Stacy stood in the middle of the main office floor, her hands on her hips. She was wearing a cobalt blue jumpsuit that made her look like a chic mechanic. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes narrowed.

“I’ve diagnosed the problem,” she announced to the room at large. Mark looked up from his calculator. Chloe and Ben paused their conversation over the partition.

Sarah, who was attempting to reconcile a budget discrepancy, did not look up. She hoped that by not making eye contact, she could remain outside the radius of whatever was about to happen.

“It’s the color palette,” Stacy continued, her voice filled with the gravity of a doctor delivering a grim prognosis. “It’s fifty shades of corporate sadness in here. This unrelenting grey… it’s detrimental to creative synergy. It’s emotionally beige.”

Ben snorted a laugh, then tried to disguise it as a cough.

“Therefore,” Stacy said, clapping her hands together with a sharp crack, “I am appointing myself the unofficial Chief Morale Officer. Operation Morale begins now. Our creative souls depend on it.”

Sarah finally looked up. Stacy’s eyes met hers across the sea of cubicles. Stacy gave her a small, conspiratorial smile, as if they were partners in this newly declared war on muted tones. Sarah felt her stomach tighten. She immediately looked back down at her spreadsheet, the numbers blurring into a meaningless swarm of black pixels. She would not engage. She would be an island of quiet, productive authority.

The first salvo of Operation Morale was fired an hour later. Sarah was on the phone with Mr. Davies from Sterling Corp, a client whose voice always sounded like he was perpetually on the verge of a nap. He was droning on about Q3 deliverables when he asked for a specific figure from last year’s campaign.

“Of course, Mr. Davies,” Sarah said, her voice a smooth, professional balm. “Just give me one moment to pull that up for you.”

She clicked the ‘Hold’ button on her desk phone. The small red light blinked. She opened the file on her computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard. And then she heard it.

It wasn’t the usual series of gentle, synthesized chimes that the firm had used for a decade. It was a faint, tinny sound bleeding through her receiver. A thumping bassline. A familiar, impossibly high-pitched male voice.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

Sarah froze. Her hand hovered over the mouse. It couldn’t be. She lifted the receiver to her ear, pressing it hard against her skull. The sound was undeniable. The Bee Gees. The hold music was the Bee Gees. Someone had replaced the firm’s generic, inoffensive hold music with the theme from Saturday Night Fever.

A hot wave of panic washed over her. She imagined Mr. Davies, a man who probably considered beige an exciting color, being subjected to disco. She glanced frantically out of her office. Stacy was at her designated intern desk, meticulously applying different colored sticky tabs to a thick binder. She looked up, caught Sarah’s eye, and gave a slow, infinitesimal nod, her expression one of profound satisfaction. She knew. Of course, she knew.

Sarah took a breath, stabbed the ‘Hold’ button again, and brought the receiver back to her mouth.

“Mr. Davies?” she said, amazed at how calm she sounded.

“Yes,” he replied. His voice sounded exactly the same. Not a hint of disco-induced trauma. “Got that figure?”

“I do,” Sarah said, reading the number off the screen. “It’s right here.”

The rest of the day was a study in controlled tension. Sarah managed to avoid using the hold button again, opting instead to tell clients she would call them back, a small but significant disruption to her workflow. Every time her phone rang, her heart gave a small, disco-adjacent jump.

By late afternoon, a headache was blooming behind her right eye. She was hunched over a particularly dense spreadsheet, trying to track a rounding error that had thrown an entire quarter’s projections off by seventeen cents. Her neck ached, her shoulders were drawn up to her ears, and the fluorescent lights seemed to be drilling directly into her brain. She was so focused on the tiny, defiant number on her screen that she didn't notice Stacy approaching until a shadow fell over her desk.

"Your posture is a crime against occupational health," a voice said.

Sarah flinched, her head snapping up. Stacy stood there, holding a clear plastic protractor she must have liberated from the supply closet. She held it up to her eye like a monocle, squinting at Sarah.

