Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Third Time
On her first day at her dream job, Ingrid watches Chantal's group stage the same stunt a third time, calls 911, and is told by her own boyfriend, with a marriage certificate, that she is the mistress.
My boyfriend Lane had a childhood friend named Chantal, and her favorite game was catching the mistress.
She had played it on me twice.
The first time, I was three weeks into a job at a packaging firm.
Chantal walked into the lobby with five friends and a phone on a stick.
She cried that I was sleeping with her husband, and I was fired by Friday for disrupting the workplace.
Lane stepped in front of her when I yelled.
"Chantal's young," he said. "She likes to mess around. You're ruining it by taking it so seriously."
The second time, I lasted four months at an ad agency.
The whispers followed me to the coffee machine until I quit.
Lane said I was too sensitive.
"You didn't do anything wrong," he said. "Why do you care what strangers think?"
Then I got the offer from Ahlgren Studio, the design firm I had wanted since I was twenty-two.
Lead designer, one hundred twenty-eight thousand dollars, a window on the lake.
I told Lane first, and he kissed my forehead and said he was proud of me.
I did not tell Chantal.
She found out anyway.
On my first morning I stood in the glass lobby with my new badge, shaking hands with the design team.
At 8:52, the doors opened and Chantal walked in wearing a white dress and a pink sash.
Six friends came in behind her, one filming, two holding a banner.
The banner said CAUGHT HER.
"That's her!" Chantal screamed, and pointed straight at me.
"That's the woman who's been sleeping with my husband!"
My new coworkers turned to look.
I stood frozen, and the whole lobby watched me do it.
I had put up with this twice, and there would not be a third time.
I took out my phone and dialed 911.
"My name is Ingrid Eklund," I told the dispatcher, loud enough for the lobby to hear.
"I'm at my workplace, and a group has come in uninvited to harass me on camera."
Chantal laughed so hard she had to hold a friend's arm.
"Oh my God, she called the cops!"
The officers arrived in six minutes.
Lane arrived in seven.
He came through the doors out of breath, in the gray quarter-zip I had bought him, and I felt something go quiet in me.
He didn't look at me.
He went straight to Chantal and put a hand on her back.
"Officer, I'm sorry about this," he said. "It's a family thing."
"Lane," I said. "Tell them this was a prank."
"It was a joke, Ingrid."
His voice was calm, the way he sounded when he explained why I had misunderstood something.
"Chantal was playing around. Did you really have to turn it into a scene?"
"You're the one who showed up with the police."
"I showed up because you called them on my wife."
For a moment I didn't understand the word.
"And besides," he said, with a small, tired smile, "she isn't wrong. You are the mistress."
The lobby went still.
The coworkers who had been defending me just moments earlier took one step back.
I felt their eyes land on me one by one, and my skin crawled.
"Lane, what are you talking about?"
"I know you're trying to protect Chantal," I said, my voice shaking, "but you don't have to lie about something like this."
He ignored me and took a folded paper from his jacket pocket.
He handed it to the nearest officer.
"This is our marriage certificate. Chantal's and mine."
I looked at the paper, and the officer looked at the paper.
"Sorry about the waste of your time," Lane said. "We'll keep it in the family."
Chantal waved a second copy in front of my face.
"Lane said the game needed a real reason to be any fun," she sang. "So we went and got married first."
She tilted her head.
"So congratulations, Ingrid. Now you get to be the mistress for real."
The officer handed the certificate back and turned to me with a flat look.
"Ma'am, filing a false report is a crime. If this happens again, you'll be the one answering for it."
My throat closed.
I could hear someone behind me whispering the word mistress to someone else.
Somebody's phone was still recording.
I looked at Lane, at the man I had cooked dinner for four hundred times, who had never once met my eyes since he walked in.
Then I did the only thing left that was mine to do.
I took the little gold bird necklace off my neck, the one he gave me on our second anniversary, and put it in his palm.
"Then she's your wife," I said. "Congratulations."
I said it loud enough for the whole lobby.
"I'm not your mistress, and I'm not your girlfriend. Don't call me, don't come to my apartment, and don't touch my things."
Then I turned to the officer.
"I want a report taken. Trespass, harassment, and filming me at my workplace. Her, and every person she brought."
"Ma'am, you'll need to come to the precinct," he said.
"Then I'll come to the precinct."
Chantal's smile faltered for the first time.
The elevator chimed behind me.
A tall man in rolled shirt sleeves stepped out and stood very still, looking at the banner, the sash, and the cameras.
He had gray at his temples and a face that was not amused.
I knew him from the website.
Tobias Ahlgren, the founder.
My new boss.
His eyes moved over the lobby, found me, and stopped.
"Ms. Eklund," he said, in a voice that carried to the glass. "My office. Now."
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