Page 41 of Debugging Love

He sets his phone on his desk. “Warn me next time.”

I stick out my finger and poke holes in his cologne aura. He recoils and waves my hand away.

Seriously, what is the code? Whatever it is, I fell out of the loop and tumbled into the exception handler. Why doesn’t he want me to touch him? Platonically. Let’s clarify that.

I don’t have time to debug Chance’s strange behavior so I focus on his screen and list the technology stack we use for our web apps. Chance’s eyelids drop a millimeter a minute until they finally close and he’s rubbing his face.

“Am I boring you?”

“This is the same stack I used at Circular Solutions. I already know it.”

Irritation needles the base of my skull. “Great, but there are still different ways to architect—“

“I’ve worked a lot of contracting gigs.”

“So have I.”

“Painting? In Indianapolis?”

The needle stops needling and goes for a full-out jab. “I’ve written thousands of lines of code at JetAero alone, so I know there’s no way you know how things work around here. I’ll just highlight the basics and then let you study the requirements and go from there. Okay?”

Chance grabs his phone and leans back. “I’m just trying to save you some oxygen.” He sticks his nose in his screen, kicking off a new game of Wordle.

“Christopher told me to get you up to speed. I’m getting you up to speed.”

“I am speed. Forty-two losers. I eat losers for breakfast.”

“Did you just quote Lightning McQueen?”

“I’m faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Jyotiraditya Balasubramania.”

He’s not taking this seriously. Not one bit.

“Yes!” Chance balls his fist and pumps it in the air. “First try. The word wasspear. Notspeedbut close.”

That’s it. I plant my hands on Chance’s desk and shove off so hard I glide into the walkway.

“We done?” he asks.

“So done.”

Horrifyingly, Chance does the snake. One way and then the other. Probably learned it while country line dancing. Should never,never, do it at work. But I don’t tell him so. Instead I beeline to Christopher’s office.

The office is big enough for Christopher’s desk, two chairs, and a neatly stacked tower of boxes that my former boss left. They’re full of cords and docking stations and wireless keyboards and headphones—a supply hoard because JetAero is so stingy with its equipment funds. Christopher dutifully wound up each cable, secured it with a zip tie, gave it a serial number that corresponds to his Access database. He plans to sort and inventory everything in the closet behind my desk but he hasn’t gotten to it yet, and so he keeps his office as tidy as he can, including his desk, with its carefully coiled wires, Bluetooth accessories that he bought himself so he wouldn’t have to deal with even more wires, and a tumbler with the wordsTears of my Staff (still warm)emboldened on it. The only other items on his desk are his meaty forearms as he looks up at me.

I close his glass office door gently behind myself, under no illusions that his glass-fronted office with one-inch thick walls provides any privacy. So, I keep my voice low.

“I want to sit somewhere else,” I whisper.

Christopher motions to the chairs across from him, an invitation to sit. I lower myself to the edge of the chair and lean toward him. “Anywhere else.”

“You can slide over to the chair beside you,” he whispers back, his head ducked.

“No, I mean my office desk. I want to move.”

“Why are we whispering?” Christopher asks.

“Because some dummy thought it was a good idea to construct private offices out of glass and Styrofoam.”

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