Page 38 of Debugging Love

He enters “brain” into the top row. The “a” turns yellow.

“Are you going to play that instead of paying attention?”

“Wordle helps me concentrate.”

I suppress a sigh, take a moment to reset myself, and try an “I feel” statement. “When you play Wordle while I’m trying to help you set up your development environment, I feel like you aren’t paying attention.”

He picks his chin off his palm. “It helps me listen. But...” He tosses his phone onto the desk and grabs his pack of gum.

The pile of used wrappers and his constant gum popping point to one conclusion: Chance is a chain-chewer. He pulls out a fresh stick, spits his old gum into the wrapper, and tosses it onto the pile. My eyes move from the wrapper to his face, and a realization hits me. This is how he keeps his jaw so chiseled! Also the trash can is under his desk. It’s literally under his desk. It’s fine, though. I’m not triggered.

“Open up the intranet and go to IT,” I say. “The APSC is under self-service.”

He scoots closer to his desk, hovers his hand over his mouse for a moment before opening a browser window. After pulling up the IT tab, he clicks around, finds the APSC, scrolls through the list, inching ever closer to the end of the alphabet.

“We use BrainyJ. You went too far.”

“There it is,” Chance says, his tone too victorious for my liking.

“We use BrainyJ,” I repeat.

“I use Visual Studio Code.”

“Our projects are in BrainyJ.” Am I repeating myself?

“They don’t have to be,” Chance says.

“But they are. We—“

“I’m used to this.” He gestures to the downloading executable file, leans back and crosses his arms as we both wait. “I can still hook it up to Maven.”

“We use Ant.”

Chance winces. Kinda like I did when I heard a woman was playing Doctor Who. I’m not against women, but Doctor Who? That’s like casting Sherlock Holmes as a female. Some fictional characters are sacred, what were they thinking? Just my opinion.

Visual Studio Code completes its download and I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to strong-arm Chance into using the proper software. I look down at his arm, most of his bicep visible beneath the cuff of the short sleeve, just enough muscle to fill the gaps. Pretty sure he’s wearing one of those T-shirts that are like push-up bras for men. His chest looks full and out there.

I realize I’m looking at Chance’s chest while he’s looking at me. His mouth turns up in a smirk. I feel like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Like them, I survive the fire with only a slight blush, but the visual signs of my embarrassment make me evenmoreembarrassed.

“You need to be a team player,” I say to the wall opposite Chance. He saw me blush. He saw me staring at his chest.Andhe refuses to listen to me. I’m not mad. Serenity now. “Okay. We—we’ll talk about it later. Just, let me show you our code repository so you can get started.”

“Where do you store your dependencies?”

“In our repository.”

Chance rubs his face. “Drew allows this?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s above your pay grade.”

Chance squints at me, the two little lines between his brows like goalposts. I just scored one on him, which makes me smile. Point: Danni.

I rattle off the URL to our code repository, Chance enters it, and his expression droops as I explain our organizational system. He offers his opinions about how he’d do it differently, verbally reorganizing our entire folder structure.

“Nothing’s ever ideal,” I snap. “Most of this code was written before me. I just do my job. Also, we’re a team. We cooperate.”

“I like improving things.”

“You have to weigh the costs versus the benefits.”

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