Road-Tripped Read online

  Road-Tripped: A Romantic Comedy

  Ad Agency Series Book 1

  Nicole Archer

  Contents

  Dedication

  Road-Tripped Soundtrack

  Road-Tripped Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Review Me

  Ad Agency Book 2 Coming Soon

  Copyright

  To my beloved son, the muse in my life.

  Road-Tripped Soundtrack

  This book comes with its own soundtrack. If you’re reading on a device with internet access, simply click the link at the beginning of each scene. If you don’t already have a Spotify account, you’ll need to sign up for the free streaming service and download the app.

  If you’re reading a print version or have a device without internet access, you can find the Road-Tripped playlist on the author’s website, or on Spotify under the username: nicolearcherauthor.

  Road-Tripped Map

  Calliope, whose name means fine, strong voice, is the muse of epic poetry. She inspired eloquence and beauty in all forms and is often portrayed holding stringed instruments or tablets. Epic poems tell the story of a heroic journey.

  Chapter One

  Flippin’

  Manhattan, New York

  “I do not like my state of mind. I’m bitter, querulous, unkind. I hate my legs, I hate my hands, I do not yearn for lovelier lands. I dread the dawn’s recurrent light. I hate to go to bed at night.”—Dorothy Parker

  Soundtrack: Heartless Bastards, “Blue Day”

  1. String razor wire across the bottom of the slide. 2. Disguise a bomb detonator in the video game controllers. 3. Mix poisonous ricin in with the pool table hand chalk. 4. Spike the liquor bottles with sleeping pills.

  Rather than laugh like the evil genius she was, Callie Murphy released a far-reaching fuck-my-life sigh. Her list of Murder Methods for Merrymaking Coworkers was the most creative thing she’d written in months—and it wasn’t even billable.

  Across from her desk, more Shimura Ad Agency employees gathered in the break room Skip nicknamed, The Hive. He should have called it The Suck, since it was a total office productivity vacuum. Staff played in there all day. In fact, she had yet to see a single employee work more than four hours.

  It was a mystery how the agency managed stay in business with all those unbillable hours. On second thought, her boss probably kept it afloat with his enormous inheritance.

  Pool balls cracked, video game machine guns rattled, and shrieking laughter erupted. The blender started crunching and whirring. What next? A drum circle? She rewrote the title and added few more methods to her list.

  Just then, the office manager burst from the ceiling, screamed down the slide, and landed at the bottom in a crumpled pile. Ouch! That had to hurt.

  Every day someone got injured on that thing. Skip should have made every last one of his employees sign a waiver not to drink and ride it. He’d installed the bright yellow liability after he took over his father’s business.

  “It boosts office morale,” he’d told her.

  “Know what boosts morale even better?” she’d replied. “Money.”

  But Skip knew dick about workplace morale or legal matters. He was clueless about running a business in general. Not surprising, since up until six months ago, the man had never worked a day in his life.

  Hard to believe Skip “Stoner” Shimura, her childhood surfer friend from California, owned an ad agency in New York. Particularly since his biggest talent in life was throwing killer parties.

  Now he threw killer parties . . . at work.

  Every. Single. Day. He held a booze fest cleverly camouflaged as a mandatory staff-bonding event. Monday was mojito night. Wednesday was Wallbangers. Thursday was Tom Collins night.

  As a form of protest, she boycotted every event. Standing up for herself was part of her new personal brand standards. And no one, not even her fake boss, was ever going to tell her what to do again. By God, if she didn’t want to have fun, then no one was going to force her to.

  She glanced at the clock. Ugh. Twenty more minutes. An eternity.

  Lately, time ticked by at an evolutionary pace. The last six weeks had felt like sixty years. If time were indeed the cure for pain, then at that rate, she’d never stop feeling like shit.

  Speaking of pain, a tap, tap, tapping on the floor grew louder. The sound triggered an almost Pavlovian jaw-clenching response. Sure enough, Account Manager Barbie appeared, wearing blood-red stilettos and painted fingernails to match.

  Her real name was Sabrina Driver, but like the doll, she was blonde, big-boobed, and brainless. As if those traits weren’t enough to cause a TMJ flare-up, Barbie also littered her speech with the word “like.” Even the laws of physics sounded asinine coming from her mouth. “Like, for every action, there’s, like, an equal and opposite reaction, like, you know?”

  Then there was her escort service attire. To put it another way, plunging, revealing, and skin-tight had to be her keyword search phases when she shopped at hookers.com. Of course if anyone else dressed like that at work, they’d be fired. But Big Tits got a pass. Gee, wonder why?

  What bothered Callie the most though was Barbie’s striking resemblance to her friend Hillary. Scratch that. Her nemesis Hillary.

  Barbie clicked straight toward Eli James. “Oh my Gawd,” she cried. “You were so awesome last night.”

  Was she talking about his bedroom skills or his music skills? Hard to tell with her.

  During the day, Eli was a graphic designer at Shimura. At night, he DJed and produced music. Around Manhattan, his popularity was exploding.

