“The fuck do you mean, the North Pole?” I stare incredulously at him for a taut moment. Only birdsong can be heard in the far distance. “The North Pole’s real.”
Something like sympathy flits across his features. “Buddy, you’re turning thirty-one. It’s time to accept the fact that Santa isn’t real.”
“Oh, but the fucking Kraken is?”
“Was,” Aaron says. “I heard from a friend?—”
“Was it Conspiracy Sam?”
“All I’m saying is that the Krakenwasreal until—” He holds up a finger when he sees the look on my face. “Okay, where’s your sense of whimsy?—”
“Barb is not real,” I say. “This is some weird joke you guys are playing on me. I’m going to fly out to South Carolina in July and find out Barb is actually Ed with a voice disguiser.”
Aaron lifts a brow. “Your mom is right. You do need a girlfriend.” He pauses. “Or a dog. A dog would make a better hiking buddy than me.”
“You don’t have to tag along?—”
“Aw, man, I’m not going to let you go by yourself. You know that.” His mouth curls. “If your ass gets eaten by a bear, who’s gonna be there and make it less awkward for me when I order seven baskets of buffalo wings during happy hour?”
“It’s still just as awkward with me there.” I shake my head as he grins harder at me. “And you inhaleninebaskets in one go.”
“All I’m saying is that this trip might be good for you,” he says. “You might meet a nice local girl there”—his finger goes up again—“and rediscover what it’s like to have fun.”
“I like to have fun.”
“How,” he says, spanning his hand toward the fir trees beside us, “is this fun?”
“It’s good exercise. Something to help burn off the nine baskets of wings you plow through,” I deadpan. “And you know this helps me clear my head.”
Heavy skepticism washes over his face. “Man, your head hasn’t been cleared in months. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this stressed.”
I open my mouth to object, but he’s not wrong. Leading the QA team has done nothing but give me my first gray hair a few months into working at Green Checks, a permanent increase in my blood pressure, and tension in my entire body that never seems to go away until I clock out for the weekend.
When I first started at the company, the QA team had seven people working for me. We’re down to four. Not because they quit on me, but because they’ve been fired after Malibu Barbie wouldn’t stop erroring them on so-called issues our clients never cared about in the first place.
She looks for problems that don’t exist, and then I’m saddled with more work as I have to put out a bunch of fires when Ed comes for me and asks why my team’s screwing up so much by ignoring all the scenarios we could have tested for.
If my team keeps shrinking, it’s going to become impossible for us to get anything done. We’re barely scraping by as it is. Everyone’s doing twice as many assignments, they’re all burning out, and morale is so low that the bar is in the pits of hell.
“Okay,” I say finally. “For the rest of this weekend, I’ll stop talking about work, thinking about work?—”
As if on cue, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
“Don’t answer anything from work?” Aaron tries and groans a split second later. “It’s your day off.”
“Ed wouldn’t reach out unless there’s an emergency.”
“It’s. Your. Day. Off,” he repeats. “And we’re in the middle of a forest. Tell him that Workaholic Ethan can’t come to the phone right now because he’s becoming one with nature or something. He’ll understand.”
“I’m not a workaholic,” I say, even though we both know I am. To a certain extent. My student loans were finally paid off earlier in December, but I’ve got a house I’m trying to pay off.
“Let me see what it is,” I say, and the moment I glimpse at my screen, a weary sigh escapes me. “Fuck. I need to go.”
The overtime pay is good,I remind myself.I’m being paid an obscene amount of money just to sit at my desk.It’s not like I had better things to do on a Saturday afternoonbesides watching Aaron inhale an inhuman amount of chicken tenders drowned in a disgusting mixture of ranch, thousand island dressing, curry ketchup, and yuzu sauce.
“So, Carter,” Barbie says, and her vocal fry is out in full force as she drags out each syllable. “What’s going to happen if this is still down on Monday?”
“Then it’s still down on Monday.”
