Kristina Forest knows how to grab us by the heartstrings. Her incredible romance books not only bring the love and the HEAs, but they are undeniably swoon-y to the max. And now she’s back with another tale, this time a magical workplace romance that will no doubt have us wondering all about this mysterious workplace and the two coworkers turned to possibly more who view love differently.
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive first look at Kristina Forest’s The Unrequited Love Department, which is set to be released on January 5, 2027. The novel follows Joy and Charles, two people who couldn’t be more opposite when it comes to love. Of course, when you work at The Unrequited Love Department, you see it all and it’s not always perfect. But when they are forced to work together to get leaked unrequited love letters back, they learn a thing or two about love and each other on their journey. Will they still believe in it after everything? Here’s some more info from our friends at Atria Books:
From USA TODAY bestselling author Kristina Forest, a whimsical workplace romance with a light speculative twist, about a hopeful romantic in the Unrequited Love Department of Cupid & Associates who’s forced to team up with a cynical coworker after she releases secret love letters into the world.
Joy works in the Unrequited Love Department of Cupid & Associates, where she catalogs secret longings and unanswered letters from people around the world. She believes in love—despite the fact that it has never chosen her back. When a moment of heartbreak leads her to make a catastrophic mistake and leak confidential unrequited love letters, Joy risks exposing the most private feelings of strangers everywhere—and losing the job she loves.
Cynical, guarded, and entirely unimpressed by Joy’s optimism, Charles from the Solutions Department has spent years fixing other people’s romantic messes while refusing to believe in love himself. Assigned to help Joy recover the leaked letters, the two are forced into close quarters—and an unexpected partnership—on a road trip to intercept secrets before they land in the wrong hands.
Along the way, as they witness love in all its messy, hopeful forms, Joy and Charles find themselves drawn to each other. But with their outlooks on love so at odds, their journey puts their fragile connection to the test.
Tender, funny, and full of heart, The Unrequited Love Department is a magical workplace romance about taking risks, letting go of the past, and believing that love—when it finally arrives—might just be worth everything.
And you can officially get your first look at Joy and Charles thanks to the stunning cover. With cover design by Min Choi and cover illustration by Kelsee Thomas, not only do we get to see Joy and Charles getting a little close to one another, but you can also see the missing letters they’re looking for in the fun designed sprayed edges! Check it out below:
While our first day in the office isn’t until January 5, 2027, you can get another special sneak peek with an excerpt below! Just make sure to preorder The Unrequited Love Department to see what happens next as soon as it drops!
Prologue
In a handful of cities throughout the United States, a particular kind of mail collection box can be found. White, nondescript, and unobtrusive, these collection boxes aren’t used by those who mail letters or invitations to long-distance relatives and friends, or by those who fill out physical subscriptions for magazines, or who still pay bills by mail.
These collection boxes serve a unique purpose. They exist solely for receiving love letters. A decades-old rumor states that if you deposit into a mail collection box a love letter addressed to the person you love, eventually, the person who is the object of your affection will come to love you in return. Letter writers can find collection boxes in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco, but the most popular collection box—and rumored to be the most effective—can be found in New York City on the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. On Valentine’s Day, the line to deposit a letter stretches down Seventh Avenue toward the entrance to Central Park.
Most people see letter writing as a fun, cultural activity, like attaching a padlock to the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris or tossing coins into the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Many skeptics assume that the letters are routinely dumped and recycled at the end of each day. However, some people remain true believers. These people claim to speak from experience. They say that after depositing their letter, the person who they loved confessed that they loved them back. There is no way to prove that the collection boxes have anything to do with these unions, of course. It could be the result of some sort of magic or it could be pure coincidence. For this reason, the white, nondescript, and unobtrusive mail collection boxes exist between states of mysticism and amusing tradition.
But here is a little-known truth: A team of people read through every single letter dropped inside the collection boxes. They are employed by Cupid & Associates Inc. in New York City.
They work in the Unrequited Love Department.
Chapter One
Joy Hart was daydreaming about pancakes.