  Almost as much as Barbie’s shirt buttons were.

  Eli told Barbie’s tits thank you and asked them if they wanted a drink. They replied, “Like sure, why not?” And he strolled off to get them one.

  Avery, another senior writer there, flew to the restroom with her cheeks puffed out and a hand over her mouth. Uh-oh. Miss Adams must have had a little too much to drink. That or she had the flu.

  Callie made a mental note to stay out of her projectile vomit range and focused on something else nauseating.

  Walker Rhodes.

  Once he stepped inside the room, dumbassaphoria took hold, and every female brain within a six-foot radius shrunk to the size of a Tic-Tac.

  With swept-back coffee-colored hair, a big dimpled grin, and a tall muscular body that rivaled Mr. June in the Olympic Men’s Swim Team calendar—he often had that effect on women. Perfectly demonstrating this, a crowd of drooling, lash-batting, hair-flipping vultures circled him and giggled like idiots.

  From behind a pair of black-framed glasses, he winked a
n electric blue eye at his fan club members. “Look at all the beautiful woman in here. Y’all are the best birthday present ever.”

  Blushes and smiles galore filled their faces. Amazing how they gobbled up his bullshit.

  In essence, Walker was Shimura’s sacred white buffalo—women worshipped him. Oh how the office ladies swooned over his slow syrupy Southern charm. They practically fainted when he held out chairs, opened doors, let them sit first, and stood when they did. That reaction was somewhat understandable. After all, perfect gentlemen were the last of a dying breed. And let’s face it, hot perfect gentleman were damn near extinct.

  Handsome, gentlemanly, smart, and talented. Walker seemed like the perfect catch. Except for one thing.

  He was a colossal manslut.

  That nice-guy act was just part of his get-under-your-panties game. And given all the touching, whispering, flirting, and eventual tears that followed in his wake—he was winning.

  In other words, she was the only woman there he hadn’t tapped.

  And it was going to stay that way.

  To fortify that decree, she’d perfected the art of avoiding him—hiding behind her desk, taking the stairs, coming in and leaving before everyone else. Invisibility was the only way. Otherwise she’d weaken and end up in the Walker cult. Because while logically she abhorred him, her hormones adored him.

  She stayed strong though, because womanizers like him deserved an engraved invitation to Hell. And if need be, she’d learn the ancient art of calligraphy to hand-address the envelope.

  Don Juan lifted a shot glass and toasted to himself. “Here’s to being single, seeing double, sleeping triple, and having a multiple.”

  More giggling ensued. One woman moaned. For crying in the locker room, the guy could talk about bowel movements and turn women on. Cult leader.

  The moaner, Liberty, the social media manager and former mid-western beauty queen, smacked his butt. “Twenty-nine more, birthday boy!”

  “Nun-uh, sugar,” he drawled. “On my birthday, it’s me who does the spanking.” He spun her around, bent her over a knee, and spanked her in front of everyone. She squealed with delight.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Callie muttered. The way women Velcroed themselves to him! And for what? A one-night stand? How desperate could you get?

  “Happy dirty thirty, Walkie,” Barbie said, splaying her hands across his chest. “Sorry about tonight. I’ll make it up to you later. Cross my heart.” She slowly traced an “X” over her knockers and gave him a kiss on the lips.

  From what it looked like, she’d be making it up to him later in bed. If she really wanted to make it up to him, she ought to let Liberty join in.

  There’s an idea. Shimura should add threesomes to the staff social calendar. Talk about bonding with your coworkers.

  Only five minutes had passed since she’d last looked at the clock. Five minutes of torture. Loud music. That’s what she needed. Just when she cranked up the tunes, someone tapped her shoulder.

  She jerked around and found Skip staring down at her with smug superiority—a look he’d perfected by age twelve. He tossed his intentionally shaggy, black mop out of his eyes and moved his mouth.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said, as if it weren’t patently obvious.

  He peeled off her headphones, put them on, and listened for a spell. His upper lip jacked up. “What is this vagina rock you’re listening to?” he shouted. “Is this band called I Hate Men?”

  She stopped the music. “Hey, thanks, Skip.”

  He tossed her headphones on the desk. “For what?”

  “For taking time out of your busy drinking schedule to come over and insult me.”

  “What? You can’t even take a joke anymore?”

  She scratched her temple with a middle finger. “Doesn’t something have to be funny to be considered a joke?”

  He hit her with a down-the-nose stare then shook his head and said, “I ordered the bubbly blonde writer. What happened to her?”

  “You mean the doormat? She died back in Chicago.”

  Was that sympathy on his face? How odd. And mildly unnerving.

  Nah, he was probably stoned.

  “Is that where I return the black-haired bitchsplosion I received by mistake?” he asked.

  “Bitchsplosion, huh? Did you come up with that on your own?”

  “Overheard it at lunch today. Thought it perfectly described how your crappy attitude is destroying agency morale.”