"I'm fine," Sarah said automatically. "Just finishing something."

"No, no. This won't do." Stacy circled the desk, her expression one of deep professional concern. "As Chief Morale Officer, I am mandated to conduct an immediate ergonomic assessment. It's for your own good. The spine is the highway of the nervous system. Yours currently has a ten-car pile-up."

Before Sarah could formulate a protest that was both firm and polite, Stacy was behind her chair. "Do not move. We need to get a baseline reading." She leaned in close. Sarah could smell her perfume, something citrusy and green, layered over the faint, clean scent of office paper. Stacy held the protractor near Sarah’s neck. Sarah froze, every muscle in her body going rigid.

"Hmm, yes. A twenty-degree slouch. Sub-optimal," Stacy murmured, making a note on a neon-pink sticky pad. "This is contributing to spreadsheet-induced agony. We need to adjust the machinery."

Stacy’s hands went to the levers on Sarah’s chair. One hand brushed against Sarah’s hip as she reached for the height adjustment. A jolt, sharp and specific, went through Sarah. The chair hissed and dropped an inch.

"Better," Stacy said. She then used the protractor to measure the angle of Sarah's elbows relative to the desk. "Ninety-one degrees. Acceptable, but not aspirational."

Sarah just sat there, a mannequin in a business-casual prison of her own making. She stared at the spreadsheet, but the numbers had become hieroglyphs. All she could feel was the warmth of Stacy’s body so close behind her, the way the air shifted with her movements.

"And now," Stacy announced, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "for the manual realignment."

Her hands settled on Sarah's shoulders.

The contact was electric. Stacy’s palms were warm and dry, and her grip was surprisingly strong. Sarah’s entire body tensed, a reflexive, full-body cringe.

"Relax," Stacy said, her voice a low hum near Sarah's ear. "You're wound up like a grandfather clock. Just breathe."

Stacy's thumbs found the tight knots of muscle on either side of Sarah's spine, just below her neck. She pressed down, hard. A pained sound escaped Sarah's lips.

"See? Ten-car pile-up," Stacy said, not unkindly. She began to work her thumbs into the muscle, moving in slow, deliberate circles. The pain was sharp, but it was followed by a slow, spreading heat. Sarah kept her eyes fixed on her monitor, her hands resting on her keyboard as if she might be called upon to type at any moment.

Then Stacy started to hum. It was a low, rhythmic tune. It took Sarah a moment to place it. It sounded like something sailors would sing. A sea shanty. Stacy was giving her a shoulder massage while humming a sea shanty in the middle of the office. The absurdity of it was overwhelming.

Her fingers moved from the base of Sarah's neck out along the tops of her shoulders, kneading the tense muscle there. Sarah’s jacket was a thin barrier, but she could feel the distinct pressure of each of Stacy's fingers, the slide of her palms. She felt the tension in her jaw, the ache behind her eyes. She felt the way her own body was resisting, fighting the release Stacy was pressing into her. She closed her eyes for a single second. The spreadsheet swam in the darkness behind her lids.

After what felt like both an eternity and no time at all, the pressure lifted. Stacy’s hands were gone. The air behind Sarah felt suddenly cool and empty.

"There," Stacy said, her voice back to its normal, cheerful volume. "Preventative maintenance complete. You should be good for at least another ten thousand cells."

Sarah could not speak. She could not turn her head. She sat perfectly still, her shoulders tingling, the ghost of Stacy’s touch radiating down her back. She heard the soft rustle of Stacy's jumpsuit as she walked away. Sarah opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She just stared at the seventeen-cent error, her mind a complete and utter blank.

The blankness held for a full minute after Stacy had gone. Sarah’s brain felt like a computer that had been improperly shut down. She blinked, and the numbers on her screen slowly swam back into focus. Seventeen cents. It seemed cosmically unimportant. Her shoulders still felt warm. She could trace the path Stacy’s thumbs had made beside her spine. She took a breath, held it, and let it out slowly. She saved the spreadsheet, closed it, and decided the seventeen cents could remain a mystery for now.