Fluffy buttermilk pancakes drizzled in strawberry syrup and topped with homemade whipped cream. She imagined cutting the pancakes into little triangles and enjoying them with a steaming mug of coffee. A perfect breakfast after a particularly grueling week. But she was startled from her daydream when her coworker Shawn leaned over and said, “Joy, we need to talk.”
Joy blinked and glanced at Shawn. They were standing in the cafeteria line of the corporate building that their employer, Cupid & Associates Inc., shared with a dozen other businesses. Each weekday, a different restaurant organized a pop-up in the cafeteria. Friday mornings belonged to Chef Paul from Paul’s Boucherie, who served heart-shaped pancakes with strawberry syrup. The pancakes were a highlight of Joy’s week. She intentionally caught an earlier train to the office so that she could beat the line that sometimes stretched to the elevator bank.
Her stomach grumbled again as she thought of the pancakes, but Shawn wanted to talk and he was staring at Joy intently, like he needed to tell her something important. Over the course of the last month, she and Shawn had gone on four dates. After their fourth date last week—spent strolling through MoMA, followed by a special screening of Mississippi Masala—Shawn had kissed Joy gently before walking her to the C train. Joy had held her fingertips to her lips during the subway ride back to Brooklyn, anticipating a spark or butterflies. Any sign that might point toward Shawn becoming a Possible Boyfriend. She was hoping to feel an emotional connection with him, something that went beyond their initial physical attraction to each other. Maybe it was because she’d let Shawn do most of the talking on their dates so far and she needed to share more about herself moving forward. Shawn was a decent guy, and with time, Joy felt confident that a special spark could materialize. Maybe the fifth date would be the charm.
“Sure, what do you want to talk about?” she asked as the pancake line shuffled forward.
Shawn stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I don’t think this is going to work out. You and me.”
Joy froze. A loud ringing sounded in her ears as she let Shawn’s words sink in. But around them, the world continued to spin. Chef Paul asked the next person to step forward. Behind Joy in line, two Cupid & Associates colleagues, Javier and Eddy from Proposals, were discussing the benefits of buying a lab-grown diamond or a moissanite engagement ring. All the while, Shawn watched Joy expectantly, waiting for her response.
“But on our date last weekend, you said that you had a good time,” Joy whispered, finally finding her voice. “You said that you wanted to go out again soon.”
“It was a good time.” Shawn bit his lip. “You’re a fun girl, Joy. It’s what I like about you. But I’m not looking for anything serious, and I think that you are.”
“Yes . . .” she agreed slowly. The line inched forward. Javier and Eddy from Proposals fell quiet. Joy had the eerie suspicion that they were now eavesdropping on her conversation. Cupid & Associates was a small consulting firm comprised of roughly forty employees, and office gossip often spread like wildfire. Joy didn’t want to become a headline among her colleagues. “That’s what I told you when you first asked me out. I said that I was looking for a relationship and not a hookup.”
Shawn lowered his head and nodded. “You’re right. You were very clear from the start.”
Joy stared at his downbent head and sighed.
Shawn was handsome in a way that made people turn their heads. He was tall with rich brown skin. His teeth were straight and pearly white. He wore suits to work every day, without fail, and Joy had admired him from afar for years. She’d accepted that he’d never acknowledge her existence because she worked in the Unrequited Love Department, and most people forgot about her and her team. But last month, Carla from HR had thrown a birthday party at the karaoke bar up the street and she’d invited everyone from C & A. While several of Joy’s colleagues had gathered around the karaoke binders to choose songs, Joy had walked to the bar to order a drink, and she’d slipped on some spilled beer. She’d had a split second to think, Oh no, I’m falling, before two strong arms hooked around her torso and broke her fall. She turned her head, and Shawn was smiling down at her, like the dashing knight of her dreams.
“Whoa there,” he said. His dazzling smile had almost made her heart stop. “That would have been a nasty fall.”
They’d talked the entire night, mostly about Shawn and his hobbies and his favorite TV shows and movies, but Joy was a good listener, so she hadn’t minded. The next day, Shawn had ventured down to Unrequited Love to ask her out. His intention impressed her because her department was located in the building’s basement, while the rest of C & A was located on the tenth floor. No one bothered to come to Unrequited Love unless absolutely necessary. She’d been heartened by Shawn’s effort. For so long, she’d been holding space in her imagination for her future partner. A man who’d spend holidays and vacations with her. Someone she could introduce to her aunt and uncle and siblings. She imagined what it might feel like to know that someone else out there in the world was thinking about her.
