“From my perspective, women are his problem,” I say dryly.
“No, Lex isn’t like that. Ask any woman here; he’s never been out of line.”
“Then I guess it’s me. I’m his fucking problem.”
Without a word, Oliver gets up and comes over to me. He turns my chair, makes me stand, and wraps his arms around me in a reassuring embrace. As his familiar scent fills my lungs, my anger slowly melts away. Behind me, someone else joins in on the hug–Mason. Soon enough, all five of them are hugging me, and their affection helps calm me down.
After a while, they let go to get back to work, except Oli, who bends to level his face with mine. “Are you feeling better?” he asks. Forcing a smile, I nod. “Do you want some tea or something?”
I shake my head. “I’m good, thanks. I’ve wasted enough of your time as it is.”
“You’re never a waste of time.”
My boss might be an asshole, but I have the best coworkers in the world.
Even though I’m brooding the whole afternoon, I do my job and I do it well. By five-thirty, I’m fucking glad to leave this place. I considerstaying, as I originally intended, but decide against it. My boss scolding the shit out of me is enough punishment. Just as I’m about to turn off my computer, I receive a message from the internal messaging software.
It’s from Alexander.
Alexander Coleman: Come up to my office.
Has he changed his mind? After giving it some thought, did he decide to fire me? I stare at the five words as if they might give me cholera. If I don’t go up right now and delay it until Monday, maybe he’ll change his mind again and not fire me. My pulse quickens. The possibility of losing my job two weeks in is frankly shameful.
I’m still hesitating on what to do when a sixth word makes its way into the conversation.
Alexander Coleman: Please.
In my—albeit little—time here, I’ve never heard him say please. Until this point, I even doubted the word was in his vocabulary. But there they are. Six letters that change everything. He can’t possibly want to fire me if he’s being this abnormally nice.
My expectations for this man are so fucking low.
“Are you coming?” Oliver wonders, all packed up.
I do a quick Alt+Tab to open my last window and hide the message before turning to my friend. “No, I have one last thing to take care of before I can leave. But go, I’m good.”
He exits the Lair after a warm smile and a nod.
Alone in the office, I open the conversation with Alexander and send him a dry:
Andrea Walker: Ok.
Not even five minutes. I didn’t even last five minutes back at work before blowing up at Andrea.
With a sigh, I remove my glasses and throw them on my desk. I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to appease the headache hammering in the back of my skull. I shouldn’t have come straight here from the airport. After missing the whole week, I could have gone home instead.
There’s too much going on with Kelex to waste four and a half days in Denver. Especially since I was never close to my paternal grandmother, so I didn’t really care about attending the unplugging of her life support machines and then the funeral. But my sisters insisted, so I had to put everything on hold and get on a plane—which I hate—to join the extended Coleman family.
That’s why I wanted to ensure everything was alright as soon as I returned and that the team didn’t need my help. I didn’t expect to find the Lair empty upon arriving. With all the noise they were making in the break room, it wasn’t hard to find where my developers had gathered. Part of me knewshewas the cause of this mess before I even saw her on the arcade machine.
Andrea Walker isn’t the exemplary employee I expected. She talks back, sidetracks her colleagues, makes her own rules… But she’s also fucking brilliant at her job. She’s the most impressively skilled coder I’ve worked with, and I can’t dismiss that. Having her with us is an asset, and it makes up for her being challenging to work with. In all truth, she could work only three hours per day and still be more efficient than any of her colleagues.
That’s why I need her to come up here. We must clear the air and restart this whole thing on better terms. I need to lower my expectations regarding her work ethic.
With another tired sigh, I pick up my glasses and slip them on to return to my emails. I handled the important ones while I was away, but I still need to catch up on the rest of them.
My body instinctively tenses when I hear two feeble knocks on the door.
“Come in.”
