In that case, I’d have made a kick-ass start-up founder.
“Knock knock.”
I swiveled around to see Bob standing in the doorway of my cubicle, his arms folded across his chest, his face all scrunched up. He looked like he had indigestion.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Just had a little visit from Josh Brewster. He wasn’t too happy.”
“Is he ever happy?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” he said. “But he told me he’s been having an ongoing problem with his laptop and that you haven’t been able to provide a fix.”
“The ongoing problem is that he keeps downloading viruses onto his computer.”
“Didn’t you install security software?”
“Yes, and I have no idea how these things keep getting around it. He’s probably disabling his virus scanners so he can surf around some shady corner of the deep web.”
Bob sighed and ran a hand along his bald head. “Look, that’s the other thing, Melanie. You can’t go around accusing people of stuff you can’t prove.”
“I didn’t accuse him of anything. I was only speculating. It’s my job to fix his broken laptop, right? In order to do that, I need to know what’s causing the problem.”
“Do you have any evidence?”
“No.”
“Then you have no idea if that’s what he’s doing.”
“Well, what kind of app is his team developing?”
“You should already know this.” Bob scowled. “They’ve got Blitz. It’s a fantasy football app.”
“There you go. He’s probably into gambling, and that means—”
“Enough!” Bob’s sharp tone cut my conspiracy theory off at the root. “Stop with the Nancy Drew routine and just do your job. Which, if you’ve forgotten, is to clean up his laptop and get it back to him as soon as possible.” He turned to leave, then stopped abruptly, adding, “The guys are under a lot of pressure here. Stop giving them such a hard time.”
I stared at the empty space he left behind, his final sentiment echoing in my brain.
The guys.
Yup, that was a pretty accurate description of the Hatch population. In the four years I’d been here, only a handful of women had walked through the door. My workdays were devoted to serving men. And not only did I need to keep their tech devices working, but, apparently, I was also responsible for protecting their fragile egos.
Infuriating.
I resumed my scan of Josh’s laptop, deleting suspicious registry entries and replacing hacked files. With each passing minute, my keystrokes grew more forceful. At one point, I smacked the keyboard so hard that I dislodged the space bar.
Then, when I was sure his system was free from any and all traces of malicious software, I installed a little insurance policy: a keylogger. It’d run silently in the background while Josh did his work, recording each one of his keystrokes and storing them in an encrypted file. This way, if he disabled his virus scanner and went to a shady website, I’d have evidence.
He’d never know it was there. But the next time he came into my cubicle, screaming his head off about my inability to fix his laptop, I’d show him my receipts. That’d shut him up.
It was noon when I finished. I tucked his laptop under my arm and headed toward the Blitz work area, steeling myself for what would undoubtedly be a torrent of insults and four-letter words. But Josh wasn’t there, and his team members didn’t bother to look up from their screens as I gingerly placed the repaired laptop on his desk and ran off.
I took the long way back to my cubicle, skirting the window-lined perimeter of the office space, so I could enjoy the views. From up here on the twenty-ninth floor, New York looked divine. Sunlight sparkled off the East River. Boats glided beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving frothy white wakes. It was the ideal afternoon for an alfresco lunch.
And by that, I meant sitting at one of those picnic tables on Fulton Street and snarfing down the peanut butter sandwich I’d thrown in my purse this morning. Not especially glamorous, but with my budget being what it was, I’d take what I could get. All I had to do was grab my stuff from my desk drawer and—
“Melanie?”
I spun around, and there was Alex, looking characteristically dapper in fitted chinos and a cotton oxford. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing the tiniest tuft of black hair.
Stop looking at his chest.
“What’s up?” I asked, completely calm, completely cool.
“I’m waiting on a database build, so I’ve got nothing to do for the next hour or so. Are you free for lunch? We can go to a restaurant at the Seaport.”
Unbelievable. After that debacle on Friday night, you’d think he’d have the decency to be contrite.
“I don’t think so,” I sniffed, my gaze floating out the window.
“You sure? It’s my treat.” He leaned in slightly, lowered his voice. “I’ve been looking forward to it all weekend.”
“Have you?”
I fixed with him an icy glare. He drew back, his expression halfway between confusion and terror. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Does he think I’m a total idiot? “I met her, remember? Jenny.”
His brow relaxed as he released a sigh of nervous laughter. “Jenny’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a girl I met on Fluttr. That was our first date. And, uh...it didn’t go so well.”
“Oh.” Turns out, I actually was a total idiot. My face must have flushed a dozen shades of crimson. I could feel the heat radiating from my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I can see why you would’ve thought that. But now that we’ve cleared up that little misunderstanding, are you interested in getting lunch?”
One side of his mouth quirked up in an adorable little half smile. There was no way I could say no.
My peanut butter sandwich would stay good until tomorrow. Probably.
“Let’s do it.”
5
We settled on Fresh Salt, a café on Beekman Street with outdoor seating. As I sipped my ice water, I took a moment to bask in how perfect everything was. A mild breeze floated off the river, and the snippet of sky visible between the surrounding buildings was blue and cloudless. For once, there were no construction vehicles spewing exhaust, no jackhammers clobbering the asphalt, no open bags of garbage festering on the pavement. The usual noises and odors of a New York City street were absent. It was simply a beautiful Monday afternoon.