Given the way that Shawn was currently breaking things off with her in public, it was clear that he was not going to be that future partner.
The line continued to shuffle forward, and the sweet smell of pancakes wafted across Joy’s nose. It was awkward to have this conversation with Shawn in any situation, but it was especially mortifying to be broken up with at work while in earshot of two of their colleagues. She could already imagine how this story would become the main topic of discussion across the company by lunchtime.
“Is this something we can talk about later?” she asked quietly.
Shawn shook his head. “I’ve got a first-class flight to Lake Como tonight with a Nuptials client. They’ve planned a two-hundred-guest wedding, and they need all hands on deck. You know how it is.”
“Right,” Joy mumbled.
Nuptials was the star department at Cupid & Associates. The top wedding planners in the country hired Nuptials consultants for their expertise. Shawn and his team were obviously Cupid’s favorite department. It was why Shawn could travel first class to a Lake Como wedding in the middle of March on C & A’s dime. Meanwhile in Unrequited Love, Joy had been begging for approval on a new coffee machine for at least three months to no avail.
“Are you mad at me?” Shawn asked. Somewhere during the last minute or two, he’d decided that looking at Joy with puppy dog eyes was his best course of action.
“Um,” Joy mumbled, unsure of how to answer his question. She couldn’t be mad at him for being honest about his feelings, but she didn’t love his timing or his delivery.
“I . . . I think I’m just a little shocked that you’re doing this right now,” she said.
They moved up in line. Shawn was next to order. Joy watched as Chef Paul expertly poured batter onto the steaming skillet in the shape of a heart.
“No time like the present, right?” Shawn said, shrugging. “You never know. I might meet someone new while working the wedding this weekend. I don’t want to miss my chance.”
Joy’s jaw dropped. Shawn actually had the nerve to smile. She sucked in a harsh, furious breath and fumbled for what she could possibly say in response to that.
“What’ll it be?” Chef Paul asked Shawn.
Shawn shook his head and stepped aside. “Nothing for me. She’s next.”
Joy glanced at him sharply. He didn’t even want pancakes? He literally only came to the cafeteria to publicly dump her and ruin the one thing that she most looked forward to every week? His actions suddenly felt so impersonal and dismissive, like she was an item on his to-do list that he had to check off before his work trip. 8:50 a.m.—Break up with Joy. Why did she ever think that it was a good idea to wait around to feel an emotional connection with him?
“Miss?” Chef Paul said, looking at Joy, brows pinched in impatience. “How many pancakes?”
Joy’s stomach roiled as she glanced at the bowl of batter. Just like that, she’d lost her appetite.
“Um, actually, I’m not hungry,” she said, stepping out of line.
She spared a quick glance at Javier and Eddy. From the way that they were staring at her, sporting expressions of pity, it was obvious that they’d overheard everything. Wonderful.
Joy needed her desk and the solace of her neglected floor, stat. She took off toward the cafeteria exit.
“Wait, Joy,” Shawn said, frowning as he speed walked beside her. “We’re good, right?”
“Of course!” Her voice came out like a high-pitched, deranged squeak. Shawn startled a little at the sound. “For real, it’s fine. We want different things. It was nice hanging out with you. Good luck with the big wedding.”
They reached the crowded elevator bank. Joy pressed the down arrow for the basement.
“You’re sure?” Shawn asked. He lowered his voice somewhat. “I know how people talk around C & A, and . . . well, you’re not gonna bad-mouth me to anyone, right? I don’t want people thinking that I treated you poorly or anything.”
Now he cared about what people thought? After breaking up with her in the middle of the cafeteria? She almost laughed right in his face, but she mentally grasped onto her last shred of self-preservation and stared straight ahead at the elevator doors.
“We’re absolutely fine,” she said, moving over to make room as more people crowded into the tight space.
Why was the elevator taking so long? She glanced at Shawn, who was smiling at her regretfully, like he’d taken the final slice of pizza and felt bad about it, but he still wasn’t willing to share. The last thing that Joy wanted or needed was his pity.
