“Yes, yes. I’m fine,” Samiah said with a shake of her head. “Sorry about that.”
“No apology necessary. I ran into you too.” He held a hand out. “I’m Daniel, by the way. I started in R&D today.”
Ah. She remembered hearing something about a new hire. “Welcome to the team.” She shook his hand. “I’m Samiah.”
His eyes widened for the barest second, but it was long enough for her to catch it.
She narrowed her gaze, then with irritation said, “You heard about the video.”
He hunched his shoulders apologetically. “Pretty hard not to. It’s kind of the talk of the office.”
Dammit! Could she have one fucking moment when that stupid video wasn’t at the center of everything?
“I haven’t seen it,” Daniel quickly added. “But I hear you put on quite a show.”
Great. So this is what she would be forever known for. Not for single-handedly debugging Trendsetters’ signature utilities software just months after she started, or launching their annual Thanksgiving donation drive last year, but for cursing Craig Walters out in a sushi bar. Her grad school advisor would be so proud.
Samiah put a hand up before he could ask an intrusive, asinine question. “Please don’t say anything else. I don’t want to talk about that video.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “But I was only going to ask if you were okay. Are you?”
She blinked several times, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “I’m sorry?”
“I asked if you were okay.” His shoulder lifted again in a slight hunch. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me, but I can imagine it sucks to be put on display for everyone to see.”
Oh, God. It suckedsomuch. How did he know?
“It does,” she said with a vigorous nod, her hand tightening on the mug. She was so overwhelmed by what appeared to be genuine concern in his eyes that she nearly wept.
He was the first person to ask about her well-being. Her other coworkers hadn’t given a damn about how she was doing. They were all too caught up in the glamour and hype of knowing someone at the center of a viral video.
“Having the entire world witness the most humiliating moment of your life and judge you for it sucks like you wouldn’t believe. And it makes me question my judgment about pretty much everything.”
“Don’t.” He made a move, as if he were about to reach for her. But then he backed off, slipping his hands into the pockets of his pressed khakis. “Don’t blame yourself for what happened. It sounds like that guy was a pro. It says nothing about you.”
She nodded, the sudden emotion welling in her throat making it hard to speak.
“Thank you for that,” she finally managed to get out. “It means a lot to hear it put that way.” Samiah swallowed, then continued. “I’m just hoping it will eventually all blow over. Hopefully someone will record their cat playing Beethoven on the piano and that video with Craig will become a distant memory.”
Daniel snapped his fingers in a gosh-darn kind of way. “I knew I should have gotten a cat. I’m more of a dog person, but those videos don’t catch on as well as the cat ones.”
He smiled and, for a moment, Samiah forgot that she’d said just yesterday that she was putting men on the back burner.
It’s just a smile. Calm the hell down.
It was a nice smile, but still just a smile.
“Samiah?” she heard her name a second before John Kim, a member of her Implementation team, walked up to them. “Oh, sorry,” John said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I was hoping we could go over the presentation before today’s meeting.”
“I’m sorry?” She frowned. It took her a moment to remember she was at work. “I mean of course,” Samiah said with a breathy laugh.What the hell?She never got flustered.
She turned to John. “Yes, of course. Grab Katie and meet me in my office. I’ll be there in a sec.”
John nodded to Daniel and held out his hand. “You’re the new hire in R&D, right?”
“Daniel Collins,” he answered.
“I’m John. I’ll be the one bugging you when it’s time to work on the regression testing for the new CRM software.”