  “Yeah, I can see I’m doing some damage.” She swept a hand toward the burgeoning celebration where everyone was now wearing sombrero hats and drinking the finance guy’s frozen margaritas.

  He leaned against her desk and crossed his ankles. “You know, it looks pretty bad when the friend I hired is the only one who doesn’t attend the bonding events.”

  “I can imagine. It must be horrifying to see one of your employees work for a living.”

  Three, two, one . . .

  “I should fire you for insubordination,” he said.

  Yep, right on cue. Skip threatened to fire her at least forty-seven times a day. The joke had grown so old it had mold on it.

  She shifted her attention back to her computer. “Well, hey, I’m kind of in middle of something, so . . .”

  He glanced over her shoulder and read the screen. “Ways to Whack Your Loud Coworkers?” He read the rest silently with his mouth open. “Dude. You need help.”

  “I keep begging you to move me to a quieter spot . . .”

  “But how would I know when you were about to blast me with poison gas?”

  She sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “What do you want, Shimmy?”

  “Sorry, your mental health issues sidetracked me for a minute. So tonight, I’m taking the whole agency out to the Boom Club for Rhodes’s birthday. And guess what?” A counterfeit smile rolled up his face.

  When Skip smiled, something shitty usually followed. She sank down in her chair. “Oh God.”

  “Strap on your dancing Chucks, Murph” he slapped her back—“We’re going clubbing.”

  “Can’t make it,” she said, shutting down her laptop. “I’m busy.”

  “Ha! Busy. Good one. But I’m afraid your attendance is mandatory.”

  She let loose a lip-flapping laugh. “Which page in the employee handbook states I have get wasted with my boss after hours?”

  His gaze drifted to her chest. “Did you rob a teen-aged boy or something? What are you wearing?”

  “There’s a t-shirt shop in the hotel lobby. Haven’t had time to replace my clothes, yet.” Time wasn’t the problem. It was the desire she lacked. She could barely muster the will to get dressed in the morning, let alone give a flying fuck about what she wore.

  “Don’t you have something a little less potato sack-y you can wear?” He flicked a finger over her. “What size is that anyway?”

  She shrugged. “Medium?”

  “Medium in what? Hippo sizes? You can’t go out in that. Don’t you ever want to get laid again?”

  Actually, just talking about sex made her want to make modern art in the toilet. “Aw, sorry my clothes aren’t slutty enough. Guess I can’t make it tonight.” Adding an extra dash of sarcasm, she pouted and blinked sad puppy dog eyes.

  “Tell you what.” He struggled to dislodge the phone from the back pocket of his skinny jeans. “I’ll call my personal shopper and have her buy you something besides that”—he shuddered—“bed sheet.”

  Of course he had a personal shopper. Only peasants bought clothes for themselves. “Have you been smoking weed in the stairwell again?” She snatched his phone. “You think I feel like trying on cute outfits right now?”

  “Wear that then and get your bag of bloody hearts, Wednesday Addams, we’re going clubbing.” He pumped his fists in the air. “Oonce. Oonce. Oonce.”

  She blasted him a Mach-Ten-Level-Murphy-Death-Glare.™

  He flipped over his palms like the patron saint of innocence. “What? That
’s not the look you were aiming for when you dyed your hair and chopped it all off?”

  “You know what?” She propped her feet on the desk and placed her hands behind her head. “I think someone needs a good Harrasselhoffing.”

  His eyes slid into angry black slits. “You wouldn’t dare . . .”

  “Oh, I think it’s high time your employees knew their boss sat in David Hasselhoff’s lap and got a stiffy.”

  “I was five! And an extra on Baywatch!”

  “You had a tiny boner!”

  “It was the tight suit they made me wear!”

  She discharged a villainous comic-book laugh—one that had yet to be trademarked—and watched him sweat for a painfully long moment.

  He squinted and raised his chin. “You don’t even have that picture anymore, do you?”

  “You really want to chance it?”

  “Meet me up front in five.” He spun on his four hundred dollar sneakers.

  “Yeah, right.” She snorted. “Be right there.”

  He turned. “I’ll move your desk if you go.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Oh, and bonus! Tonight’s on Double Dick’s tab. So drink to your shriveled-up black heart’s content, dude.”

  “Double Dick?”

  “New client. Richard Dickson. Total penis. Times two. Like I said, order as many expensive froufrou designer cocktails as you can, because that guy is my second asshole right now, and he needs to pay for papa’s extra toilet paper.” He sauntered to the front, humming the Addam’s Family theme song.

  Speaking of toilet paper, know what sounded better than celebrating a manwhore? An explosive case of diarrhea on an airplane. Add in a drunken crowd and loud club music, and it’d be a close approximation of what her personal version of Hell looked like.

  “Chop, chop, Murphy.” Skip snapped his fingers. “What’s taking you so long? Baggy-ass shirt weighing you down?”

  “Your mom’s weighing me down.”

  The side of his cheek moved up slightly, intensifying his usual smirk. “Guess you haven’t totally lost your sense of humor.”