Screw it. She’d take the stairs.
She squeezed past Shawn. “I have a meeting to get to, actually, so I’ve gotta run. See you around!”
She hurried to the staircase and jogged down the steps like her life depended on it, fleeing the scene. She hadn’t been lying, though. She did have a meeting. The Solutions Department was finally sending a representative to meet with her about her team’s increasingly unmanageable workload. Joy had been promoted to manager a few months ago after her old boss, Patty, had retired, and she was trying her best to do what she could for her very small, overworked team.
Once she stepped onto the basement floor, it was like she’d walked directly into the tundra. She pulled her coat tighter around herself. It was always freezing in the basement during winter, and swelteringly hot during summer. The hallway was poorly lit, and the bulbs needed replacing. Up on the tenth floor, there were functioning lights, and the walls were painted various shades of pink, maroon, and red. It was a fun and cheerful environment. But it didn’t look like that down here. Unrequited Love was located in the basement because Joy and her team needed easy access to the storage room, which housed all the unrequited love letters retrieved daily from the collection box in front of the building as well as the collection boxes in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco. Down here in the basement, Joy and her coworkers were often forgotten.
From the outside looking in, Cupid & Associates Inc. was a consulting firm that had earned a reputation for being the go-to experts on all things romance by providing skilled advice, strategic planning, and operational support to various companies. The Nuptials team consulted with wedding planners, and the Proposals team worked with jewelers. There was the Literature team, as well as Film & Television, who consulted with book publishers and movie studios, respectively, about their romance acquisitions. There was also a team that consulted with dating app companies and matchmaking services, aptly named Modern Love. C & A profited off love every day. The more love and happy couples that existed in the world, the more money C & A made.
Only those employed by C & A and who’d signed an ironclad NDA that was laced with magic and kept them from speaking about the company’s secrets knew the truth. The firm was founded sixty years ago by the Quinn family, led by Cupid’s great-grandmother. Cupid was the company’s current CEO, but Cupid wasn’t his real name. Cupid’s actual name was Reginald Quinn III. His family passed down the nickname as it fit the family’s gift. The Quinn family was endowed with long life and magical abilities. Their specialty, however, was their ability to make people fall in love.
The Quinns were tight-lipped on the specifics of their magic. As a C & A employee, you only knew as much as you needed to know in order to do your job. Joy was unsure how the Quinns had received their gift or how they used it to make people fall in love. But there were rumors around the office. Some people at C & A believed that a long-ago Quinn ancestor had struck a deal with an unknown deity or witch and that the Quinns created special love potions and powders, or that the love magic rested in their fingertips or on their lips, and they only had to touch someone or speak the words aloud, in order to make two people fall in love. Others believed that the Quinns were simply lucky to have been born with their magic.
What Joy did know was that for centuries, the Quinn family relied on a trustworthy whisper network to use their magic, and if you knew the right people, you’d find your way to a Quinn who’d charge you a hefty fee in order to intervene in your love life. But as time went on and culture shifted, Cupid’s great-grandmother, Gladys Quinn, saw a need to help more people. She invested the family’s money into a company that would help mold what society knew of today as romance.
After opening Cupid & Associates in 1967, the Quinns placed the first mail collection box outside the building. Publicly, they were a consulting company, but through the collection boxes, their intention had been to continue secretly using their magic to help people who were unlucky in love. When they noticed the popularity of the New York City collection box, they added additional boxes throughout the country. The letters were supposed to be a way to make their magic accessible on a larger scale while keeping their finger on the pulse of what was happening in the world, romance-wise. But in recent years as the firm expanded, reading the letters and addressing unrequited love fell by the wayside in terms of priority. What was once the driving force of C & A had become more like a side project. Joy and her team sorted the letters every day and prioritized which letters should be read by Cupid, and he read through the letters whenever he had time, but that was happening less and less. He focused his attention on moneymaking departments and expanding the firm’s clientele. As far as Joy could tell, Cupid didn’t seem to care that much about the letters or her team’s work, not when her department didn’t create any revenue for the company. They were essentially C & A’s nonprofit sector.
