She’d considered calling in sick, but quickly recognized the futility in that. Her coworkers’ scrutiny would be waiting for her whenever she returned to the office. It was better for her to face their judgmental reaction to Saturday night’s disaster now and get it over with.
As she pushed through the building’s revolving doors, trepidation slithered along her spine like a serpent, poised to bite her in the ass at any moment. The lobby teemed with employees of the various tech companies occupying the building. As usual, Samiah felt overdressed in her Anne Klein jacket and pencil skirt, surrounded by all these people who had never grasped the concept of Casual Fridays. Every day in the Austin tech world was Casual Friday. Maybesheshould have opted for jeans today. Maybe then she wouldn’t stand out so much.
Hyperaware of the gazes that followed her as she walked through the brightly lit lobby, Samiah focused on the bank of elevators straight ahead. The swirling hum of the floor buffing machine drowned out any chatter before it hit her ears, but she caught several people pointing out of the corner of her eye. One woman even gave her a thumbs-up. Samiah acknowledged her support with a brief nod and smile before slipping onto a nearly full elevator.
Familiar faces surrounded her, but she didn’t know a single name. This building had over thirty tenants. Everyone treated one another with reserved politeness and congenial respect, but other than the smokers who congregated in a corner of the concrete patio on the south end of the property, no one took the time to get to know anyone who was not a coworker.
Unless someone was hunting for a new job, of course. That’s when Samiah usually found herself engaged in a casual conversation with a fellow building-mate. It would start out innocent enough, but would eventually meander into a discussion about possible job openings with the company that occupied the building’s top two floors. Trendsetters’ forest-green-and-white badges were the envy of the building.
She was blessed to have joined the firm just before its newest iteration of WiMax integration software hit big, making them the industry leader in providing Wi-Fi hotspot payment systems in developing countries. Numerous hotels, fast-food chains, and coffeehouses around the globe utilized Trendsetters’ products to pay for the “free” Wi-Fi they offered their customers. And their client list continued to grow. Everyone wanted to work here. Samiah wouldn’t give up her position for anything or anyone.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use a day off every once in a while. Like today. She’d have loved to play hooky today.
With stops on nearly every floor, it took a full eight minutes to finally arrive at the twenty-second. The elevator doors opened directly into Trendsetters’ very trendy lobby. Its focal point, the Water Wall, took up the entire space behind the receptionist’s semicircular desk. It featured a waterfall that changed colors throughout the day and cascaded down a steel wall speckled with embossed quotes from tech giants. Her favorite was the one from Steve Jobs:I want to put a ding in the universe.She’d made it her motto the moment she first read it.
On either side of the Water Wall stood twin glass-and-chrome curving staircases that led to the twenty-third floor, where Engineering and Security were housed. Even more eye-catching than the water feature was the row of brick-red benches on either side of the lobby. Each seat was held up by a strong, transparent acrylic rod that extended from the wall, making it appear as though the benches were suspended in midair.
“Good morning.” Jamie Claiborne, Trendsetters’ receptionist, greeted her with a bright smile.
Samiah braced herself for the onslaught of questions she knew awaited her. “Good morning,” she replied.
She waited.
And waited.
When Jamie returned her attention to her computer monitor without mentioning what happened Saturday night, Samiah breathed her first easy breath of the morning. Maybe today wouldn’t be awkward after all.
But the moment she stepped behind the Water Wall and into the main work area, an eruption of applause broke out. Heat suffused her face; her ears felt as if they were on fire.
She was all for being applauded at work, but not for something like this.
Get it together. Be cool. Be charming. Don’t let them see you sweat.
Holding her hands up, she summoned a smile from some part of her being that hadn’t shriveled up and died over the weekend and addressed the office as a whole.
“I know everyone is dying to hear whether or not I beat Craig up after the video ended. I did not. See.” She flipped her hands back and forth, showing them her unblemished knuckles. “No scars.”
Laughter and more cheers rumbled throughout the office. Samiah hoped that was enough to satisfy them.
She should have known better.
She couldn’t take two steps without being stopped by a coworker wanting to know how it felt to be YouTube famous or asking if she really didn’t know that Craig had been conning her. Becauseof courseshe would knowingly date a guy who was conning her. Managing to not roll her eyes every ten seconds would likely be her greatest feat of the day.
It took a full twenty minutes to make it to the sanctuary of her private office, although it wasn’t all that private. Ninety percent of Trendsetters’ office space was transparent—literally. The walls and doors of most offices and conference rooms were made of tempered glass.
Before she could stow her purse in her desk drawer, Aparna from Research and Development and Christy from Engineering came into her office wanting to know the scoop, followed by Rashad and Ali from the Marketing Department. Samiah didn’t know which she wanted to do more, bang her head against her desk or scream at the top of her lungs. Neither was acceptable, so she pasted on a fake grin and entertained the teasing jibes.
She wouldn’t have to feign an illness if she wanted an excuse to leave work early. Pretending this was all some hilarious joke and not her fucking life they were laughing about had sparked a headache the size of the old Houston Astrodome.
An announcement that there were donuts and hot chocolate in the communal kitchen granted her a reprieve from the constant stream of nosy coworkers dropping in. Grateful for the first moment of quiet she’d experienced all morning, she used the opportunity to read over her notes for the presentation she and the members of her Implementation team were scheduled to give this afternoon. As she edited one of the slides, a message popped up, informing the entire team that their two o’clock meeting had been moved to noon.
“Shit.”
It was bad enough she’d lost half the morning to coworkers pestering her about that viral video. Now Grant Meecham was stealing another two hours of prep time from her.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Grant, Trendsetters’ director of Global Sales, had called the meeting, and whenever Grant set up a meeting he did everything he could to schedule it over lunch so that he could eat on the company’s dime. Cheap bastard.
“Hey there, Miss Celebrity,” came an irritatingly sweet voice from somewhere over her shoulder.
