“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Ava asked.
The thing was, I wasn’t so sure about that anymore. But I couldn’t let on to that. Regardless of what I might be feeling or what kind of effect Tom was having on me, I just knew it would never be possible. We came from very different worlds and had very different lives.
Even putting class politics aside, the thought of trying to navigate any type of relationship with him in the context of also working together wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. It sounded like it could get extremely awkward very fast. I never wanted to be seen as the woman who slept her way to the top.
I had another flashback to the night before when Tom had caught me so confidently and protectively, how we stared at one another, not wanting to move.
From there, my brain shifted over to that morning when he saw me in nothing but my towel. It was a complete accident. An honest mistake. I figured he was still asleep, and I could scurry out to grab my bag without him even noticing I was there.
I blushed and looked away so neither of the women would notice the color suddenly on my cheeks. I didn’t want to try to explain any of it to Tom’s sister-in-law and mother.
My phone started ringing, and I nearly jumped at the vibration on the table in front of me. I grabbed it and leaned into the ladies.
“Sorry, I have to take this, I’ll be right back,” I said and stood to walk away a few feet. The caller ID said that it was Landon, and if he was calling me directly, something was up.
“Amanda?” Landon asked when I answered the phone. His voice sounded flustered and stressed.
“Landon? What’s going on?” I asked.
“Oh, thank God. There’s a problem with the new prototype engine. It’s not executing commands and is glitching out just a few frames in on a specific game. I need to talk to Tom, but he won’t answer my calls.” All the words came tumbling out as if it was one big run-on sentence.
“Whoa, slow down, Landon. The coding is off, how?”
“I just… I need to talk to Tom. Is he there? Do you know where he is?” Landon asked.
“I’ll get ahold of him,” I said.
“Okay, thank you, Amanda. Just tell him to call me as soon as you get to him.”
I hung up on Landon and turned to face the girls.
“Everything okay?” Ava asked.
“It will be. I just need to get ahold of Tom for some work stuff and he’s not answering his phone. Do you know where he is? It’s kind of time-sensitive,” I said.
“I think I know,” Ava said, standing.
“Oh, no, I can call a cab,” I said, but Ava put her hand up to stop me.
“It’s my house. I’m pretty sure they’re all there. Come on, I got this,” she said and took the bill to the register.
A few minutes later we were at Ava’s house, and all the guys were crowded around a dining room table. Tom spotted me and must have seen the look on my face as he approached.
“What’s going on?” he asked, concerned.
I explained to him what Landon told me, and his eyes grew big and he hung his head.
“Shit. Okay. Well, there’s nothing I can do here right now anyway. The insurance adjuster just left and said things are looking good for getting the insurance money, but we can’t focus on rebuilding until we figure out what exactly the cause of the fire was. So, let’s just get back to the hotel. I need to work on this code.”
15
Tom
The alarm on my phone buzzed, and I reached over without opening my eyes to shut it off. It had been a long night of trying to work out the kinks in the coding, and I hadn’t hit the sack until just a few hours ago. We had hit a wall around three, and I called it off, figuring we could hit it with fresh, well-rested eyes around ten. My alarm, as usual, was set for a good hour before that, and I planned on hitting the snooze button at least once.
Then I smelled the coffee.
One eye opened experimentally, scanning the immediate distance in front of me. On the table next to the couch where I was still lying face down, my phone sat buzzing, just out of reach of my hand, and beyond it was a still-steaming cup of coffee. I leaned a bit to get to the phone and clicked the button on the side to silence it before propping myself up a bit. Looking back behind me, I saw Amanda’s smiling face, a cup in her own hands.
“Morning,” she said.
“Morning,” I said, the words coming out in a rough grumble. “This coffee…”
“It’s from down the street. I’ve been up a little while and figured you could use a pick-me-up,” she said.
“Well, thank you,” I said, sitting up fully and reaching for the cup. It was at that point I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt, as the blanket I had curled down into fell away. In my periphery, I saw Amanda suddenly look straight up at the ceiling. As I grabbed the cup and pulled it to me, however, I happened to catch her glance back down a few times. I had to hide a satisfied grin.
“So,” she said, clearly wanting to fill the silence, “I got a couple of really solid hours of sleep in, and when I woke up it hit me. What if the glitch isn’t a glitch? What if it’s something we hardwired in?”
“You mean it’s not a glitch, it’s a feature?” I asked, which received a laugh from Amanda. I marveled at how much I enjoyed hearing that sound come out of her. Or how much I just enjoyed watching her mouth in general.
“Something like that.”
“Amanda, that’s great! That means all we have to do is rewrite the coloring code to adjust. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“We were very tired last night,” she said, looking away again as I sat the coffee down and reached for a T-shirt. I pulled it on, and she looked back over. “I’m sure someone would have caught it in the next day or so.”
“Maybe,” I said, going back to the coffee and taking a deep drag. It was dark and bitter, and it was doing the job of waking me up. Though certain parts of my body had been awake since the moment I saw Amanda, but I was keeping that information to myself. I looked at her for a moment and then sat the coffee down, turning to her. “Why haven’t you ever asked to be moved to another department? You’re really good at this stuff.”
There was a moment where she seemed flustered, and then she turned back to face the laptop, like it would give her the answer she was looking for. She took a big gulp of her coffee and then looked over it to me again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just really like my job and working with you.”
“And I think you’re fantastic at what you do, but seriously, you should try this out. You have a talent for coding that surpasses a lot of people that have been doing it for years. Maybe I could put you on a project and see how you do?”
She seemed to think about it for a minute and then nodded. “Yeah, that could be fun,” she said. Still, there was something in her voice that told me that maybe it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. Some people needed the confidence of another person telling them they were good at something to take the leap, and she was good. Really, shockingly good. If I could give her that shove and she found something she was even better at than being my assistant, it could be a whole new career for her.