To acknowledge the Unrequited Love Department was to acknowledge that there were many people in the world who loved but weren’t loved in return. That people felt neglected and unseen and undervalued. Unrequited Love was the ugly wart on the bottom of C & A’s beautiful foot that no one wanted to look at or think about. Most days, Joy felt like she and her team were the only people who thought about the letters at all.
Joy made a left turn and opened the door to her department. Her coworker Nadine Li was leaning across her desk, holding her phone up in front of their other coworker, Rupert Smith. Across the room, their fourth team member Benny Ramirez was fiddling with the fickle, ancient coffee machine. Against the wall sat piles and piles of unrequited love letters that they needed to sort through today. On the opposite end of the room sat the piles and piles of letters prioritized for Cupid. He hadn’t sent an assistant to retrieve them in several weeks.
“I’ve decided to call him Duke,” Nadine said to Rupert, beaming.
Rupert squinted at her phone’s screen. “What kind of dog is that? Looks a bit like a chipmunk in the face.”
Nadine frowned and quickly pulled her phone away. “He does not look like a chipmunk. He’s a miniature Schnauzer, and he wasn’t cheap either. I could hardly afford him, but when I got the email that he was up for adoption, I couldn’t say no.”
“Hmm. So you’ve named him Duke, eh?” Rupert said. “How do the other dogs like him?”
“Oh, King, Queen, Prince, Princess, and Duchess took to him immediately,” Nadine said, adjusting her blue cat’s-eye glasses. “He’s already part of the family. I think we’re really complete now.”
Rupert raised a bushy, disbelieving eyebrow. Every time Nadine adopted a new dog, she declared that her dog family was complete. But inevitably, she’d find herself back at the animal shelter or adoption center, looking for a new member to add to her furry crew. She’d acquired the dogs within the past year, after her girlfriend of almost a decade had broken up with her. Now, for the time being, she only wanted canine affection.
“Can I see him?” Joy asked, walking over to their desks.
Nadine and Rupert turned to look at her. Nadine smiled wider. “Oh yes, of course!”
Joy hung her coat on the back of her chair and placed her bag on her desk as Nadine proudly showed her the picture of her new dog. Duke was small and gray and kind of looked like a grumpy old man.
“He’s adorable,” Joy said.
“I want to see too!” Benny rushed over and, in his haste, he spilled coffee down the front of his cream-colored sweater. “Oh, damn. That’s the second time this week.”
Nadine clucked her tongue, and Rupert sighed. Joy handed Benny a wad of tissues. “All of your clothes will be coffee stained pretty soon,” she said.
“I blame the broken machine,” Benny said. “It takes so long to make the coffee, if it makes any at all. By the time it’s done, I have to run to my desk to get back to work.”
Joy sighed. “I know. I’ll keep trying to get someone to replace it.”
“What’s wrong?” Rupert suddenly asked.
Joy glanced over to find that Rupert was looking directly at her. Nadine and Benny paused, eyeing her as well. Rupert was in his sixties, and his twin daughters were thirty years old, like Joy. Because of this, he often joked that he was an expert mood reader, and over the years he’d adopted Joy as his work daughter. She thought she’d been covering up how shaken she was after her conversation with Shawn, but she must not have been doing a good enough job.
She stared at her coworkers, who stared back at her. They were more than coworkers, really. Due to the NDAs they’d signed when hired at C & A, they weren’t able to discuss the truth about their jobs with anyone outside of the company. If they even tried to utter the words, they suddenly became tongue-tied and the words jumbled on their tongues. As a test, Joy once tried to tell her aunt and uncle the truth about Cupid, but instead she’d mumbled, “My boss, he . . . my boss, he . . .” over and over. Her aunt and uncle almost called 911 because they thought that Joy was having a stroke. The shared secret about C & A brought Joy and her coworkers closer. They spent monthly game nights and yearly Friendsgivings together. They were neglected by the company, but they cared about each other. If Joy could talk with anyone about Shawn, it would be with these three.
“This morning Shawn told me that he doesn’t want us to continue seeing each other,” she said.
“That bastard,” Nadine hissed.
“Where is he?” Rupert slowly stood from his chair. He had chronic lower back pain. “I’ll wring his neck.”