Just before noon, Stacy reappeared at her office door, this time holding Sarah’s coat and handbag. She held them out like an offering.

“It’s time,” Stacy announced.

Sarah looked from her bag to Stacy’s face. “Time for what?”

“Lunch. I’m kidnapping you.”

“I was just going to run down to The Quiet Bite,” Sarah said. It was her routine. A half-turkey on rye, a bottle of water. Back at her desk in twenty-two minutes. “I have a lot to get through.”

“Negative. The Quiet Bite is a culinary void,” Stacy said, shaking her head. “And eating at your desk is a violation of the Geneva Convention of workplace wellness. We are embarking on a strategic culinary expedition. Field research. It’s vital.” She jiggled Sarah’s handbag. “Come on. Your chariot awaits. By which I mean my 2008 Honda Civic with a mysterious rattling sound.”

Arguing felt futile, like trying to argue with a weather event. Ten minutes later, Sarah was buckled into the passenger seat of the rattling Honda. The interior smelled faintly of synthetic pine and something fried. Stacy drove with a focused, cheerful aggression that Sarah found both terrifying and impressive. They didn’t go toward the quiet, tree-lined street where Sarah’s cafe was. They went toward the industrial park by the river, a part of town Sarah actively avoided.

The “expedition” turned out to be a food truck rally. A dozen brightly painted vans were parked in a gravel lot, surrounded by a chaotic swarm of people. Music blared from a portable speaker, a jarring mix of hip-hop and Latin pop. The air was thick with a hundred competing smells: grilled meat, frying onions, sugar, spice. It was Sarah’s personal version of hell.

“Isn’t it glorious?” Stacy shouted over the music, her eyes bright. She grabbed Sarah’s arm, her touch casual but firm, and steered her through the crowd. “The synergistic potential here is off the charts.”

Before Sarah could respond, Stacy was already at the window of a truck painted with cartoon flames, ordering in rapid, confident Spanish. She returned a few minutes later with two paper plates. On each was a taco, overloaded with meat, salsa, and a sprinkle of cilantro.

“Diablo’s Kiss,” Stacy said, handing a plate to Sarah. “Local legend.”

Sarah stared at the taco. It looked menacing. A dark red sauce oozed from one side. “It looks…spicy.”

“Live a little, boss,” Stacy said, taking a huge bite of her own. She chewed, a blissful look on her face. “The flavor is worth the potential pain.”

Hesitantly, Sarah lifted the taco. She took a small, cautious bite. At first, there was just the taste of seasoned pork and corn tortilla. Then the heat arrived. It wasn't a gradual warming, but a sudden, violent flash fire on her tongue. It consumed everything. Her eyes instantly flooded with tears, blurring the chaotic scene into a watercolor wash of color and motion. A choked gasp escaped her.

“Oh, okay, maybe a little more than potential,” Stacy said. Her voice was different. The boisterous edge was gone.

Through the watery film, Sarah saw Stacy put her own plate down on a nearby ledge. She took a napkin from the dispenser. Sarah expected a joke, a loud proclamation about her inability to handle the heat. Instead, Stacy leaned in close. The noise of the crowd, the blaring music, it all seemed to recede into a dull, distant roar.

Stacy’s other hand came up, her fingers gently cupping Sarah’s jaw. Her thumb rested just below Sarah’s ear. With the napkin, she carefully, softly, dabbed at the corner of Sarah’s mouth, then at a single tear that had escaped and tracked down her cheek. The paper was rough, but Stacy’s touch was impossibly gentle. Her face was only inches away, her expression serious, focused entirely on the small task. The world went silent. There was only the feeling of Stacy’s thumb against her skin and the surprising lack of heat in her dark, steady eyes.