Love.
Who would have thought we’d come so far in less than a year? That I would go from being guarded and shut down to the possibility of ever being so vulnerable, to constantly working to bring myself closer to Jesse, to the point where I can’t physically get him any closer to mybody.
He shifts his position and crawls alongside me, offering a sweet, reassuringkiss.
After he pulls away, we gaze at one another, in no rush to talk about anything inparticular.
This is the man I love, the man I want to give all of myselfto.
3
Jesse
“Brenden and Sam approved those files,”Jack insists in an accusatorytone.
We’re seated in the main meeting area, my team of six guys and Jack, who acts as a liaison between my department and some of the others in the company. This isn’t one of our regularly scheduled meetings, but an attempt to resolve a serious clusterfuck that happened lastnight.
“We didn’t approve those files,” Sam chimes in. He leans back in his swivel chair, face red, arms folded like he’s having to keep himself from rushing over to Jack and berating him. He has every right to because, from what I can make out, Jack was totally in thewrong.
“Jack,” I say, sounding more exasperated than I intended, “I personally know from the email exchanges I had with Sam yesterday about the program that there’s no way he told you those files were ready to be sent over to KendallInc.”
Mincer Corp, the company I work for, is hired out by other companies to create software to make their systems more efficient. One of our most recent projects has been an update to a program that helps Kendall Inc., a major e-comm retailer, with their financials, but as of late, it’s been a pain in the ass, and even worse, an update went out last night and resulted in a crash. However, the update wasn’t approved, and now I’m trying to get to the bottom of how it ended up with IT at KendallInc.
“Jack, we told you it needed work and to run tests,” Brenden says, backing Sam up. She and Sam are familiar with the details of this account because it’s been most of their work for the past fewweeks.
“I took them over to Malcolm, and we ran some tests,” Jack said defensively. “They all came back fine, so it was good togo.”
“Jesse, Malcolm didn’t even know what he was testing for,” Sam explains. “He was using the tests for the old version, so of course it didn’t have an issue, but the entire point of the upgrade was to resolve an issue we didn’t foresee in those initialtests.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, Sam,” I tell him, working to soothe hisdefensiveness.
I don’t blame him. Jack has a way of making everyone a little defensive. In my short time here, I’ve learned he’s the sort who enjoys taking credit for success and never for his many fuckups and failings, the present oneincluded.
“No one communicated any of this to me,” Jacksays.
“I have receipts,” Sam responds in as catty a tone as he canmanage.
I step in with, “This isn’t about who’s wrong right now. I’m sure Meyer will be interested in getting into that at the next meeting with us all, butI’monly trying to resolve the issue. Sam, can we find a way to revert to the old system in the meantime…or at least get back any data we lost during thecrash?”
“It’ll take me a little time, but I can doit.”
“What’s the timeframe we’re talking about here?” Jackasks.
The way he says it, I can tell he’s trying to start a fight, something I’m less than appreciative of since I just managed to defuse the tension with mypoint.
“The timeframe is longer than you have patience for, apparently,” Samsnaps.
“Okay, okay,” I say to keep Jack from using Sam’s attitude as an opportunity to strike. “Sam, get on that. Jack, tell Meyer he needs to wait at least an hour for us to figure out how we’re going to resolve this. We can’t make anypromises—”
“Jesse,look—”
“Go and tell him that for me, okay?” I interject. “If he has a problem, he has my number and knows where my officeis.”
Jack seems satisfied enough—I figure because he at least has someone other than himself that he can blame the delay on. As soon as he leaves the room, I tell Sam, “Send me every email you exchanged with Jack. I want to cover our asses in case he tries to make up something whenever Meyer asks us to report what went wrong here. And if you and Brenden can meet me in my office, we can figure out a course of action. Everyone else can get back to their task lists, and we’ll pull anyone who isn’t working highpriority.”
A few members of the team volunteer, letting me know they’re available, and I appreciate the camaraderie on this. I haven’t been here long, but since I started, there haven’t been major tiffs within the department and morale’s been high. I intend to keep it that way, especially when there are plenty of assholes like Jack, trying to poison the system with their bravado and sense ofentitlement.
As the team starts to head back to their cubicles, Brenden and Sam follow me to myoffice.