Joy laughed, and it felt good to do that. “No, you will definitely not physically assault one of our colleagues.”
“I never liked him,” Benny said, grimacing. He had since given up trying to remove the coffee stain on his sweater. “He smiles too much. And he pronounces ‘humor’ like ‘yumor.’ Why does he say it like that? Also, he wears too much cologne.”
“I don’t like him either. He showed up late to three of your four dates,” Nadine reminded Joy. “And he always took too long to respond to your texts.”
“Didn’t you say that he fell asleep during that screening of Mississippi Masala?” Benny asked. “And he never asked you any questions about yourself.”
“He likes the sound of his own voice,” Rupert added. “And two weeks ago, he promised to wait for Joy after work, but he left exactly at 5:00 p.m. to meet his friends at the bar. He claimed he forgot that he and Joy had plans. And he went to a Nets game with his buddies on Valentine’s Day instead of taking her out.”
Joy winced as she looked at her coworkers. Thanks to their expert memory, she was able to acknowledge that, yes, she’d ignored several red flags in hopes that Shawn might finally be the one. As a result, she’d also ignored what her gut had been trying to tell her—that she and Shawn weren’t right for each other.
“Well,” she said, sighing. “All of that is true.”
“What reason did he give for breaking things off?” Nadine asked.
“I’m looking for something serious and he isn’t,” Joy said.
“But you were clear about that from the start,” Rupert said.
“Yeah, we know that you’re looking for a boyfriend,” Benny said.
Joy tried to hide her grimace. She didn’t want to come off as desperate. Nadine glared daggers at Benny, while Rupert tossed his pen and Benny ducked before the pen made contact with his forehead.
“What? Shit, sorry, Joy,” he said. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just we know that you’re trying to find your person.”
“It’s all right,” Joy said on a sigh. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. But now that you all know what’s happened with Shawn, I’d very much like to move on and pretend we never dated, if that’s all right.”
“Fine by me,” Rupert huffed. Benny nodded in agreement.
Nadine saluted Joy. “Good riddance.”
The three of them were used to Joy’s routine by now. This wasn’t the first time that she’d met a guy and convinced herself that things would work out despite the many signs that they wouldn’t, only for things to end in disaster or shambles. Sometimes both. With each breakup, she didn’t feel any less embarrassed. She wasn’t upset about losing out on Shawn specifically. She was upset that she’d foolishly placed her hopes in the wrong person and wasted her time once again.
Sometimes, she was the true definition of a hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless.
“We’ve got a ton of work to do,” she said, sitting at her desk. “I guess we’d better get started.”
Their daily task was to read through each letter dropped in the mail collection boxes. Joy handled the Northeast, while Nadine handled letters from the Southeast. Rupert handled the Midwest and Benny handled the West. They split the Southwest and international letters from tourists who’d deposited a letter while visiting the United States. After reading a letter, they created a file, which included a copy of the letter, the letter writer’s address, as well as the recipient’s address for reference purposes, and the original letter was then either prioritized for Cupid’s pile or archived to be potentially revisited at a later date.
It took particular skill to determine which letters should be prioritized for Cupid. The letter writer needed to express a deep sense of yearning and sincerity that was palpable through the page. They needed to make Joy and her team feel something. In her department, they took their roles seriously as the advocates for those experiencing unrequited love across the country. That was why it hurt all the more to see the letters they prioritized for Cupid stacked to the ceiling, collecting dust. Cupid was supposed to read through the prioritized letters and decide whether or not he wanted to assist with making a love connection.
A lot of people deposited letters into the collection boxes, and there were only four people employed to sort through them all. Their team wasn’t nearly big enough. When Joy had started at C & A five years ago, she’d been told by her then manager, Patty, that it was an impossible task to completely catch up on reading the letters. So far, that had proved to be true.
At her desk, Joy moved aside the framed picture of her parents on their wedding day in order to glance at the time on her monitor. It was 9:07 a.m.
“Where is Bill from Solutions?” she asked. “I bet he forgot about us again.”
The Solutions Department oversaw the firm’s everyday order of operations. If you had an issue of any kind, whether external or internal, someone from Solutions was sent to fix that problem. The department consisted of three people: Bill Pratt, the Solutions director, and his direct reports, Dwayne Shaw and Charles Hayes. Whenever Joy created a Solutions ticket, she specifically requested to meet with Bill. Although Dwayne was nice, he didn’t really care about his job, which meant he wasn’t always very helpful. And after Joy’s most recent disastrous meeting with Charles Hayes, Bill had promised that he’d handle Unrequited Love tickets moving forward. Joy hoped he hadn’t forgotten that promise.
“They treat us just like IT does,” Rupert grumbled. “Always moved to the bottom of the ticket queue.”
“The enter key on my keyboard is still jammed,” Benny said quietly.
“It’s so unfair,” Joy said, feeling frustrated on behalf of her team. “Solutions is supposed to be the company’s fixers, but our issues aren’t important enough to fix evidently. I should march up there and give them a piece of my mind. They can’t keep treating us like this. What, are they too lazy to take the elevator downstairs?”
As she spoke, she became aware that her coworkers had fallen quiet and were staring at her with wide eyes. Nadine bit her lip.
“What?” Joy asked. “What’s wrong?”
Behind her, someone cleared their throat in a distinctive way that she immediately recognized.
Oh no. Please, no.
Slowly, Joy turned around and looked up, and up and up.
A very tall man stood before her. He had smooth brown skin, and he wore a crisp white button-up that concealed his broad shoulders. His beard was neatly trimmed, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He quirked his eyebrows as he gazed down at Joy. The corner of his mouth lifted in a small smirk.
“Good morning, Joy,” Charles Hayes said in a deep vibrato.
Joy automatically grimaced. That smirk alone set fire to her veins in irritation. She couldn’t stand that smirk. Or Charles Hayes.
She spun around to her computer screen. “I thought I requested Bill,” she said, as she double-checked her ticket. “I did request Bill.” She faced Charles again and narrowed her eyes accusingly. “He promised he’d help us moving forward, not you. Where is he?”
Charles’s smirk widened into a proper smile as he leaned against the wall of her cubicle, like the space belonged to him and he had permission to get as comfortable as possible. “Bill’s on a call. You get me, unfortunately.”
“But I don’t want you,” Joy hissed, before she’d thought better of it.
Charles chuckled, and the sound came deep from within his abdomen. “Well, in the real world, we don’t always get what we want. Now, do we?”
“I’m sure you get everything your pessimistic heart desires.”
Charles barked out a laugh, and Joy quickly clamped her mouth closed and stopped herself from saying anything further. She was a manager now, and she’d promised herself that she would stop letting Charles get under her skin so quickly. One, it only amused him. And two, their last meeting three weeks ago regarding the swift replacement of the Atlanta collection box that had been damaged due to a garbage truck backing into it had resulted in Joy and Charles arguing over how many feet the collection box should be placed away from the sidewalk. Charles had gone on and on about zoning issues, and Joy had called him an “annoying wannabe sidewalk know-it-all,” and she’d realized just how much he pushed her toward unprofessionalism.
“I’m not too lazy to get on the elevator,” Charles said. “Cupid’s mother is visiting the office this morning, and I was helping her get situated.” He inclined his head. “But I should have sent an email to keep you informed that I was behind schedule. My apologies.”
Joy didn’t doubt that Charles’s excuse was valid. She was sure he’d helped Cupid’s mother, who was rumored to be one hundred twelve, around the office, and he’d probably charmed her with his smiles and his jokes the same way he’d charmed Joy with his smiles and his jokes on her first day at C & A. She’d been optimistic then about having made a new work friend, but just as quickly, Charles had revealed his true colors and ruined everything. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot and had been struggling along on that wrong foot ever since.
“No need to apologize,” Joy said, squaring her shoulders. She had a job to do and a team to advocate for. She would do her best to grit her teeth and play nice with Charles. Even if it killed her. She grabbed her notebook and pen and stood. The top of her head barely reached his collarbone. This close, she got a whiff of his woodsy cologne. The fact that he smelled nice annoyed her. He should smell bad, like his rotten, cynical soul. Even more annoying, he didn’t step back to give her more space in order to move around him. He just stood there, continuing to look down at her with that lazy smile.
“After you,” she said pointedly, gesturing to the table across the room near their coffee machine and mini fridge. Up on the tenth floor, there were two different conference rooms for meetings. Here in the basement, they had one table for their lunches and meetings.
Finally, Charles shifted to the side and allowed Joy to move past him. “No, after you.”
She rolled her eyes and heard Charles’s quiet chuckle as he followed her across the room. She hazarded a glance back at her team, and they were watching her and Charles. Nadine gave Joy a thumbs-up.
Charles pulled out Joy’s chair for her, and she was so surprised, she stood there and stared at the empty chair like she’d never seen a chair in her life and had no idea what she was supposed to do with it. Charles cleared his throat and lifted his brows. When Joy was certain that he wasn’t playing a trick on her, she snapped out of her shock and sat down.
“I’m offended that you’re surprised by my manners,” he said, as he eased into the chair across from her. With quick, meticulous movements, he pulled his iPad out of his messenger bag, along with a stylus pen. She rarely saw him without those items. When she glanced up at his face, he was watching her.
“I’d offer you coffee, but our machine stopped working again,” she said. “We actually put in a ticket about that a while ago. Benny ruined another one of his sweaters this morning with a coffee stain.”
Charles glanced at his iPad, which contained his notes. He frowned. “I thought we were here to discuss your team’s workload?”
“We are, but the coffee machine is an issue too.”
He nodded and wrote something with his stylus pen. “I’ll look into it. Can’t make any promises, though. And no thanks to the coffee. I quit recently. You know coffee’s bad for you, right?”
Across the room, Benny, Rupert, and Nadine gasped loudly. In their department, they drank coffee like water. It was necessary to get through so many letters. Already that morning, Joy had drunk a cup at her apartment, and she’d grabbed a cup from the café down the street after getting off the subway.
“Coffee isn’t bad for you when consumed in moderation,” she said.
“Insomnia, heart issues, digestive problems.” Charles counted each symptom on a finger. He glanced past Joy at the empty coffee cup at her desk. He smirked again. “How many cups have you had so far today? I’m guessing two. And if your machine’s broken, you’ll probably go across the street to Roast Lane and get a third cup in, what, an hour or so? Three cups before ten thirty.” He shook his head, tsking. “I think you might have a problem, Joy.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. She had been planning to get a third cup from Roast Lane. But she most certainly wouldn’t go now since Charles had predicted it. The last thing she wanted to do was prove him right.
“Let me guess,” she said, propping her chin in the palm of her hand as she looked at him. “You landed your dream job with the fun police and it’s your responsibility to tell people to stop drinking coffee.”
His eyes gleamed. “I don’t have time for an extra side hustle, actually, but don’t say I didn’t tell you so when you’re stuck staring at your ceiling all night because you can’t sleep. Anyway, what’s the issue with the workload?”
Joy wrinkled her nose at him and reminded herself to be professional.
“The easiest way to sum it up is that our team isn’t big enough to handle the volume of letters we receive,” she said. She pointed to the piles of letters against the wall. “Those letters are from last month. It took an entire week to sort through letters from Valentine’s Day.” She pointed to the other piles of letters at the opposite end of the room. “Those are the letters prioritized for Cupid that we processed over the last couple of months. We’re still waiting for one of his assistants to retrieve them.”
Charles eyed the tall piles. “I’ll make a note to talk to Cupid’s assistants about arranging a pickup. Regarding the letters you haven’t read yet, maybe with some overtime, you can get it done. We can come up with a schedule.”
Joy shook her head. “This isn’t something that can be easily fixed with overtime. It’s a systemic problem.”
His lips tugged into a slight frown. “I can look into asking HR to hire a temp to assist you for a limited period.”
“I don’t think that will be a lasting solution either.” She stood abruptly, and Charles blinked as he stared up at her. “Can I show you something? We’ll have to leave this room.”
He eyed her suspiciously, like she was a kidnapper about to take him to a second location.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “I promise I don’t bite.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said, snorting. But he stood, albeit slowly. “All right. Show me.”
Copyright © 2027 by Kristina Forest. From The Unrequited Love Department by Kristina Forest. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Unrequited Love Department, by Kristina Forest will be released on January 5, 2027, from Atria Books. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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